GEW - For More Than Entrepreneurs
This week is Global Entrepreneurship Week -.the perfect time to write our first blog about a subject so close to our hearts. Because without enterprising people, the world would be a very, very different place. We believe it can be taught.
I’m a massive advocate for entrepreneurship, but It’s important to first explain that I don’t think entrepreneurship is for everyone. I don’t believe everyone should be encouraged to become an entrepreneur.
The best piece of advice i ever had was ‘’don’t start a business’’. And that came from my entrepreneurship lecturer at USC in the states.
The risk, commitment, stresses and pressure that comes with starting and running an enterprise, aren’t for everyone. Joel told us to go into it with our eyes wide open to the downside. It was good advice.
However, being an entrepreneur and being enterprising are two different things. The skill of being enterprising is essential for anyone wanting to get ahead in whatever field of work you’re in. It applies to all jobs, both public and private sector.
Enterprise and Employment
Being enterprising can mean starting a business but it’s much broader. Being enterprising can get you a job at a time of mass unemployment. JB was unemployed for 8 months before he offered to work for us for free. 3 months later he was bar manager. 6 months later he was employee of the year at the Visit York Awards, on Calendar and the front page of the Yorkshire Post (Full story to come in our youth unemployment blog)
Being an enterprising person can save you from redundancy at a time of cuts. Because enterprising people are value adders – they contribute above and beyond the value of their salary in whatever organisation they’re involved in. As small business owners, we know this more than most. Because the difference between an enterprising employee and someone else can be the difference between making a profit or losing money.
And It’s not just an important skill during a recession either. It will always be important in a globally competitive market where companies compete with people and businesses, not on the other side of the world, but the other side of a computer screen. The world has never been so flat.
We live in a digital world and computers are only going to get better, faster and more powerful. Organisations will increasingly employ computers instead of people. So what can you do that a computer can’t? Be imaginative, be creative, be enterprising.
Enterprise Education
Enterprise education is a passion for a number of reasons. As an entrepreneur, employer, educator, and someone that is handed CV’s from young people on a daily basis at our shops, It frustrates me to see young people not displaying enterprising skills so essential to employers. Because employing someone is a big risk to an organisation.
Too many young people approach employers thinking what a job will do for them. Rather than showing how they will make an employer’s life easier, more profitable. Like JB did.
In our enterprise roadshows we’ve been to schools in very different areas and worked with students of very different academic abilities. We’ve seen incredible focus from some of the most challenging students in the country when faced with a real life business task. But we’ve also seen a worrying lack of common sense from some of the most academically talented. Enterprise education has a part to play in all schools, with students of all backgrounds.
The main reason I’m so passionate about enterprise is that I think it can be taught and learnt. I was never enterprising at school and I failed my A Levels badly. It was only at USC, on a study abroad programme, that I learnt and discovered how to be enterprising, how to start a business and met real life entrepreneurs doing exactly that – many my age or younger.
It even inspired me to take an enterprising approach to improving my grades. I made it on to the President’s Role of Honour for Academic Achievement. (Blog to follow) I’m no Richard Branson, but good things started to happen when I started taking responsibility and being enterprising.
In these blogs team Xing will be shedding light on what it’s like to run a high street business, employ young people and work with them on our school smoothie bar business project.
Do you have any examples of enterprising ideas that got you or someone you know noticed or helped get a foot in the door?
Simon Long
Co-founder of Xing
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