Move people one step at a time

I visited a not-for-profit organisation recently. This organisation’s mission in the past has been to get businesses to sign up to achieve accreditation against international standards. It has been successful in getting medium-to-large business to sign up and has built a substantial membership over the years. Large companies actually pay a large membership fee knowing full well that it subsidises activities promoting the standards to smaller businesses.

One of the goals of the organisation and its new chief executive is to promote its message to SME’s. This is a totally different proposition. When promoting standards and accreditation to large companies you can make an intellectual sale. Big companies have discretionary spend where professionals in their own field can recommend development strategies and investment in training and accreditation to follow these development paths. With SME’s it’s simpler – “stuff the intellectual sale – what will it do for me?” SME’s are far nearer to economic reality that big business and any SME owner will consider investment in terms of its immediate effects on costs and sales.

In my experience the journey towards achieving standards is just as valuable as reaching the goal. I worked for a very large catering company years ago and we considered BS5750 (now ISO9000) for our restaurants. The cost of BS5750 accreditation was around £12,000-£15,000 per site and we had 450! So we put a cross-section of three through the process to learn the benefits then simply took the key lessons and introduced these to all other sites in a way that they “discovered” them for themselves and thus bought-in to making things better. Did we pay to have all 450 accredited? – No. Did we benefit financially from going almost as far as the final step? Yes, with a massive increase in profits.

Taking a lesson from this we can see that often it is better not to reveal the final destination if the final destination is expensive or scarily complex, especially if the journey will provide benefits even if the traveller gets off a few stops short of the end.

I applied this to a recent client who I am training in Project Management. Their 250 managers would be scared witless if they saw PRINCE2 in all its glory. As I am doing a Foundation in Project Management for non project-managers I show them simple elements and a systematic approach that is plain common sense. Not all of the 250 need to be high-flying fully accredited PRINCE2 practitioners. The organisation itself will not be able to put elements like the Project Office in place for a couple more years anyway.

Back to my recent visit – this organisation has now taken a business membership of www.business-scene.com as we are targeting the same customer base. By posting articles and hosting a clinic the fundamental issues of raising standards can be floated for debate and interested SME’s will, no doubt, reveal themselves. By staying away from the intellectual debate (and the high costs of the final accreditation) and focusing on providing immediate and measurable benefits for the small business owner it’s a much better way to build momentum towards the final destination. What if some fall by the way? No worries – more will have started via the soft approach than would have done so as the result of laying out the full story and all who made it some way down the road will have improved their businesses as a result. For those who see tangible results along the entire journey the final chunk of investment in full accreditation will be an easy sale. In the mean time there will have been a welcome income from the engagement activities along the way.

www.business-scene.com provides a wealth of information and contacts for any SME looking to build business and/or cut costs. Basic membership is free and full site functionality including access to downloads, business clinics, directory entries and free classified adverts along with the ability to list your events and sell your products costs 5 GBP per month. Business-Scene doesn’t officially launch until late 2006 so at the date of writing they are in the pre-launch stage.

Don’t just take my word for it - take a look at the site and see what a fiver per month buys – you’ll see it’s a no-brainer.

Are Entrepreneurs Born or Made?

I wandered into a branch of Borders last week and had a quick scan along the business section. Two titles caught my eye – one was called “How to be an entrepreneur” and the other “The entrepreneur’s book of checklists”. Of course, both are working on the premise that entrepreneurs can be made, otherwise there wouldn’t be a market for the books. The first title has the strapline “The six secrets of self-made success” and the second has “1,000 tips to help you start and grow your business”. One author is a journalist who has interviewed entrepreneurs and observed them from afar. The other doesn’t offer any credentials at all.

I didn’t go deeply into either but it seems that the two books are approaching from very different directions. One suggests that it’s actually quite simple to be an entrepreneur, all you have to do is exploit six secrets and you’re away. Why do people fall for this? If I had six simple secrets to becoming successful and wealthy why would I bother to spend time writing a book for very little royalties? Are all business journalists philanthropists?

The other book suggests that there are 1,000 things you need to be considering when setting up your business. It assumes that all business start-ups are made by entrepreneurs – WRONG (See my previous post “Artisans and Entrepreneurs”) and it assumes that being an entrepreneur is a systematic process that simply needs a long hard slog working through 100 checklists with 10 tips in each.

Is it really that straightforward?

Thinking about it I’m sure the books are aimed at armchair entrepreneurs – people who like the idea of being Alan Sugar but want the millions without the hard work or the associated risks.

