Sirolli Institute Weblog

Enterprise facilitation a win for business owners

2011-12-06T12:24:00.000-08:00

By Barbara Shaw staff reporter Bancroft This Week
When the business awards were being handed out at Community Futures on Oct. 21 in Bancroft there was some serious support coming from one woman in the crowd.

Glowing with pride and thrilled to celebrate the success of those working tirelessly to make their dreams come true in business, Darcelle Runciman would not have missed the event for the world.

If you don't recognize the name, it's worth getting to know.

Darcelle Runciman is heart and soul of the Hastings County enterprise facilitation initiative. This dynamic woman travels across the County meeting with business owners, those who are thinking about starting a business and those who are working on economic development.

With her focus being on the methods developed by Dr. Ernesto Sirolli, Runciman works to help guide Hastings County residents "through the process necessary to assemble an effective business team, in order to equally address product, finance and marketing."

Following the Sirolli model, Runciman is helping to build business and the theory is that this builds strong, sustainable community.

Runciman has been doing this for a few years with the program launching in Hastings County in 2009.

She has 127 clients, 24 businesses have been started, 52 jobs created, 762 types of assistance have been accessed, 18 businesses have been retained and a total of nine businesses have had a business tune-up.

Runciman has a high volume of clients and she meets with them all across the County. She goes to them and works on their schedule. She listens to their dreams and ideas and then helps guide them to making the connections they need to make things work.

"I work with people at all stages," Runciman says. "If you have an idea you can run it by me. Maybe you have a business that is ready to open or you have an existing business that you want to expand. We can help you connect with consultants and we can also help you find the funds for companies that want to expand."

Runciman is a business coach and she still maintains a private practice but from Monday to Thursday she's meeting with entrepreneurs from Desoronto to Algonquin Park.

Runciman is quick to point out that the program is not so much about coaching as it is about facilitation. She's not doing all of the work, she refers out to consultants in the community.

"I was meeting with a client in a coffee shop in Tweed and they called me a human Google," Runciman laughs.

And that is a great way to describe what she does.

When Runciman meets with you she asks guided questions to help you solidify your vision, to work through obstacles and then to help connect you with local people who can help you do what you need to do to thrive and survive in the creative economy of Hastings County.

"I'm a connector of people," Runciman says. "Referrals are always made and I try to give my clients three resources to choose from."

Runciman, for those who have worked with her, has celebrity status and it is not uncommon in business circles to hear people dropping her name in conversation.

She has a knack for getting people from point A to point B and that's what makes her so valuable. Her clients are quick to gush about everything she has to offer.

"I'm intuitive," Runciman says. "You're helping on a personal level first and then you work on the business. My biggest job is to teach the individual how to delegate so they stop doing everything. Community resources come into play so everyone spends back into the community."

And this is how the program works so effectively.

Runciman works with those who have often been working alone, trying to do everything themselves. She helps them figure out what they like to do and what they're good at doing and then she helps with referrals for things that the business needs. Local consultants are suggested and the business owner learns to share the work, the resources and the load. Everyone benefits.

Runciman is confident in saying that the program has created half a million in new sales.

"Business is business," Runciman says.

One of the biggest things Runciman tries to communicate to her clients is the need for an online presence and she's happy to report that some of her clients are moving forward with this strategy. She's helping business owners ask questions like, "how does my business look to the outside world?"

In addition to the connections and the sounding board that Runciman offers, her clients report that she's just a really positive, energetic woman. She's warm and nurturing, even when working through some tough issues with clients.

Always humble, Runciman re-directs praise but does say that she enjoys the people she works with.

"I care about people and there's nothing better than helping a business and getting them to take action and to see the results," Runciman says. "It's a rush."

At the business awards on Oct. 21 MP Daryl Kramp announced secure funding for the Eastern Ontario Development Program (EODP) and this is good news for Hastings County because the EODP contributes to the costs of the program which is totally free for Runciman's clients.

"It's like hiring a business coach," Runciman says. "But it's free for the client."

Runciman knows her current clients know how valuable the program is and she's happy to report that some of the first businesses she helped are now coming back for help with expansion.

Doing business in Hastings County and starting a business in Hastings County is very possible according to Runciman.

"This is an area that is untapped," she explains. "We're at the point where business can start to get going but there's lots of prep work to be done. We don't want people to just jump in; we want to be there for them."

Runciman's service is free and she can be accessed through the economic development office of Hastings County or through the CFDC in Bancroft.

For those thinking about starting or expanding a business or even for those just starting to work on a dream, Runciman is available to help. It's great service and it's free, all you have to do is take action. And that's exactly what Runciman likes.

"I have a passion for passionate people," Runciman says. "I love when people take action."

Gardening economy or Jungle economy?

2011-10-26T08:17:00.000-07:00

The proponents of the ‘gardening’ economy should stop using ‘gazelles’ as a metaphor and start using broccoli and zucchini instead. If not they should rename the ‘gardening’ economy the ’jungle’ economy!

Jokes apart I am all for the ‘gardening’ economy i.e. a tender, nurturing environment where the biggest enemies are snails and where ALL entrants to the entrepreneurial game are suitably nurtured. Picking winners in business is impossible because the variables are too many; when everything is perfect in your business, your partner runs away with your spouse, or a tsunami hits your town.

