Enterprise Hub or Duck Farm?

I visited a really great community centre recently.  Busy, friendly, homespun, clearly doing great work in and with the community. We were using several rooms, one of which was called the ‘Enterprise Hub’.  It was spotlessly clean, airy, spacious and well furnished, just like every other room in the building.  But for the life of me I could not work out what made it an ‘Enterprise Hub’.  It was not set up for hot desking, there were no PCs, no mail boxes, none of the usual paraphernalia…

So I asked the centre manager about the Enterprise Hub.  The answer surprised me – but it shouldn’t have done.  They were looking for cash to modernise and re-decorate the room and in conversation with the local authority it become clear that the only budget with cash available was in ‘Enterprise’.

‘They said if we called it an Enterprise Hub we could have the cash.’

I love the way this demonstrates the inherent enterprise of the community centre management team in tracking down the cash that they need to ‘get the job done’.  I am less impressed  by what it says about some investments in ‘enterprise’.  I can just imagine the report to the councillors about the new enterprise hub…

I remember a colleague saying to me at the launch of a major enterprise initiative,

‘The problem is that many of the people in this room don’t really understand enterprise.  They don’t live it and breathe it.  If the Government was announcing a major initiative to invest in duck farming, because an economist had said THAT is the future of the UK economy, many of these same people would be in the room, nodding sagely, and would run home to invent new policies to encourage duck farming’.

Dock Street Market – and the role of the Leeds communities

I went to a very wonderful opening for Dock Street Market last Friday.  It used to be a decent enough shop that had many fans and reportedly turned over a million a year.  But still it could not survive.

Now the shop has been taken over by a number of local artisan producers and entrepreneurs, all of whom offer a phenomenal product.  We have fish and chips reinvented by the wonderful Fish &, excellent north Italian coffee and more from Bottega Milanese, superb breads from the Riverside Sourdough Bakery and more.  The people behind these businesses are phenomenally hard working and focussed on quality, service and value.  They are doing their bit to make the collaborative project a success.

But my interest is in the role of the rest of us.  The fine citizens of Leeds.  Of the 700 000 plus people that live in the city, my guess is that the vast majority will not even know that the Dock St Market exists.  They are ‘strangers’ to the market.  Perhaps 10 ooo or so are aware of the market and certainly a couple of hundred rocked up at the opening last week.  These constitute ‘prospects’.  People who know the market exists and may become customers.

But customers so far, by definition, are a smaller group.  Having only just opened not many of us have had the chance to spend our cash in Dock Street Market yet….

A large part of the success of the market will depend on the rate at which strangers are turned in to prospects, prospects are turned into customers, and customers are turned into loyal supporters of the brand.

Historically this process of marketing and sales would be down to the entrepreneurs.  This is their job.  But I am interested in the role of the rest of us.  Those who are already prospects and customers, and our ability to help in the sales and marketing process.   Our power to influence others to check out and support the development of the great independent traders  in Dock Street Market.

Because the ability of a community to support great business is perhaps as important in developing an enterprise culture as the development of the entrepreneur.

Social media has amplified the voice of the prospect and the customer.  It can help to reach the strangers.  As can word of mouth strategies based on good quality referrals and introductions.

So of course let us keep giving the entrepreneurs the training and skills that they need.  But let us also consider how we can equip the rest of us to properly support businesses in our community.

Good luck to all behind the Dock St Market venture.  And let’s see just how much the rest of us can do to really support the kind of independent, artisan based businesses that many of us say we want to see thriving in Leeds.

You can find Dock St just south of the river.  It is well worth checking out!

More on Dock Street Market. And More…from Bronchia

The E in LEP is for ENTERPRISE

Not Economic.

Not Entrepreneurial.

ENTERPRISE.

If LEPs really focused on encouraging enterprise rather than economic growth how would things change?

If LEPs looked at how they create a culture where enterprise (the ability to act boldly in pursuit of progress) was the norm rather than the exception, a mass participation sport, something that was seen as cool and for everyone, not just those smart ‘entrepreneurial types in suits’ what sorts of things would they be doing?

