realisedevelopment.net

Just another WordPress site

Enterprise as a Precursor for Entrepreneurship – working on the demand side

by

There is much policy and rhetoric about the need to transform the ‘enterprise culture’ of our communities (especially those that make higher than average use of the benefits system).

This is usually translated into a ‘need’ (for policy makers and planners that live nowhere near the targeted community) to:

  • increase the rate of business start-ups per head of population
  • increase vat registrations
  • increase self employment
  • reduce benefit dependency.

So far so good. But now the problems start. In order to try to get these metrics moving in the desired direction we tinker with the supply side on a whole series of employment/skills and business start-up interventions, designed to make them more accessible to target communities. In the local Children’s Centre or Church Hall half day workshops on ‘Turning your Business Dream into Reality’, ‘Turning your Hobby into Cash’ and ‘Employment Skills’ appear alongside workshops for ‘Tumbling Tots’ and ‘Breastfeeding for Beginners’.

Now the ‘Tumbling Tots’ and ‘Breast Feeding for Beginners’ workshops are usually pretty popular. While often the enterprise and employment workshops struggle to get the numbers they need. Even enticements of free food and the indication that grants and funding might be available often fail to get punters through the door. Although the reasons for the difference in take up are obvious they are worth re-considering for those of who are interested in stimulating enterprise.

The Health Market Place

  • A strong professional, credible and competent outreach team (Health Visitors, Midwifes, Community Nurses and associated health professionals, social enterprises and volunteers) who form long term relationships with local people over many years and sometimes generations
  • Administrative support, data protection and other professional protocols that have developed over time for the benefit of both the client and the funder – records are kept and used to plan and manage support over many years (they long ago gave up looking for the ‘quick fix’)
  • A client base (on the whole) with a pressing need and desire to engage – ‘I really do need to learn this parenting malarkey‘ – and generally a social context and peer groups that will respect and support their endeavours to be a better parent
  • Mainly trusted as being on the side of the Mum and the Baby – we really are here to help

The Enterprise Market Place

  • Often new, poorly paid and inexperienced outreach workers (who have yet to gel as a team with few established record keeping, client management and referral systems) on short term contracts looking to achieve short term outcomes.
  • A client base with little urgent or pressing desire to engage and with a psychology that may not welcome the possibility of ‘new things at which to fail’ (in spite of our best efforts to re-assure them that ‘enterprise is for all’ they recognise that this maybe a long and risky pathway)
  • An agenda (entrepreneurship) that does not chime with local social, economic, political and cultural norms – and is often seen as being imposed from the outside.
  • An agenda that carries with it significant risk of failure and social isolation (this is not what my peers spend their time doing)

Little wonder that our best efforts to expand the supply side of the enterprise market place in targeted communities in a well intended drive to increase ‘engagement’ is so often met with apparent indifference. So what can we do that might encourage the take up of more enterprise services and the transformation of the enterprise culture?

I think that the answer lies not in continuing to develop and refine the supply side.

  • Fewer half day workshops and new enterprise centres.
  • No more ambitious and expensive push marketing plans.

Instead we should focus in the short term (3-5 years?) on nurturing the demand side. Finding ways to stimulate a genuine curiosity about the enterprise agenda.

On holding conversations (open space events, knowledge cafes etc) about what a more enterprising community would look and feel like.

  • What benefits could it bring to local people?
  • What downsides?
  • What are the possibiliites that we can pursue to make progress on the enterprise agenda – building on what we already have and can do?
  • How can local people engage in driving the enteprise agenda?
  • Who can local people invite to help them transform their enterprise culture?
  • How can we make enterprise a socially inclusive sport?

On helping more local people to recognise that they can make progress on their agendas (rather than being manipulated into the agendas of others).

  • Encouraging people to set goals and aquire skills, knowledge and networks that help them to get things done
  • Promoting the real skills of enterprising people – looking for opportunities to make things better and finding ways to exploit them
  • Teaching in a way that facilitates personal growth and independence
  • Learning how to find a sense of purpose and urgency that will drive their personal development
  • Recognise the ‘well trodden pathways’ that they are on and to choose different pathways if they so wish.
  • Recognise and valuing ‘failure’ as a part of the process. To recognise the difference between people failing and their ideas failing.

On recognising that the social context and networks are crucial for supporting enterprise.

