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Well being and Enterprise

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For a long time now I have been an advocate for enterprise development as tool of personal and community wellbeing.  I have seen it work so often.  However enterprise is so inextricably entwined with entrepreneurship that it is difficult to really engage health professionals (who arguably lead on ‘wellbeing’ in the UK) in the potential of the enterprise agenda.  When they think enterprise they generally think social enterprise and new patterns of commissioning.  Hey Ho! 

I was interested to hear that John Healey has been encouraging Councils to consider using their ‘wellbeing’ powers to help local communities through the current economic downturn.

The wellbeing power permits councils to do anything (except raise tax) to promote the economic, social and environmental wellbeing of their area. While nine out of ten councils are aware of the power, fewer than one in twelve are using it.

As long as the council’s actions are in the interest of local wellbeing, the power is available to enable a wide range of actions – saving councils time, avoiding complex legal procedures and cutting red tape.

John Healey said:

“The wellbeing power could be used to tackle some of the very real problems faced by communities during this economic downturn. Some councils have shown the way, using it to drive investment in their area, get local people into jobs or make savings by delivering more efficient services. I’m determined that more of them see this potential. That’s why I am writing to all councils today highlighting practical advice that will help them put this key tool to best use.”

  • Greenwich council used the power to tackle worklessness in their area, creating an employment agency in support of the existing community training agency
  • in Torbay the council founded a Development Agency using the wellbeing power, which helped to boost tourism, economic development, and the regeneration of its harbour
  • a joint agreement between North Tyneside and Newcastle City Council was facilitated by the Wellbeing power and provided a whole new street lighting infrastructure. The move helped to regenerate the local area, restoring civic pride, improving house prices, attracting new businesses and reducing crime
  • London Borough of Newham used the Wellbeing power as an opportunity to invest in a partnership project with the local PCT. The Local Finance Improvement Trust they created will build new premises and provide social care services in three London authorities
  • using the Wellbeing power the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea improved the safety of their local area. The council funded the employment of fifteen additional Community Support Officers to provide more uniformed presence on the streets, contributing to reduced street crime
  • in Wakefield, families living on an estate blighted by crime and drug-abuse were given a lifeline by the wellbeing power. It allowed the houses to be bought by the Council without a lengthy Compulsory Purchase Order process. The families were able to move away from the area and get a fair price for their homes – and the Council was free to redevelop the estate.

Makes you wonder whether enterprise professionals could sell a case to a local council to use their wellbeing powers to support enterprise projects as a vehicle for progress.  I would like to think that three years into LEGI at least some working models that might deserve replication were starting to emerge. 

Anyone care to work up some ideas?

A Truth About Enterprise and Entrepreneurship?

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So here is my contribution to Enterprise Week.

DO NOT START UP YOUR OWN BUSINESS – UNLESS YOU HAVE TO.

Not the message that is usually put out, especially by national, regional and local government, but after 25 years of running and supporting small businesses, that is my best advice.  Don’t do it – unless you have to. Unless of course you have money to burn.

Because the truth is that small business is a really hard game.  You have to provide a great product or service – and one miscalculation, or one bad debt, can put you out of the game and into the bankruptcy courts. Few people succeed in business the first time they try.

It takes resilience, persistence, self confidence and courage.

The chances of success are slim and the levels of commitment and hard work required are, in most cases, enormous.

Your business will almost certainly steal you away from friends and family at least for the first few years, and many successful entrepreneurs talk about how much their business has cost them in terms of their relationships and health, as well as cash.

This is the reality of entrepreneurship that needs to be taught.  (Policy makers please take note.  If we were this honest about the nature of entrepreneurship we might not get as many people involved in enterprise week – but a far higher percentage that did get involved would go on to be successful entrepreneurs.)

Those that ‘have to’ start a business fall into two very different camps.  The first ‘have to’ because they have no other economic option for survival.  Enterprise is their ONLY option.  It is the only way they can make a living.  For those whom enterprise is a forced choice the outcome is rarely great.

The second group ‘have to’ because it is the only way that they can have the freedom to do what they have to do, to be the person that they have to be and provide the products and services that they really have to provide.  Enterprise provides them with a way of becoming the person that they feel they have to be.  It is about their own identity as a human being.

So the rallying call for enterprise week should be,

‘DO NOT DO IT- UNLESS YOU HAVE TO!

Unless it is the only way for you to become the person that you really want to be’.

And if we invested our energy into helping people to really understand who or what they want to become we might find that all of a sudden ‘enterprise’ starts to look after itself.