How would our communities change?

What would happen to our economy?

A Community Ecology of Enterprise

Enterprise is not just about ‘entrepreneurial types’ and ‘business ideas’.

It is not just about business and commercial endeavour.

If I want to make something happen to improve things in my community I may start a business, but I may start a campaign, or a festival, or a local action group.  I have worked with many people whose motivation was not to develop a business, but to make a difference, and in some cases setting up a business has been a means to that end.  No more than that.  It is simply a means to an end.

Well managed and run these kinds of community based activity all contribute to a more enterprising community and provide the kind of community ecology and practice ground from which commercial endeavours may spring.  They also help to build the social capital that is essential to building a sustainable and resilient local economy and community.

If LEPs were to think more about the kind of community ecology that supports enterprise and how this can be developed I suspect they would get a much greater ROI than on more traditional approaches of advice, managed workspace (we are awash with these in Leeds, mostly under-used and inappropriate for the communities they were built in) and access to finance.

Yes the web matters.  But it won’t be primarily because either a LEP or the national Business Link site offer generic advice and guidance (which to be frank just replicates what is already out there in most cases) but because local sites and sites of shared interest will provide highly specific and contextual advice – usually in the form of dialogue and conversation rather than factsheet.  The web will provide a platform for conversations that cannot easily take place face to face.

We have to start to think differently.  We have to innovate. We have to be prepared to try new approaches.  I hope LEPs are up to the challenge.

For me this means getting away from thinking about one to one advice for high growth, one to small group for lifestyle and start-up (in deprived areas) and one to many (content led websites) for the rest, and instead seriously building the networks, social capital, self belief and self-reliance that will allow our communities to become much more enterprising.

After Business Link…Time for a change of tack?

So it was confirmed in the White Paper yesterday that Business Links will be gone by the end 2012.  All that will remain is a website, and perhaps a call centre.

So what will replace £154m per year of business information, advice and guidance?

Time for DIY support I think.

Time for businesses and the wider communities of which they are a part to help themselves on their own terms.

I am not talking about ‘local’  Chambers of Commerce or Enterprise Agencies winning contracts from the State to deliver outputs and targets in return for tax payers cash.  That will just recreate the problems of the old regime:

• post code lotteries,
• sectoral discrimination,
• services designed to trigger funding payments and hit targets, rather than work in person centred ways to deliver just in time support to the people who are hungriest for it,
• groupies who learn to lunch with the bureaucrats and help them to deliver the targets while some people who are the most hungry for support are denied it because they are not aiming to turnover £2m within 24 months, live in the wrong part of town, aren’t working in a priority sector and so on.

DIY culture can provide support that is:

• more accessible,
• more inclusive,
• much less expensive and I suspect,
• much, much more impactful in terms of creating economic, social and political progress than the current system.

Why, because it is convivial, inclusive, centred on people and relationships, not focussed on policy goals and targets, bureaucracy light, puts experts and expertise in the back seat rather than the driving seat (it is great to have them on board when we need them – but much of this stuff we can figure out for ourselves), dynamic and above all fun!

And I would ensure that everyone who wants it, who really wants to work on making progress, should have access to free, confidential and competent coaching, in the community, from a coach who is supported, and held accountable by local people.  This is both practical, sustainable and affordable with the potential for a tremendous return on investment in terms of business, culture, health and well-being, community development, skills development and so forth.

The radical secret to this is that the coach engages with and works on the clients agenda – not the agendas of the planners and policy makers.

Time to take ‘enterprise development’ out of the ghettos of ‘entrepreneurship’ and ‘business support’ and to put it at the heart of our strategies for community development.

Because if we develop the people and the communities then they will build the economy.

I wonder if any of the new Local Enterprise Partnerships will have the courage, foresight and leadership to give it a go?

New Enterprise Allowance or New Enterprise Alliance?

Another government, another push for another 10 000 small businesses to be created from the ranks of the long term unemployed.

