Some time ago on this blog I mentioned
that the UK Conservative Party was focusing policy in the direction of allowing
the community to take on more responsibility for delivering ‘outcomes’ in
service areas that are currently provided by Government.
It was about encouraging social
enterprise, with the belief that the community could provide better service
delivery to its own needs.
It seems the Western
Australian state government is thinking in a similar vein.
I must say, I’m not one to
be cynical about this concept by claiming an abrogation of
responsibility on the part of the governement. Quite the opposite in fact. Afterall,
Living Communities is about that very thing. Communities taking the lead in
developing solutions for their own economic needs, being proactive rather than
dependent.
I believe that this idea should
be allowed to develop and bloom if possible but at this stage it’s been thought
up in the completely ‘entrepreneurless’ atmosphere of the public
service and my guess is that the authors would have absolutely no idea what would be
required for a traditional not-for-profit organisation to become a social enterprise let alone the traits required of a start-up social enterprise to succeed in the real world.
That’s not a criticism. Just an
observation. I think if done properly, the vision contained in ‘Putting the
Public First: Partnering with the Community and Business to Deliver Outcomes’
is commendable and possible. But first a reality check.
I want to look specifically at one aspect of the vision the Economic Audit Committee
has from my point of view as someone who is actually developing a social
enterprise from scratch…concept to delivery, but has never managed a not for
profit organisation before. My background is in the private sector as a
business owner and entrepreneur.
Part of the economic audit report
vision is this; “An increasing number of Western
Australia’s community sector organisations will have the opportunity to develop
as social enterprises, run along business lines and become financially
sustainable.”
It’s a great vision and one I support
100%, but…
Who is going to lead these social
enterprises, particularly those already operating for many years in a culture
of grant dependence that encourages no risk taking whatsoever and almost no focus on innovation?
Private sector CEO’s hand picked
through advertising and business graduates perhaps? Well, these new social
enterprises certainly won’t be able to command the remunerative clout of the
established private sector. So my guess is that very few people with successful entrepreneurial
experience would apply for such responsible positions because they would be so poorly paid compared to what was on offer in the private sector.
The probability is that the current
managers of existing community sector organizations will have to try and become
business minded entrepreneurs. This, I believe, is just about impossible.
Entrepreneurs in my book are born and
not made. Did Sir Richard Branson, Dick Smith and Lindsay Fox go to
entrepreneur school - did they even go to business school? To clarify where I'm coming from, I'm defining entrepreneurs here as being self-made visionaries. Not business school MBA graduates hired as highly paid managers of large, already established businesses - I define CEOs as managers also. They are rarely entrepreneurs.
You can train someone to have business management skills but
you can’t change his or her personality to think like an entrepreneur. You can’t make them want to take, what most people would regard as risks. You can’t make them street smart or to accept a degree of failure as a learning. You can’t train them to be
flexible one minute and stubborn the next, persistent or most importantly, inspiring.
You can’t train someone to be truly passionate either.
Personal traits
are what make an entrepreneur different to an average business practitioner,
not training.
Unless of course the definition of
social enterprise here just means ‘business’, in which case, you could very
well plonk just about any business graduate into these roles. However, that
won’t develop social enterprises of any great note.
So, business graduates are not
necessarily and may never be, entrepreneurs for the very same reasons as not for profit sector
managers are not necessarily and may never be entrepreneurs.
What is needed to build great social
enterprises capable of delivering both services and sustainability is
entrepreneurial identification and development as opposed to the impossible task of training people to become entrepreneurs.
We cannot run training courses open for anyone with a certain TEE score and expect to churn out what the university marketing blurb might describe as 'the social enterprise leaders of the next generation'.
We should seek out socially minded entrepreneurs either currently working in
the sector* or through identification programs, talent search and by watching
those already trying to create something new and important and helping them grow it further. The
very fact that these people have already started on a social enterprise path of
their own making, taken risks and been creative and innovative, surely means
that they may have the personality traits necessary.
These people could be trained
with business skills but even that’s not always necessary. You can simply provide
entrepreneurs with the managers to do the job, to help fulfill the entrepreneurs vision.
So let’s not force the impossible and
try and create entrepreneurs from managers. Keep the managers by all means, they’re
necessary to keep rampant entrepreneurs grounded and focused on the vision rather than the mundane detail. Let us also allow managers to be directed in turn by a suitable entrepreneur - to constantly innovate, to push the boundary away from the status quo, inspire the team and to question fundamental beliefs. This symbiotic
relationship would pay dividends and is rarely found in current public sector organisations. Managers are rarely entrepreneurs and
entrepreneurs rarely managers. They need each other. And so does social
enterprise.
*not necessarily as a manager either, they may be the receptionist!
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