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E-mail to an Enterprise Professional

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If I said enterprise not entrepreneurship then I was too strong.

It is just that we can help people to develop their enterprising soul in so many more and varied arenas – many of which are more intrinsically attractive and powerful media than ‘business’ – especially to young people.  Musicianship, sports, art, food, writing, wildlife, gardening, web 2.0 etc etc.  Why nail ‘enterprise’ to ‘business’ so much of the time?  It just serves to alienate lots of people for whom the world of business seems phoney, vain, self serving, venal and corrupt.

Azjen’s stuff is interesting.  My problem with it is that it presupposes a set of behaviours that we are trying to move people towards.  ie an officially sanctioned version of what constitutes the enterprise curriculum.  I know that these exist – but I question their value.  I believe that the way in which each of us is enterprising is distinctly personal and probably neither transferable nor generic. It is an expression of our personality, culture and our experience as much as of our aspiration.  Enterprise education is therefore about drawing out what is within rather than grafting on what is (according to a gap analysis against our framework) ‘missing’.  It is about helping people to become fully themselves, not to fit our template for enterprise/entrepreneurship.

The fact that you might find enterprise conceived this way hard to measure is not a major concern of mine.  However I KNOW FOR CERTAIN that if we engage more people in this process of self discovery and emergence, a massively high proportion of them will go on to do enterprising and very possibly entrepreneurial things.  Invest in this and you will get increased wellbeing – and there is plenty of cash being spent on that!  Hint towards strategic repositioning, broadening income streams and increasing impact for your organisation.

From a more enterprising community will come more entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, actors, writers, intrapreneurs, political activists and entrepreneurs.  It is this idea of what constitutes an enterprising community that we should develop. Hint – it is not one where the measure of TEA =6%.

To develop a more enterprising community we need to help community activists and gatekeepers, to develop much more benign and open attitudes to the potential of enterprise as a tool for community and personal development.  All the time it looks like a thinly veiled government plot to reduce benefits and increase tax take we can not expect to be welcomed with open arms – especially when the cash runs out – as it will.

Listening to the Millionaire MBA was really insightful for me on this idea of the personalisation of enterprise where, even in the narrow field of high growth entrepreneurship, successful entrepreneurs accredited their success to a vast and often conflicting range of different behaviours, models, ideas and values.  Kalms and Roddick both had very different takes on the politics and practice of branding – yet they both exploited the practice wonderfully.  Similar examples are legion.

Success in business, success in life depends fundamentally on becoming YOU – not conforming to the policy makers aspiration of the ideal citizen.  Enterprise is about the emergence of identity not its manipulation by the Treasury.  So come on enterprise educators.  Let’s drop the obsession with ‘business’ and get on with the real work of educating more enterprising souls.

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Why We Must Develop People and not Entrepreneurs

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Economic growth is supposed to deliver prosperity. Higher incomes should mean better choices, richer lives, an improved quality of life for us all. That at least is the conventional wisdom. But things haven’t always turned out that way.

An even stronger finding is that the requirements of prosperity go way beyond material sustenance. Prosperity has vital social and psychological dimensions. To do well is in part about the ability to give and receive love, to enjoy the respect of your peers, to contribute useful work, and to have a sense of belonging and trust in the community. In short, an important component of prosperity is the ability to participate meaningfully in the life
of society.

This view of prosperity has much in common with Amartya Sen’s vision of development as ‘capabilities for flourishing’.

The ‘iron cage of consumerism’ is a system in which no one is free.

It’s an anxious, and ultimately a pathological system. But at one level it works. The system remains economically viable as long as liquidity is preserved and consumption rises. It collapses when either of these stalls.

Prosperity without growth?
The transition to a sustainable economy
Professor Tim Jackson
Economics Commissioner
Sustainable Development Commission

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10 Common Mistakes In Developing an Enterprise Culture

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Many projects designed to stimulate an enterprise culture fall foul of one or more of the following:

  1. they focus too much on the individual and not enough on the enterprising ecosystem – failing to address social context – instead trying to help individuals to ‘overcome the odds’
  2. believing that the reasons for low levels of enterprise are because we have not provided the right building – commissioning the latest interpretation of the ‘catalytic space’ – hoping that if we build it they will come
  3. failing to educate and engage other stakeholders and agencies involved in community development about the role of enterprise in economic and social development.  Helping them to see that this is about education and the development of human potential
  4. focusing on persuasion rather than education – using ‘carrots and sticks’ to drive people towards enterprise – rather than helping them to clarify their own self interest and then developing their power to realise it
  5. pretending that enterprise is a good thing – instead of portraying it in a balanced way as a double edged sword – a powerful vehicle for life that can crash horribly or take you on a wonderful journey
  6. skimming communities for those with most developed ‘enterprise potential’ and helping them take the last few steps – instead of helping those who have not explored their enterprise potential take the first few steps – ‘Have you got a great business idea?’
  7. designing interventions around 121, 12-several and 12 many interventions – instead of around word of mouth and other network effects – failing to train gatekeepers to act as educators and enthusiastic referrers
  8. designing services that are policy led (designed to achieve specific policy goals) rather than client centred – designed to help clients to become more enterprising in their own terms
  9. starting from where we want to start rather than from where clients are
  10. failing to recognise that strong, long term relationships are critical to building the trust and support necessary to enable people to take more enterprising actions – and a bonus number 11
  11. failing to build teams capable of starting sustainable growth oriented business – instead pandering to the myth of the lone entrepreneur bravely riding the range.