To me it seems similar to what we already have under the Flexible New Deal, unless I am missing something: it may be a tad better resourced.  But, I am encouraged that Iain Duncan Smith appears to have a real commitment to social justice, at least, he chairs the cabinet committee on it.   Let’s hope that his commitment to social justice rather than newspaper headlines really shapes this New Enterprise Allowance.

So what are the chances of success for the New Enterprise Allowance, and what might be the pitfalls?

To begin with, although I am a big fan of mentoring, I am not convinced that it is the best way to support people with transitions from unemployment to self employment.  The best mentors (as opposed to coaches) have ‘been there, done that, seen the film and got the t-shirt’.  They can offer sage advice and guidance based on practical experience (usually gained over many years in a specific and relevant industry, and importantly should be chosen by the mentee and not assigned to them by a service provider); Mentors should know what it takes and be available to put in the time and commitment necessary.  Let’s also hope that they are properly trained, supported and supervised in the process of mentoring.  And mentoring should not be a mandatory component but an option, we have to recognise that folks learn in different ways and for some the thought of being mentored just does not cut it.

So, if we must have a mentoring programme let us run it well.  Lets take mentoring seriously.  Let’s make sure that we have enough well trained mentors.  Personally I doubt that we will.  More likely we will find an army of middle managers looking to do some CSR, or rebadge existing enterprise advisers as New Enterprise Allowance Mentors.  Plus ça change…probably

I think the enterprise coaching role is, in places where it has not been confused with enterprise evangelism, much more likely to be effective.  Non directive, facilitated conversations that give people space to develop their options and make their own choices provides a sustainable route to more enterprising communities.  Conversations that don’t use ‘benefits’ and ‘enterprise’ as carrots and sticks to manipulate people to meet government targets and trigger payments by ‘results’.  Our industry is riddled with such practice.  We need conversations that respect people and their right to choose.

I suspect that mentors will work with mentees primarily on ‘the business plan’.  I doubt they will have the coaching skills to really work on developing the person rather than their idea.

Will a decision not to start up be valued and rewarded as highly as a decision to start?  I hope so.

Will the New Enterprise Allowance engage ‘the community’ in supporting local people struggling to make the transition to self employment?  No sign of community panels and networks to support the formal delivery structures.  It is not so much a New Enterprise Allowance that we need in our communities as a New Enterprise Alliance….

Will the scheme be designed to encourage the formation of team based start-ups where complimentary skill sets and personalities ensure that all functions in the business are adequately covered?  I doubt it.  It will, if history is our guide, take the shortest, lowest cost, route from benefits to self-employment, not the route that is most likely to result in a sustainable business with the potential to grow.  While we should be looking to maximise return on investment I suspect we will look to minimise investment.  Cost per start-up will be the metric of choice.  And the sooner we get the better.

The New Enterprise Allowance will be for long term unemployed who ‘want’ to start a business.   Finding the people who really WANT to will be an enormous challenge.  Personally I don’t think it is anywhere near enough for someone to want to start a business.  It needs to be something that they HAVE to if they are to have a decent chance of success.

We have approaching 800 000 people who have been unemployed for more than 6 months.  The New Enterprise Allowance hopes to help 10 000 of them to start a business this year, that is just over 4 in every 500.

• But which 4?
• What percentage of the 800 000 will wish to engage with the programme?
• How many will the delivery mechanism engage with at the start of the process?
• How many of those will make it through to trading?
• What positive outcomes will be delivered to those that engage with the programme but decide not to start a business?

This represents a challenge.  To help find the few who really will do the groundwork required and learn what needs to be learned.  It is a challenge both for marketing the scheme and effective psychological contracting between service provider and service user..

And the whole scheme reeks of yet more ‘fast enterprise’.  A couple of mentoring sessions and three half days with a training company and you will be ready to roll.  Well maybe. And maybe not.  Where these sorts of schemes prevail they prioritise the most capable and even then have frightening business failure and loan default rates.  Good business start ups plan and prepare carefully.  They don’t rush it.  There is little point in starting 10 000 new businesses in a year if the survival rates are not good.  And please this time will someone show an interest in survival rates?