Neither book answers the question “are entrepreneurs born or made?” simply because they assume they can provide the wisdom for anybody to become an entrepreneur. I wonder if either author truly understands what an entrepreneur is? In fact does anybody understand? The dictionary will provide a description but when you look at the diverse characters and management styles of the high profile entrepreneurs of this world they are all very different.

In my humble opinion an entrepreneur is somebody with a burning desire to achieve something through the medium of business. They are prepared to sacrifice some or all of their personal and family life and take enormous risks in pursuit of their vision. What is interesting is that the vision is not what most people think. It’s not about the businesses they create, true entrepreneurs are serial business creators and often create very different and unrelated businesses. Entrepreneurs are searching for something whether it be money, power, recognition, a sense of self-worth or the slaying of ghosts from their past. They are all driven and there are not that many of them about.

So are they born or made?

I think true entrepreneurs have a latent ability. In some it surfaces naturally and they just get on with it. In others it needs a spark or catalyst to set it off. The book authors obviously hope their book will be the catalyst but my (possibly cynical) view is that buying the book will be as likely to turn you into an entrepreneur as buying a lottery ticket is likely to turn you into a millionaire. Why am I cynical? A book may inspire you in the short term but a book will never give you your idea or your vision or your passion or your commitment or your drive. That needs to come from within.
So if you feel that life isn’t being fair to you and that you deserve a better life then don’t buy the book. If you are searching for a way to bring about your dreams, desires and aspirations then buy the books – they may just spark something.

Artisans and Entrepreneurs

One of my many hats is as an independent business advisor assisting SME’s in Wales. The Welsh actually start more small businesses per capita than any other part of the UK and the survival rate after 2 years of trading is also the best. 5bn Euros in state aid over the past few years has probably helped!

My work is with start-ups and established businesses and I have rooted about in the innards of a wide variety of businesses and had serious discussions with a wide range of business people.

Very broadly speaking I find that SME’s are run by two categories of people – the artisans and the entrepreneurs. What is amusing to me is that many of them fall into one category but fervently believe they are in the other.

Here’s an example. I worked with an independent marketing consultant a while back and he thought he was an entrepreneur. After all he had started up his business (offering to do exactly what he did for his previous big corporate employer for anybody who wanted him) and was beginning to make a small income. His was an over-romanticised view of his own enterprise. There was nothing entrepreneurial. All he was doing was applying his existing skill set to create a job for himself. He complained about the fact that the business admin was stopping him doing what he was good at for enough days per week to generate a decent income. Of course the entrepreneur starting out would be creating a job but would also realise that this was a launching pad. Business admin has to be done and so you can only reasonably expect to bill for up to 3 days per week, spend half a day doing admin and the rest marketing and selling, selling, selling. The entrepreneur knows this and has a grand plan to springboard to a larger business.

People with specific skill sets who want to use those skill sets need to recognise that they are artisans. If they have aspirations for growth then it may be better to club together in much the same way that accountants and solicitors form partnerships so they can do what they are trained to do and share the admin and promotional load. Craftsmen operate in cooperatives for this reason and to create a wider product offering so they can feed off each others’ customers.

Entrepreneurs may have specific skill sets but they also have a burning desire to achieve something, be it profits for the sake of profit, profits for philanthropic purposes or profits in order to stay in business and grow into a success (however that is measured).

Getting people to recognise which of the two categories they fall into is the first step to them taking proper ownership of their business and assuming full responsibility. Up until this point they will blame failure on anything and anybody but themselves. Why is it important to recognise which you are? Artisans tend to build unspectacular businesses. They don’t crash and burn with massive debts and they don’t make millions. Entrepreneurs take more risks; their grand plans will produce spectacular crashes or a garage full of paid-for Ferraris and a second home in the Algarve.

Artisans who believe they are entrepreneurs (the most common misconception) will forever be unhappy with their achievements and some can be quite bitter that the world has not recognised them and made them rich. Artisans who know they are such are better reconciled with who they are and can balance work with their private lives. True entrepreneurs on the whole tend to know that they are and the canny ones get their families on board and make a deal to work hard until they can cash in and spend more time playing then. I have yet to come across a true entrepreneur who though he/she was an artisan, there are many who start a business in their core skill set but they soon branch out and create a string of diverse and often unrelated businesses.
So the lesson is? Know whether you are an artisan or an entrepreneur and build your business and your life accordingly. Being true to yourself is the only path to happiness.