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Inspiration from Haneberg and Strickland

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Just listening to Lisa Haneberg’s podcast with Bill Strickland.  I can’t get enough of these ideas.  They consider a really powerful question along the lines of:

Will your life be a reflection of your environment or a reflection of your vision of how you want the world to be?

How can we build a relationship with our clients that is strong enough to allow us to ask this question?

If you have done my enterprise coaching programme you will (I hope) recognise this as a classic and powerful ‘confrontational’ question.  It is one that we should aspire to ask in our work with clients.

Making the right choice in relation to this question could be fundamental in helping stimulate a more enterprising culture in some of our most disadvantaged communities.

We should also consider this question in relation to our own practice and the nature of the relationship with our own organisation.  If our organisation is obsessed with outputs and targets does that mean our service needs to reflect that?  If our employer is bureaucratic and process driven do we choose to reflect that – or a more entrepreneurial culture?

Do we have the courage to take a different route?

Bill talks about changing the environment, physical and psychological, to provide a context that is affirming, positive and facilitative of peoples’ assets rather than focusing on, labelling and magnifying their deficits.

Enterprise professionals as custodians of the human spirit.  What a vision.  Now where was that business plan.

Give the podcast a whirl – watch the videos – you could even read the book!

Facilitating The Power of Faith and Belief

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Imagine a client who is about to commit him/herself to a significant investment in a new business.  The market does not seem to be there.  The finance is not yet in place.  The business (from any logical rational perspective) looks like a money pit.

Yet they know they can make it work.  They can see the business in its final form.  They know that they will find a way.  They just need to commit to it.  So they make the investment.  They burn their bridges.  There is no going back.  They have to find a way.

Enterprise Based on Faith or a Plan?
Enterprise Based on Faith or a Plan?

You ask them why they are so sure that the business will work.  They answer,

“I just know it will work – I can feel it in my bones”

or perhaps

“God told me to do this – he will find a way”

or

“I know it is a risk – but it is a risk that I comfortable to take”.

Now just suppose they are the Head of Sony on the brink of launching the Walkman – even though all the business anlaysts were screaming – DON’T DO IT.  Or imagine your client is Rupert Murdoch, about to launch Sky Sports – even though the market research says that overwhelmingly people will not pay to watch football matches on satellite TV.

Now imagine it is a local person about to launch into their first enterprise – no financial reserves to fall back on.

  • How would you handle the situation?
  • What would you say?
  • What would you do?
  • Who else might you involve?

If you manage a support service – how would you want your advisers and coaches to handle it?

The Power of the Listening (Progressive) Manager

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We need to stop being helpful.

Trying to be helpful and giving advice are really just ways to control others.

Advice is a conversation stopper…we should substitute curiosity for advice.

Do not tell people how you handled the same concern in the past.  Do not immediately offer the text book solution to the problem – unless you want to kill creativity, enquiry and insight.

Do not ask questions that have advice hidden in them, such as “have you ever thought of talking to the customers directly?”

Often people will ask for advice. The ‘request for advice’ is how we surrender our independence. If we give in to this request we have affirmed their dependnece on us; their belief that they do not have the capacity to create the world from their own resources; and more importantly, we have supported their escape from their own freedom.

For more on this I would recomend almost anyhtingby Peter Block – but especially:

Community – The structure of belonging – Peter Block

“One of the basic elements of the relationship between oppressor and oppressed is prescription. Every prescription represents the imposition of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed to into one that conforms with the prescriber’s consciousness.”

Pedagogy of the Oppressed – Paulo Friere

“It was wonderful! Incredibly powerful – just to be listened to.”

Participant on an Introduction to Enterprise Coaching Programme.

Without Valleys There Can Be No Mountains

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I am not sure where I first collected this quote but the more I think about it the more I see its relevance to effective management.

To me it means that wherever there is a great strength there is also a great weakness.  You cannot have one without the other.  Ying and Yang. I think this relates to a Jungian concept that whatever light shows us our way forward will always cast a corresponding shadow.

If this is the case then it becomes impossible to minimise a weakness without compromising the strength with which it is paired.

It also means that whenever we see a weakness we should look for the corresponding strength.  This is important because so many managers become almost obsessed by fixing problems rather than by celebrating and maximising strengths.

So when you find yourself recognising a weakness in yourself or others – spend a few moments looking for the corresponding strength.

Enterprise Evangelist or Enterprise Coach?

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Enterprise Evangelist Enterprise Coach
Entrepreneurship is a good thing – you should try it. Entrepreneurship is neither good not bad.  For some people it is a wonderful life affirming experience.  For others an unmitigated disaster.
We can turn your ideas and dreams into reality. You can make progress in getting the kind of life that you want.  My sole purpose is to offer you the help and support that you need on your journey.
We need to increase the start up rate if we are to change the enterprise culture in this community. We need to help more people believe that they can take action to make things better -in whatever ways matter to them.
We encourage people to start business quickly.  That helps us to keep up with our contract outputs – and anyway you don’t really learn about business until you are in it – do you? We help clients start business slowly, if at all.  We make sure that they have done as much planning, research and training as possible before they start and got a strong management team in place to reduce the risks of failure.  If they have an alternative to starting a small business we encourage them to consider it – SERIOUSLY!  We understand just how hard small business can be.
We spend a lot of money on publicity and events to attract large numbers (we wish!) to use the service. We spend almost nothing on publicity.  Instead we focus on building a great reputation (we know how to do this) and then encourage word of mouth strategies, referrals and clients telling their stories to gradually build interest.
We usually start with a bang – but numbers quickly tail off – unless we keep the marketing spend up.  We refer clients into mainstream business support or other sources of support as soon as we can.  Our job is just to get them engaged. We start slowly and build exponentially as our reputation spreads.  Within 12 months we would expect top be seeing 200 people a year with about 10% of them going on to start a new business.  Because of our reputation we also get some existing business wanting to talk with us – but that is ok because we know how to help them too!
We do all we can to keep people engaged with our service.  We pay bus fares, pick them up in our cars, provide child care and food to make it easy. We do little to keep people using the service – other than help them build their confidence and self belief in what they can achieve when they work with us.
We don’t mention business failure rates.  If we start enough – surely some of them will survive? We monitor survival rates more closely than start up rates.  We understand that it is business failures that establish a fear of enterprise and do most to damage an enterprise culture.
We design and deliver our services and interventions to deliver policy goals for number of interventions and start-ups We design and deliver our services with the client needs at the centre of things.  Our service is free of charge, competent, compassionate and easy to access.
We believe that primarily our clients need help to develop their ideas from a technical point of view.  It is all about the business plan.  The sooner we can refer them onto a technical expert – such as a business adviser the better. We believe that the idea and the business plan is one small aspect of our work.  More important is helping the client to develop their skills and their passion and commitment towards making real progress in their lives.  Understanding psychology is just as important as understanding business.  We develop the people – so that if they want they can develop their business ideas.
I don’t need to build a strong relationship – I just need to find people and refer them to mainstream business advisers. It is the quality of my relationship with you that dictates how useful it is.