Then there is the cash element.  In the transcript of his speech on Conservative Home, IDS is reported as saying:

We will provide business mentoring and a financial package worth up to £2000 to get your business up and running.

Now quite what is meant by ‘a financial package worth up to £2000’ remains to be seen.  Cash grant?  Loan?  Benefits?  But clearly in this transcript it is £2000 in addition to the mentoring provided.

But can anyone explain to me the why the magical figure of £2000?  How about we teach them to access the finance that they need to give their business a well capitalised start?   Whether that is £5 or £5m?  If we are serious about teaching people how to run a small business let’s not cap ambition according to the size of our currently cash strapped treasury pockets.

So at first glance it looks to me like wrong pedagogy, wrong curriculum, wrong ‘financial’ package, wrong pace of change and a failure to embed enterprise culture in the community.  Apart from that all systems are go.  I can already hear the usual suspects sharpening their pencils in anticipation of the invitations to tender.

I hope it is me that is wrong….

What do you think?

Sticks, carrots, coercion and coaching

“What we did establish is that the carrots offered were far less effective than the sticks employed.”

Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Chair of the Committee of Public Accounts – talking about the ‘limited effect’ of Pathways to Work pilots

Sticks and carrots have a long and noble tradition in the  management of donkeys.  However even with donkeys there are times when the ‘bribe and  punish’ approach to change management fails:

• When the donkey is not hungry enough
• When the effort of reaching the carrot is too great (the burden is too heavy)

In these circumstances we may choose to resort to the stick.  But this too will not work if:

• the pain of the stick is thought to be less than the pain of moving forward
• the donkey learns to like the stick and the attention that it brings

But I think the real issue here is not about the limitations of sticks and carrots in the management of donkeys and people.

It is about the complete and utter failure to understand the nature of human motivation.  Motivation is that which energises, directs and sustains a person’s efforts.  Sustains efforts.  Sticks and carrots applied to move a donkey from one (expensive) field to another (less expensive field) do NOTHING to sustain efforts.  In fact it is likely to achieve the opposite.  The donkey returns to its passive state until more carrots and sticks appear on the scene.  And the state wants more enterprising communities?

But the major problem is not treating people like donkeys, and further dulling their enterprising souls.  It is that the state believes that this is the most effective, fair and just way of changing behaviour.  That this is such a common default setting when trying to manipulate the behaviours and choices of its citizens.

And we wonder why ‘community engagement’ is so difficult.  When you have beaten and bribed your donkeys into submission don’t expect them to engage with you, without the use of ever more sticks and carrots.

Perhaps instead of resorting to a coercive approach to change, we might try instead a coaching approach?

Helping people to recognise their long term self interest and how it may be pursued.  Helping  them to develop the power they need to make progress in their lives.  Helping them to recognise that it is possible and that they don’t need to be pushed around by a bureaucratic system of sticks and carrots.  That THEY have choices and agency in their own lives.  Vegetable wielding bureaucrats do not have to be the architects of their future.

And what if someone decides that their long-term self interest is served by staying exactly where they are?

Well, we could just leave them alone and put our time, energy and investment into those that want to explore pastures new.  Why should the squeaky wheel get all the grease?

Because perhaps people are more like sheep than donkeys.  When they see some of the flock moving forward others are sure to follow.

Aren’t they?

Kurt Cobain and MC Hammer as Enterprise Gurus

In a week when Dragon’s Den has returned to our screen portraying a particular take on entrepreneurship I htink that we can get fresh inspiration for entrepreneurial good practice from less mainstream reference points.  Here are a couple of examples from the music industry.

Nirvana are not the usual reference point when considering characteristics of the successful entrepreneurial start up, but this post teaches some valuable lessons:

http://lateralaction.com/articles/kurt-cobain-startup-success/

I also love this podcast where rappers and other ‘street’ musicians talk with Stanford University about the impact of the internet on their business models – featuring 80s legend MC Hammer and Quincy Jones III

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=2047

Thanks to Hope&Social’s own @edhombre for pointing me at the Cobain piece. Hope & Social are finding their own ways to build customer loyalty and make a living (and fun lives) from the music industry without having to sell tons of bytes.