Any that I have missed?

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Blowing My Own Trumpet!

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Couple of pieces of feedback about small pieces of work. 2 hour diagnostic conversations with managers of enterprise services followed up by brief 1000 word reports back to them.

Hi Mike,

thanks for this….you have managed to capture exactly my vision, and my apprehensions, in regards to the the service and expressed it in a way that is so much more professional than I could ever do myself.

and,

Dear Michael,

Thank you so much for meeting with me last week and for the report you kindly sent us.  It was very helpful to talk through the issues and to have them laid our so succinctly in your report, which despite identifying several areas that need addressing, I found very encouraging.

I am not quite sure the best way to approach [our funders] but do feel I it would be beneficial to send them a copy before I see them.  Are you happy for me to do this?  I shall also send the information to our Board to reflect on and I have requested that we find some time to work on the issues you highlight.

…

You also suggested I should contact someone from the council about taking the market plan forward into the city.  Are you happy for me to takes some quotes from your report to send to [ list of councillors], if we are going to progress our move into [the city centre] it will only happen by having all of them on board.

I look forward to hearing from you and again many many thanks for your time, encouragement and assistance…

In both cases the intervention has led to clearer understanding and a series of actions designed to take things forward.  This IS the enterprise coaching cycle in practice.

If you manage an enterprise service and would benefit from a similar service do get in touch!

Build It – And They Won’t Come!

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Why are so many ‘entrepreneurial’ workspaces so empty?

I have visited many recently. Those that pursue sustainability through membership fees and rentals are often the emptiest. Or full of people from out of town who can recognise a bargain when/if they see one. Those that recognise that local people often cannot afford to pay and therefore offer their services for free seem to have customers literally queuing up. However these are written off as ‘unsustainable’. Investing in the development of people – ‘Obviously unsustainable’!

The symptoms are obvious to the semi-expert eye. Tired signs saying ‘under offer’ for months without new tenants materialising? Acres of untouched hot desk space. Continual assurances that we were busy yesterday. Caterers that come and go – because the footfall that they anticipated has not materialised.

Promises lying broken.

When we build these places – WHY DON’T THEY COME?

This is an important question. And one that we CONSISTENTLY fail to address.

Why do those charged with developing a more enterprising culture believe that building catalyst centres, managed workspaces, incubators and other spaces will somehow change the psychology, the prevailing beliefs of a community?

Why is the “build it and they will come” mentality so prevalent? And so successful in unlocking the wallets of planners, politicians and commissioners alike?

Why in the face of refurbished or newly built, but largely empty, buildings do we insist on building yet more? Is it in the name of job creation?

We develop a more enterprising culture when we tell better, different stories. Stories of hope, aspiration, potential and achievement. Stories of progress, passion, skill and learning.

When we provide respect, encouragement and transformational relationships built on trust and wisdom. When we engage people as individuals and help them to clarify and achieve their own goals – not those pre-defined by some policy maker.

When we listen to them talk about their hopes and dreams – not tell them about the great deal we can do them if they take rent our workspace.

We don’t transform a culture by providing people with access to whitewashed vanilla workspaces and the chance to use a shared laptop with a keyboard dirtier than a toilet seat.

It is not just the waste of valuable resources that is so galling when we see buildings refurbished just because they can be. It is the ongoing waste of money as we try to cover up our mistakes in a futile effort to make them work. As commissioners cover their backs and hide behind and fall back on the recession as an excuse for their failed investments. Buildings don’t change cultures even in the good times. They don’t narrow the gap between the haves and the have nots even when the economy is on a roll. People do.

Now I hate to see a beautiful building falling into decay just as much as the next man. But I hate to see the talent and potential of people being wasted even more. Those buildings were a by-product of a vibrant, creative and enterprising community – not the cause of it.

To develop a more enterprising culture we first have to stimulate the demand side – get more people wanting to do stuff. Believing that THEY can do stuff. That they have a right to succeed or at least try – and that they will be supported with care, compassion, competence and creativity.

Only when this work on the demand side is underway and delivering tangible results should we invest in the infrastructure that they need – because then we have a chance of making an investment in something that people really want.

Something that might just fit.

Something to which they will come.

NB Of course if you build high quality entrepreneurial spaces in places that are already enterprising then they fill quickly.  Anyone else see a pattern emerging here?