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Never Discourage Anyone…But Don’t Motivate Them Either

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Never discourage anyone … who continually makes progress, no matter how slow. – Plato (427 BC – 347 BC)

Never.  NEVER!  NEVER!

I wish the judges of enterprise competitions would understand the importance of this.

At the grand finals of a recent dragon’s den type event (which included the usual cocktail of local business people, ‘would have been’ apprentices and celebrity millionaires on the judging panel) 6 finalists were asked to pitch their ideas.

The setting was the enormous stage in the Main Hall of a local University.  Powerpoint, radio mics, lapel mics, comperes.  It had the lot.

The audience?  A couple of hundred family and friends, enterprise professionals and housing types.  Some of the finalists took to this platform like a duck to water.  For others it was more like lambs to the slaughter.  I suspect for none of them was this a situation that could REALLY be justified as a legitimate and essential part of their ‘enterprise education’.  For most it was certainly not timely.

The task?  Deliver a 6 minute pitch about your business/start up idea and then face 6 minutes of questionning, while dealing with problems with both sound and AV systems of farcical proportions.  These were so acute I began to think they were deliberatley staged to test participants’ ability to think on their feet.  I am still not sure if the computer maintenance business sabotaged their own powerpoint to make some sort of point?

And the judges seemed to have available to them one of two responses.  The first were variations of  ‘You have something’, ‘You will make this work’, ‘Whatever you try you will find a way’.  At least one of the judges seemed to be able form this response based on just what people looked like!

The second was ‘You have got a problem’, ‘You have got nothing’, ‘It is terribly confused’, ‘Your name doesn’t work’.

It is hard to know which of these is responses is more dangerous.

I am sure the event and the competition that led upto it was a great success for funders.  Lots of PR, a big dinner etc.  But can we really say this is community engagement in enterprise?

I suspect that some of the competitors found the whole process deeply discouraging.

Interestingly the winner and runner up were both graduates.  Another wonderful example of enterprise skimming?

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My Favourite Enterprise Podcast…ever

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While many businesses pay lip service to the idea of environmentally responsible practices, Patagonia has defined itself by “inspiring and implementing solutions to the environmental crisis,” says Chouinard.

The company has pledged that by 2010, it will to make all of its clothing from recycled and recyclable materials. Chouinard says that he would exit the clothing business altogether rather than compromise his standards.

Patagonia takes many steps to control its growth, such as drastically limiting its catalog distribution and not taking the company public in an IPO.

Chouinard even encourages his customers to buy less and focus on their needs rather than their wants. He insists that every time Patagonia invests in the environment, he sees an increase in the company’s bottom line.

Check out the full podcast here it is well worth the effort.

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Why Doesn’t Motivation Work?

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This is a question I was asked recently by someone in local government.  ‘How come some people travel two thousand miles in search of a job, while others won’t even get on a bus?’

It is a question that deserves consideration – and I believe that the answer lies in both hope and fear.

With hope, travel (both geographical and psychological) is a necessity.  Where there is hope we are driven to pursue it.  Without hope then even the smallest step towards self improvement might not be taken.  The person that travels two thousand miles does so in hope.  The hope that they will find their share of the wealth and that they will be able to alleviate conditions at home by sending some of this wealth back.

The person that won’t get on the bus is in the true sense of the word hopeless in this area of their lives.  What IS the point of another trip to the job centre or the college that will just end up in yet another failure?  It is hard to believe that the institutions that are there to help can be of any help at all.  It is an example of what the psychologists call Learned Helplessness.

The second part of the equation is fear.  How will my life unfold if I don’t take personal responsibility for changing things?  Almost certainly the person prepared to travel thousands of miles is doing so to escape literally fearful conditions at home.  Maybe war or violent crime.  Maybe the type of crushing poverty that leaves you without decent housing and with no hope for improvement at home.  Escape is perceived as an urgent priority, literally life and death.

But what about the person that won’t get on the bus?  How will their life unfold as a consequence?  Well they will remain just like a significant proportion of their peers – which they will find comforting.  As a group they can collectively blame others for their condition.  They can claim benefits and perhaps do a bit of work on the side.  And there is certainly ‘excitement’ to be had – everything from Jeremy Kyle through Diamond White to adrenaline pumping crime.  In the short term life is not so bad.  The longer term consequences maybe less than optimal – but people can always defer worrying about the future. As the Office of Science and Technology puts it “Evidence shows that people may be biased towards seeking short-term rewards at the expense of greater long-term benefits.”

So the need is to offer real hope and a realistic assessment of the long term consequences of not getting on the bus.  It is to help people start to explore their ‘enterprising soul’.  And this is not about a half day ‘business start-up’ workshop.

The tragically ironic thing about the people that travel two thousand miles?  For many, within a few months of arriving, a forced engagement with depressing ESOL classes and tussles with bureaucracy soon lead to the same sense of learned helplessness that means they too will no longer get on a bus.

You see, the problem is that motivation always works – perfectly.

It is ‘the system’ that let us down.

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Enterprise = Power x Self Interest

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I have written about this formulation before, that enterprise is a factor of power and self interest.  It is still working for me and bearing fruits.

I was attracted to this video from Demos that provides some useful insights into, and questions around, the nature of power.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFDcIuwugNg]

So what do you think?

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