How to Depress an Enterprise Culture

Enterprise is a dangerous thing.

In the wrong hands it can re-distribute wealth from the wealthy and put it in the hands of the poor.  If this happens of course vast swathes of public services could be cut back.  Job Centres could be closed down, demand for health services might plummet and swathes of middle class ‘helping’ professionals could be laid off.  So, ensuring that enterprise culture remains depressed and marginalised  in some of our poorer communities is essential to social progress and economic recovery.

Here is your quick guide on how to do it…

• Build a Public/Private Sector Partnership with the Mission of ‘Promoting Enterprise’

Counter intuitive I know.  But if it just looks like a government/council/housing association led initiative it may lack credibility.  Getting a few (even one) local business person on board will really increase credibility and increase the chances of winning investment.  Be very careful though.  Private sector people will actually want to see enterprise encouraged.  As soon as they see the real effects of the programme they are likely to flee like proverbial rats on a sinking ship.

• Get your hands on a large sum of money

People are inherently enterprising.  They show all sorts of creative and innovative ways to make life better or at least more bearable.  Fortunately for us many of these (in fact the vast majority) don’t show up in our measures of enterprise so we simply deny them and state that communities with low start-up and VAT registration rates are ‘lacking in enterprise’. However, the point remains, people are inherently enterprising and if we wish to discourage enterprise it can be expensive.  A few million should do it to sustain a 2 or 3 year campaign.

• Invest substantial sums in prolonged marketing campaigns encouraging enterprise and claiming that anyone can do it

I know this seems counter-intuitive.  If we want to discourage enterprise, then surely we shouldn’t be promoting it?  But bear with me – this works.  If we can get a message out there that says

‘You can be your own boss, running your dream business: All it takes is a bright idea and the determination to succeed’

…our battle is practically won.  Leaflets, posters, websites, adverts on commercial radio stations and buses.  Just flood the target areas of deprivation with marketing collateral.  Ideally also recruit some enterprise champions to attend local community centres and summer fairs handing out leaflets and letting everyone know just how much support is available to the would be entrepreneur.  And if you want to blow a few tens of thousands on a website too – well it will do no harm.

People will come forward in reasonable numbers especially if we help them out with bus fares, offer free lunches, crèches and hint at the possibility of funding to listen to our messages.  Enterprise for all, Anyone can do it, All it takes is hard work, You don’t even need a bright idea – we can give you one of those…

• Procure Your Own MBA Enterprise (Lite)

Now all we need to do is feed them into an Enterprise MBA (anorexically) Lite.  Perhaps three half day workshops with a decent consultant who can make it all seem so very simple.  Half a day to work up the idea, half a day to develop a marketing plan and half a day to look at financials should do it.  Perhaps supported by a week-end Enterprise Show that offers ‘All you need to know about business in one day’.

Whatever you do please do not encourage team based start ups.  These are far too likely to succeed.  Encourage the myth of the ‘lone entrepreneur’ at every opportunity.

Now we can just sit back and wait.

If we work really hard at this within a year or two we can have perhaps 1000 bright shiny new businesses – most of them run by the gullible who really believe that with all the support available this should be easy.  And the magic starts.  They suddenly find that this is hard work, and it is relentless.  The business becomes like a cuckoo, requiring constant attention, dragging them away from family and friends, requiring time, money and lots of hard work.

NB be very careful not to provide any form of ‘relationship’ with your wannabe entrepreneurs other than the poorly transactional/technical.  You must never employ competent coaches who might help them to balance these tensions and maintain their motivation to succeed.  Instead employ people who have never run a business nor have been trained as coaches and use them as recruitment sergeants for the MBA Lite.  You can call them Enterprise Coaches.  Just make sure that their enterprise experience is limited and their room to coach negligible.  As our wannabe entrepreneurs start to feel and show the strain of running their own businesses we can start to blame their struggles on them.  ‘Perhaps you are just not cut out to be an entrepreneur’. Again avoid telling them the true stories of many successful entrepreneurs who often cut their teeth in failing businesses before finally finding a recipe for success.  Luckily there is a whole industry of motivational speakers and ex Apprentices who will help you to re-tell and re-enforce the Enterprise Fairy tale.  (NB don’t underestimate the budget you will need to procure their services.  This seems to be one area where the vast supply available has not resulted in driving down prices…)