Of course for those that ‘have to’ enterprise can be a wonderfully powerful vehicle to achieve remarkable results.  I am not anti enterprise – quite the opposite.  I just wish we could present it honestly as the double edged sword that it truly is.

Ripples from the Zambezi – Introduction

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Sirolli introduces his book as the results of years or practice in the art of economic development through person centred development or facilitation.

He describes the growth of Enterprise Facilitation™ through word of mouth advertising and client testimonials.

He describes how current interest in entrepreneurship has made the work of spreading his methodology more straightforward. As more women join the enterprise market and more people become interested in flexible and home working through self employment the market place for Enterprise Facilitation™ in just about any community seems to be a growing one.

A Diverse Client Base

Clients come from a wide range of backgrounds and one of the founding principals of the methodology seems to be that help is available for anyone living or working in the community. Building social systems that ensure that a diverse client base is:

A) Recruited, and

B) Provided with a high quality and relevant service, is perhaps a key Sirolli lesson.

He describes the client base as “in the market right now looking not just for employment but also for a way to make a living without compromising their need for dignity”.

How does this description fit clients for your enterprise services?

What about people who are not ‘in the market’ but who already make a living through benefits and/or the gray economy?

What options do they have ‘to make a living without compromising their need for dignity’?

Indigenous Growth

Sirolli also claims that ‘civic leaders are accepting much more readily the notion of indigenous growth’.

What does he mean by the concept of ‘indigenous growth’?

How does it contrast with other approaches – such as:

  • business attraction/inward investment or
  • developing social infrastructure to attract the ‘creative classes’?

Sustainability and Human Scale

Sirolli also makes the point that 1000 home based business in a community ‘cannot even be seen’ while a factory employing a 1000 people will ‘change the physical landscape, even the air a community breathes’.

How is this a compelling reason for person centred economic development and indigenous growth?

Ubiquity of Passion, Intelligence, Self-motivation and Energy

This is one of the founding assumptions of Enterprise Facilitation™. That in every community there is the passion, intelligence, self motivation and energy to plant the seeds of economic development.

Many of the communities targeted by economic development programmes appear to have lower levels of passion, intelligence, self motivation and energy than their more prosperous neighbours.

Why else might levels of ‘enterprise’ be so low?

Are these human qualities somehow missing from economically failing communities – or have they just gone underground?

What are the mechanisms that cause some people from these communities to hide or apparently lose their passion, intelligence, self-motivation and energy?

What can be done that might help them to re-connect with these qualities?

You can can comment on any part of Ripples from the Zambezi by joining the Enterprise Reading Group.

Arts, Crafts and Enterprise

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I recently spent a day touring some of the enterprise development projects being supported by LEGI (in whole or in part) in Leeds.

The variety in the physical spaces that we visited was incredible:

  • an old warehouse that had been converted to shared work spaces rented by the hour by aspiring artists (screen printing, wood working, jewelry making etc)
  • two ex middle schools that have been refurbished and are about to opened as mixed use incubator/work spaces with restaurants, bars, gyms etc
  • a brand new modular building with funky furniture and desk space in one area and what looked to the untrained eye like a very well planned and equipped building training environment on the other
  • and a couple of generic office spaces that have been rented in the community to provide drop in space for potential entrepreneurs and administrative bases for outreach workers.

What struck me on the day was how some of these places seemed to ‘fit’ with the local community that they were situated in – and for whom one could see a demand. Indeed they seemed to have evolved as a natural consequence of local peoples passion, skills and interest (in jewellery making, screen printing, etc).

In contrast some of the others appeared to be quite out of context with the immediate environment (you know how you recognise the ‘new build funded by the public purse’ in the middle of a run down estate) with funky furniture and expensive fittings that on on the one hand send a clear message of valuing local people (YOU DO DESERVE THIS) but may provide easy targets and ammunition for the cynics as well as making them quite intimidating to some local residents.

Underlying each of the projects there is a strategy based on a set of assumptions about how enterprise development will work in the locality and with a certain target group.

I personally believe that much more work remains to be done to clarify these assumptions and strategies so that they can play an effective part in project development.

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Success Built to Last

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Success in the long run has less to do with finding the best idea, organizational structure, or business model for an enterprise, than with discovering what matters to us as individuals…For the most part, extraordinary people, teams, and organizations are simply ordinary people doing extraordinary things that matter to them.

Success Built to Last – Porras, Emery and Thompson

cited in Make the Impossible Possible by Bill Strickland pg 120