  • Encourage more people to be more supportive of their peers who are trying to make stuff happen
  • Build more social capital around the enteprise agenda – establish social technologies where specilaist support and advice can be found at low or no cost – where individuals and organisations with a stake in supporting a more enteprising culture can share ideas, exchange practice and more importantly build the trust and understanding neccessary to really co-operate on future endeavours
  • Develop connectors, mavens and salespeople at the local level who can change the ‘vibe’ around enterprise and form them into competent, credible and person centred outreach teams who are prepared to advocate enterprise. In my expereince most communities are already developing such mavens, connectors and salespeople. The neighbourhood management team, local youth groups, faith based groups and other community based projects are often an excellent place to start your search.

As a good friend of mine said, ‘going into a community that has experienced long periods of economic and social decay and prescribing an increase in entrepreneurship is a little bit like going into Burkina Faso and, on noticing that they don’t have a state of the art scientific research programme, suggesting that they invest in a large hadron collider, a stem cell research project or a programme of space exploration as a way of bringing them quickly up to world class’.

We have to develop enterprise strategies that acknowledge where people are at rather than where we want them to be. In this way I think enterprise professionals can really start to play a part in transforming the culture of some of our most disadvantaged communities.

And in time we might have local people queing up for places on our enterprise workshops and to take up space in our enterprise centres.

Enterprise and Flow

by

The Flow Channel

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests that the level of challenge needs to be carefully matched to the level of skill and confidence if the learner is to stay in the ‘flow channel’ that exists between anxiety and panic on the one hand and boredom on the other. Too much challenge and not enough skills and the learner is likely to feel panic and anxiety and may withdraw from the development process. Too many skills and not enough challenge is likely to lead to boredom and also increase the probability of withdrawal.  Get the balance right between the level of challenge and thelevel of skills and confidence and you have every chance that they well get ‘into the zone’.

As enterprise coaches (especially those of us working in communities with low levels of educational attainment) it is my belief that we often float the challenge of self employment and entrepreneurship much too early in the development process for some of our clients. The mismatch between the challenge (you could run your own business) and the perceived level of skill and experience is so high that we induce anxiety, fear and panic and are likely to experience high drop-out levels.

This problem is especially acute when policy drivers lead to ‘fast enterprise’ projects designed to accelerate the client towards entrepreneurship. This often manifests itself in a range of workshops designed to put people on the ‘fast track to entrepreneurship’. In practice such workshops often struggle to recruit participants from the target market and experience high drop out rates.

My solution?

Recognise that self employment and entrepreneurship may lie way outside the comfort zone for many people in the communities we serve. We have to use an ‘intermediate technology’ to help them to make progress from where they are at, in terms of both their technical skills and their psychological state (confidence, motivation, self esteem and self-belief).

Start to engage in more ‘person centred’ ways about what progress might look like to them at the moment. Help them to set goals for progress that are challenging but realistic and provide them with the support and guidance that they need to achieve. This WILL lead to personal development and to them learning to use enterprise skills to make progress. Help them to recognise the progress that they have made and the skills and abilities that they have used along the way. Ask them again to think about what progress they want to make now and repeat the cycle.

If we can help enough people to steer a course of personal development that delivers real progress on the problems and opportunities that face them we may find that before we know it we have a number of people who are ready to start working with us on their plans for entrepreneurship.

Business Plan – A, B, C and D

by

The unfortunate truth is that most entrepreneurs make far more money and get much more fun out of plans  B, C and D than they ever get out of plan A.

This is because good entrepreneurs learn quickly and are flexible.

They especially learn not to be seduced by a plan that is wonderful on paper but just does not work in the real world.

Are you ready to move to plan B?

Evaluating Enterprise in ‘Deprived’ Communities

by

One of the most comprehensive pieces of evaluation work done on a wide range of projects designed to stimulate enterprise in deprived communities was the Evaluation of the Phoenix Development Fund – a piece of work that was completed by Peter Ramsden in July 2005.

The Phoenix Fund was a flagship £189 million fund administered by the Small Business Service running from 2000 to 2008 developed in response to Policy Action Team 3 paper on ‘Enterprise and Social Exclusion’. 

The terms of reference for the evaluation set out five key questions that the evaluation would address:

  1. Did the PDF encourage fresh thinking?
  2. How effective have specific project type approaches been?
  3. To what extent have projects to help particular sections of the community been successful?
  4. To what extent has the Fund helped to engage mainstream providers?
  5. Has funding helped to build capacity?

