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New Start, ACT, NfEA and the State of Business Support

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New Start Magazine have published an article about the recent NfEA conference to launch ACT – a new network for enterprise support professionals.  It certainly got my juices flowing.  Below are my comments submitted in response to the original article.

I am glad the launch of ACT went well.

When I was invited to become a supplier for ACT the prime criteria for selection was a willingness to pay NfEA several thousand pounds for the privilege!  Of course others do this kind of thing to – but that does not make it the best way to secure high quality and innovative learning for business support professionals.  When I managed BLU the only criteria for being included as an associate was that you had something great to deliver and that you consistently got good feedback.  Selection as an associate was based on a rigorous and open selection process – against priorities and learning needs identified by advisory groups consisting of civil servants and business support professionals who were collaborating to deliver public policy as effectively as possible.  It was not based on ability/willingness to pay.

I am also glad that SFEDI are reviewing the ‘issues’ with the accreditation of business advisers.  As the lead body with responsibility in this arena it will be very interesting to see what they come up with!  My money would be another ‘much has been achieved but much remains to be done’ report.  I am not anticipating any turkeys voting for xmas on this one!  I have sat with SFEDI in many a meeting where both standards and assessment procedures have been dumbed down significantly by those ‘charged’ with improving skills and enterprise just to make sure that they have an ample supply of affordable, accredited advisers to deliver the latest government funded business support wheeze.  The reality is that this is about hitting the numbers promised by politicians and civil servants, rather than ensuring that the owner manager gets access to high quality business support.

NFEA, SFEDI, IBC/A/C have been working to improve the standards of business support for decades and in that time have presided over a general decline in the quality of advice and support available through the public purse, primarily in my opinion because of political interference and the imposition of the successive waves of ‘reform’ in the delivery of business support.

George is right, there are some very good advisers out there.  Some younger than others.  But in general I believe that both the quality of the advisers, and the power of the business support process to inspire and transform our entrepreneurial base have been significantly eroded by short term thinking, too many initiatives and political interference.

Am I the only one that sees it this way?

A further observation if I may.  Anyone who seriously believes that effective business support is about ‘showing people the way’ – based on knowledge and experience of previous recessions is seriously off the pace.  Our job is not to show them the way – IT IS TO HELP OUR CLIENTS TO FIND THEIR WAY – in a world that is massively different and rapidly changing.  To help them develop their vision and follow their intuition and insights.  To adapt and innovate, not to mimic and comply.  Our job is not to ‘tell and show’.  Nor to ‘diagnose and broker’.  It is to facilitate and enable.

I remember a few years back, when I was assessing business advisers, watching one tell a young entrepreneur that he should obsess less about his need for a laptop.  “I ran my business for decades without using a laptop” he said.

And another who said that we should not worry too much about developing a good online presence for business support services because “proper business people don’t have time to surf the web”.

Web 2.0 is a very different world.  Yet how many business advisers have read Cluetrain Manifesto?  Or even Tom Peter’s Re-Imagine?

How many have the courage and the skills to bring these insights to the world of informing, diagnosing and brokering?

No, much of business support is still in a world dominated by the technologies of the past – like benchmarking; in a world where we believe that academic institutions and training providers can develop qualifications that keep up to date with emerging technologies and provide us with a workforce with the skills needed in todays’ world.   In the modern world technologies move too quickly to be codified into qualifications and training programmes.  Skills have to be learned on the job.  Most providers are teaching tomorrows’ workforce how to use yesterdays’ technologies.

I look forward to the business support industry giving up fighting the last war and recognising that there is a brand new one to be fought requiring very different methodologies.

My guess is that no-one live twittered the ACT conference!

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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Multi Level Marketing and Enterprise Development

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I went to a fascinating workshop last night organised by a multi level marketer and hosted at Shine in Harehills.