• Run a ‘Modest’ Grants and Loans Programme

Lending people money or even giving small grants to get their businesses started provides a wonderful mechanism to ensure that painful lessons about enterprise have a long-lasting and practical impact.  It also helps us to short-cut the most commonly raised objection to starting a business which is ‘I don’t have the cash’.  This is a vital step.  In its absence they may go and speak to lenders who will explain to them that their business is unlikely to work and that they will not be able to pay for any investment they seek.  THIS IS DISASTER!  We should do all we can to avoid exposing our wannabe entrepreneurs to such doses of reality.

By running our own grants and loan schemes we also help to lay the seeds for decades of resentment in the community.  Firstly we will have the chance to refuse many who apply for loans.  This really ticks them off, wastes their time, puts them off the enterprise process and makes them deeply suspicious of anyone who offers to invest in entrepreneurs.  And for those that we do make loans there is a good chance they will default – but even if they don’t they will see us as money lenders – and no-one really likes their lenders, do they?  And if we give them a grant, because no one else will lend them money – well we are almost certainly setting them up to fail.  If their business idea was inherently profitable they would not need to come to us for a grant.

NB actually setting up a grant or loan service can be hard.  Instead, do a deal with a local credit union and get them to work ‘under your brand’.   This way you get all of the upsides without having to actually do any of the dirty work.  Never signpost people to independent sources of finance and investment.  This risks your client seeing you as the good guys and them, the evil moneylenders, as the bad guys.  Of course if your long-term goal of depressing enterprise culture is to be achieved then you need to be perceived as the bad guys – so bring the finance guys under your brand.

• Now be patient

That’s it.  Now sit back and watch the results of your labour come to fruition.  You have encouraged perhaps a thousand people to start businesses.  Of course, some of these would have started their businesses anyway.  And some will expect to work all hours to get things working well.  But many, if we are lucky a majority, will be anticipating some sort of cake walk to entrepreneurial success.

And so the magic starts.

The demand for many hours of hard work kicks in.  The money flows out, and our trap is sprung.  We may have had to put up with a short-term spike in the start-up rates (it is unlikely that many VAT registrations will occur as a result of our MBA Lite) but now we can expect the start-up rate to quickly fall away again.

We now have a small army of failed and failing entrepreneurs in our community, with neighbours and friends talking about their latest entrepreneurial failure, trying to service their debts and walk away from their ‘dream business’ turned nightmare.  If you have done your work well perhaps loan default rates could be significantly above 50%.  We do not need to promote these failures.  Indeed we can be portraying them as successes to ensure that we recruit another tranche to our MBA.  The entrepreneurs will collude with us in portraying their success – but the community will recognise and spread the truth.  That enterprise is hard and inherently risky, and that in spite of all the support available the decks are stacked and success often remains elusive.

But what, I hear you say, of those that ‘succeed’.  Aren’t they walking adverts for the entrepreneurial dream?  Well, actually, No.  Most of them will be in the ‘working like a dog for not much money’ phase.  Even those on the road to entrepreneurial success (typically by way of a start-up failure or two) will be like government sponsored health warnings against the dangers of an entrepreneurial life style.

• Commission a Mid Term Evaluation

It must be glossy and full of warm words and smiling faces.  Don’t worry, even your most miserable and hate filled entrepreneurs will be prepared to smile for your cameras as you explain to them that many potential customers will read this report.  If possible get an evaluator with a double barrelled name and a decent reputation to undertake the evaluation.  They will understand the politics of the situation and can be relied upon to be sympathetic.

• Avoid producing lists of the entrepreneurs you have helped and the businesses you have started

Such lists can be problematic.  People who are interested in enterprise in their communities might ring up some of your clients and find out whether they are living the dream or not.  If you are wise each of the clients will have been helped by several of your partners and will have been counted more than once.  Such double counting can easily be hidden away in a database.  Indeed we can blame it on the IT system.  A published list is much less forgiving.