Overall the conclusion of the evaluation was that the fund had been a success. Using a reflective action-oriented approach the PDF contributed greatly to the growth of knowledge and experience of business support to encourage inclusive enterprise. There is now a considerable body of documented knowledge of inclusive approaches to business support. This compares to the situation in 2000 when it was reported by SBS that there was ‘too little knowledge in this field’.

If you are involved in an enterprise project aimed at working in disadvantaged areas I would commend the evaluation and the lessons learned reports highly!

Just to whet your appetite:

Models of delivery – critical success factors:

  • Regardless of type of programme envisaged, the needs of individuals must be central; be prepared to flex from the original programme specification if needs be.
  • An inclusive and holistic approach to developing the skills and confidence required for individuals to move ‘forward’ really works, as does the use of coaching, specialist sector advisers, peer or other supportive networks etc.
  • The above takes ‘longer than usual’ amounts of time and investment in relationship and trust building; be realistic about what can be achieved in a very limited life programme.
  • This can also be more costly but needs to be weighed against the longer-term benefits of clients/users coming off benefits (for instance).
  • Investing time in building positive relationships with mainstream business support agencies is crucial and can lead to a change in mainstream culture and provision, leading to potentially more productive partnerships and win-wins.
  • Well-designed and holistic enterprise support can also add significant value by providing optional routes into employment and further learning for individuals who feel enterprise is not for them at the present time.

You can find more here.

Enterprise – A Journey from A to Z

by

Enterprise is a journey from A to Z.

Except there is no Z.

The journey just keeps going on.

But imagine for a moment that ‘Z’ is finally having a stable secure business – that does what you need it to do.  And that the enterprise journey is from A-Z.

The truth is that most, if not all, of our enterprise support services only go back as far as ‘W’.  ie they only  engage people who already have an idea or an aspiration that they want to do something about.  And the support service implies that there is a logical, rational (if typically dull) process called business planning that will get you safely from W-Z.  (Never mind that this is an untruth that misleads clients about the fundamental dynamics of enterprise.)  We have spent a lot of time and energy on supporting the transition from W-Z.  We have short entrepreneurship programmes, advisory services, planning software and templates.  This is not where the vast majority of human enterprise potential is lost (although even at this late stage we still manage to waste a lot!)

The real waste is in the majority of people that never make it as far as ‘W’.

How do we get  the vast majority who do not see themselves as enterprising to recognise the role that enterprise skills and behaviours can play in their personal pursuit of progress/happiness?

My argument is that if we can ‘unstick’ some of these very stuck people (especially with reference to ‘deprived communities’) we will start to build a ‘pipeline’ for enterprise from ‘where people are at’ (usually a-d) on the enterprise journey rather than where we would like the be (W).

Of course this does not fit the policy goals for instant enterprise…but it does reflect the reality of human growth and development and what we know about enterprise – that it takes time to learn how to do it well.

One of the challenges in communities that are ‘low on enterprise’ is that they have an inordinate number of ‘precontemplators’ – people who do not see enterprise/business as relevant to them.

They may watch Dragon’s Den/The Apprentice and be sickened at the prospect of moving in those circles.  So when we ask ‘Have you got a great business idea’ their instant thought is ‘No! Yuk!’

The other large constituent in these communities are contemplators who have thought about it but decided ‘No’.  Often because they don’t think they have the skills because we still promulgate the myth that you need to:

  • be financially literate
  • have good reading and writing skills,
  • be articulate, visionary, powerful and persuasive,
  • have a great product,
  • be a strong marketeer and great at sales and
  • be a fully fledged finance director

to succeed at the enterprise game.

Precontemplators and contemplators are the groups that effective outreach needs to engage to help them re-consider the reality of enterprise – what is is and how it relates to them and their dreams.  At least if we are to really start transforming the enterprise culture in disadvantaged communities.

We also need to recognize that failure (lapse and relapse) is an inevitable (almost) part of the enterprise journey.  It is part of the learning process.  If you are Richard Branson then people pick you up from the failed budgie breeding project and the xmas tree farm and encourage you to try again.  If you are from a poor non working class family the response is more likely to be ‘bloody typical of you to F**k that up as well’.

Few of our services help clients to prepare for failure and put it into context on their enterprise journey.

Few services pay serious regard to the power of the peer group and how that can be managed.

Outreach is not just about going to the places that mainstream support fears to tread.  It is about presenting enterprise in a very different, much more accessible and engaging way.  It is about understating the psychology and motivations of the client and and building a bridge to enterprise that starts from where they are at.