The evening kicked off with a series of presentations from the Business Link Yorkshire Ideas Team, Job Centre Plus and HMRC.  Three competent, wide ranging presentations.  For me, just too many talking heads.  Still I suspect all three were able to put ticks in boxes and they certainly gave the evening a solid air of credibility and professionalism.

After a short break things got really interesting.

We were presented with an introduction to Multi Level Marketing and how it differs from pyramid selling (pyramid selling is illegal and only those in at the beginning can get to the top, MLM is much more meritocratic in that if YOU do the work YOU get the rewards was the message I picked up).  The person making the presentation was a Multi Level Marketer for one of the largest MLM oufits in the world, Herbalife.  A little web research on Herbalife leads to some very mixed messages.  Clearly for many people it works well; they make money and enjoy good health.  The internet suggests that this is not everyone’s experience.

http://www.mlmwatch.org/04C/Herbalife/herbalife00.html

http://herbal-nutrition.net/st

http://www.club40.net/sales%20site/shop.htm

http://herbal-nutrition.net/goodfoodguide

After the presentation one of the current herbal life distributors told us how it had transformed her life and it could transform ours too.  We could make money while we are on holiday, get repeat business, never have to talk with strangers, enjoy low start up costs etc.  It all sounded too good to be true.

This was not enterprise education – this was recruitment.  This was not impartial and independent advice.  It was MLMers doing their stuff, recruiting more MLMers and piggy backing on the credibility of Business Link, HMRC and the Job Centre.

Finally we had a very brief and very credible presentation from Robert Looker.  He provided a balanced and professional introduction to the concept of the franchise.  Robert was open about the fact that he worked for Exemplas.  He did not point out that Exemplas were one of the partners behind Business Link Yorkshire.

I think Business Support organisations have to engage with MLM schemes.  They are in our communities.  The vast majority of those ‘Need an extra income’ signs fixed to lamp posts lead to MLM organisations.  We have to find ways of making sure that they add value in our communities and do no harm. MLM works for some people not all.  Its reputation is mixed.  Typically it requires you to have a network of friends with disposable income (not massively common in super output areas).

I don’t beleive the public purse should be used to provide a platform for any single MLM organisation – although it should be used to educate about MLM.  If the workshop had been an impartial ‘All you need to know about MLM’ then I for one would have been much more relaxed.  I was pretty shocked that one MLM outfit had established this platform of credibility to promote themselves directly into the community.  This was neither independent nor impartial.

I have been involved in the development of the Business Link brand for over 15 years.  I understand independence and impartiality.  I also understand how easily these brand values are compromised – and I think they were last night.

Developing more enterprising cultures in ‘areas of deprivation’ is difficult  and fragile work.  There are always ‘get rich quick and easy’ schemes looking to part people from their cash and we need to be very careful to help people make good choices as we prompt them to flex their enterprise muscles.  We bear a burden of responsibility as we encourage people to be more enterprising.

I  doubt that our responsibilities are best discharged by wrapping advocates for one direct MLM organisation in the shrouds of publicly funded  business support.  I am sure it is the herbalife agents who will be following up interest. I am also sure that it was the public purse that picked up the tab for the refreshments.

I am distictly uncomfortable.

Am I the only one?

New Measures and New Approaches to Development

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Just recently I have been thinking about what we measure and why we measure it in various development programmes.  In economic development, measures are based on productivity, a measure usually derived from Gross National Product or Gross Domestic Product.  Anything likely to increase the productivity of the economy is deemed to be a good thing and pursued wholeheartedly.

This has led to a long term and persistent bias towards the pursuit of productivity gains – rather than to investing in establishing a context from which productivity will emerge.

Consider this from Bobby Kennedy from almost 50 years ago:

‘Too much and too long, we seem to have surrendered community excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product … counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them. It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.’

Robert F. Kennedy Address, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, March 18, 1968

Seems pretty close to the mark even 50 years later.

  • Why did this voice of reason not prevail?
  • Could it prevail now?
  • Should it?