• Get Out Early

Ideally after a 2-4 year campaign such as this you should now withdraw your sources of advice and support.  If you are lucky you will be able to blame this on central government cuts and ‘The Recession’.  Don’t worry the long-standing enterprise support organisations such as the Enterprise Agencies or Business Link won’t be able to pick up the slack – they are already stacked out.

FAQs

Q: We have spent several millions refurbishing old buildings in deprived areas as ‘enterprise centres’ and have helped establish Development Trusts and CICs to run them.  Is there any danger that these might serve to promote enterprise in areas of deprivation?

A: Relax!  It is true that you have spent millions that you could have held onto – but it is unlikely that you will have done any real harm to our mission of depressing enterprise in deprived areas.   As long as you have built in lots of overheads (Victorian listed buildings that are inherently energy inefficient, combined with generous staffing and ‘architectural’ use of atria and ‘overpriced shared working space’ should suffice).  Unless you make the mistake of offering really competitive prices for decent office space with easy terms you are not going to fill up with local sustainable businesses capable of paying their rents consistently.  This mistake is almost impossible to make as if you should, no doubt unwittingly, provide any meaningful competition to the private sector there will be howls of complaints about anti-competitiveness.

NB leave the buildings with a legacy investment so that they can sustain themselves for a year or two after you have gone.  This way you may avoid some of the blame for commissioning a white elephant.

As the poor CIC or Development Trust pursues ‘break even’ it will have to forget its social mission and, at worst, the car park will fill up with BMWs, Audis and 4x4s as entrepreneurs from  out of town recognise that their are deals to be done on some sexy workspaces.   Or they may shift their focus from ‘enterprise centre’ to ‘conference centre’.  Or the car parks (and bicycle sheds) will remain stubbornly empty and after many months or years of support the centre will die a long and lingering death.  In most of our communities this trajectory can still be seen playing out in versions of ‘enterprise centres’ from the 70s, 80s, and 90s.

You may find that some claim the Enterprise Centre gives local people something to aspire too and that this will somehow lead to an entrepreneurial revolution.  Again Relax.  Go and talk to the operations manager in any of the older incarnations of the enterprise centres.  They, their low occupancy rates, and their key tenants running government programmes, will testify that no such enterprise revolution is likely to occur.

Q: We have executed the plan perfectly.  Does this mean that we can take the foot of the gas?

A: No!  People are inherently enterprising.  As soon as you stop, the recovery starts.  They start to make progress again.  Luckily it tends to be slow and pain staking but it happens.  You must be prepared to re-brand and relaunch the whole project again at least every 10 years.

Q: Hang on a minute!  We have done some or all of the above in the name of encouraging enterprise in deprived communities.  Are you saying that we have got it wrong?

A:…Well of course only time will tell.  But in short, Yes.

Big Questions for Enterprise Coaching?

Is enterprise to be interpreted narrowly or broadly?

• A narrow interpretation would equate enterprise with movement towards self employment or entrepreneurship.
• A broad interpretation would equate enterprise with efficacy, agency and an increased sense of influence and power in shaping one’s own future.  With the pursuit of wellbeing and happiness through the exercise of personal responsibility and the skills of association, collaboration and mutuality.

Is the role of the coach to be limited or expansive?

• The limited role of the enterprise coach is as an outreach enterprise evangelist selling the enterprise fairytale and encouraging people into workshops and mainstream services….
• The expansive role of the coach is as a provider of person centred transformational relationships, harnessing the potential of people and the community to encourage personal and community development

We seem to be heading towards a position which takes a narrow definition of enterprise and limited role for the coach.  I believe this will result in communities that are actually much less enterprising  and entrepreneurial.

If we were to have the courage and ambition to shift to a broad definition of enterprise and an expansive role for the coach then I think we may actually have a foundation for the development of Big Society.  And funnily enough it wouldn’t cost very much….