Or you can get caught in a bubble, by investing in technology companies only because it is fashionable to do so.. Who is to say that tomorrow’ revolutions will not happen in the service industries or in a most obscure rural community? After all the biggest company in the USA today is a grocery shop that was started by Sam and Helen Walton in a remote rural community.

It seems that reality continues to baffle the cleverly constructed theories of experts who try to pick winners, incubate talent and attract the cultural creative. In reality there is no geography to intelligence and no method to passion; the only hope is for generalized entrepreneurship. The survival strategy of gazelles is not to outrun cheetahs but to breed more. In economic development numbers count and we should promote a culture that encourages millions of people to transform their talents into a way to feed themselves and their families.

Promoting is very different from planning; as the late Peter Drucker used to say: ‘Planning’ as the term is commonly understood is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy... Innovative opportunities do not come with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze.

AUTHOR: Dr. Ernesto Sirolli

Enterprise Facilitation® - Independently Assessed Since 1988!

2011-04-08T13:12:00.000-07:00

The independent assessment of Enterprise Facilitation started immediately. When the Western Australia Government agreed to finance the first ever pilot project in the towns of Esperance and Geraldton in 1986 it demanded that an independent assessment of the pilot be conducted by the Department of Economics of the University of Western Australia. Funded by the Western Australian and the Federal Government the study titled:

“LOCAL ENTERPRISE INITIATIVES: BETWEEN STATE AND MARKET IN ESPERANCE”
by Dr. Jeremy Moon and Dr. Kelvin Willoughby was published in 1988.

According to the Australian Journal of Public Administration: ISBN #DOI:101111/j.1467-8500.1990.tb02249.x

This paper draws on the findings of Moon and Willoughby (1988) commissioned by the Commonwealth Office of Local Government and the WA Department of Regional Development and The North West, but it remains the sole responsibility of the authors.”

Abstract: This paper presents an analysis of the Esperance Local Enterprise Initiatives Committee, which is at the heart of an archetypal emerging pattern of local economic development distinct both from top-down statist models and from market alternatives. The model is composed of a mixture of state resources (notably finance, information and legitimacy), elements associated with entrepreneurialism, grass-roots orientation, bottom-up implementation, the pursuit of profit, and a network system which interlocks the ELEIC with different government departments and agencies.

That first publication was followed, during the years, by a number of independent studies and the aim of which has been not only to understand the model but to come to a decision to invest in it. We have decided to list the Independent Reports on our website to make them available to all who wish to peruse them. The reports are published in their entirety and we have made no corrections or alterations to the text.

Here is the list of the Independent Reports that we have found in our library, as others will become available we will post them. http://www.sirolli.com/Evidence/IndependentReports/tabid/189/Default.aspx

The reason why we have not displayed this material in a prominent fashion before has been my fault. I was under the misconception that one should not be focused on trying to satisfy critics, skeptics and naysayers. After all, every single new community that has established an Enterprise Facilitation project over the past 25 years had at its helm capable people who conducted extensive due diligence before paying good dollars for our training. To imagine that hundreds of civic leaders have been negligent over the years seemed to me absurd.

Now however I see things differently. We are publishing all these independent reports not to satisfy the disbelievers but to honor our friends. To all who have believed in the value of Enterprise Facilitation and have used the approach over the years, here is additional evidence that your story of success was not an isolated occurrence but the natural consequence of believing in the intelligence and resourcefulness of your own people.

“When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.” William Blake

author:Dr.Ernesto Sirolli

Dino Pezzino was the Master Shoemaker that inspired Ernesto Sirolli’ work in 1980 in Western Australia

2010-12-09T14:25:00.000-08:00

To Joe and Charlie Pezzino, to Dino’s family and friends.

In Death of Dino Pezzino

For the past thirty years Dino has honored me with his friendship. He was like an uncle to me and I went to see him every time I was in Western Australia. Dino was truly a great man. Generous, friendly and …funny! He was the force behind the Fremantle Shoemakers Cooperative and few people truly understood that he taught Australian unemployed kids for free, in the evenings and out of his great heart. He was taken to court by the Shoemakers Union because he was teaching unemployed kids without having a Ticket to do so. So Dino submitted himself to be examined by a panel of expert shoemakers, half of which he had taught the trade (!), got a Ticket and got the satisfaction of winning the court case. Not only did he win, the Judge highly praised his work, awarded damages against the Union and the Fremantle Shoemakers Cooperative, received the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Award for best job creation scheme in Australia in 1982.

A master in his art, Dino commanded the respect, even the awe, of the men and women he taught. He started his apprenticeship in Sicily when he was fourteen years old in his uncle’s shop. His first job was to straighten used tacks that his uncle had used to make shoes. He became very good and his skills literally saved his life. As a prisoner of war he was interned at Buchenwald where he was asked whether he wanted to work or not. He offered to work and was sent to a factory that made shoes for the German army. Here during his lunch hours, with leather from the seat of a downed US Bomber, he made a pair of boots. A German officer took notice and asked whether Dino could make him a pair….very soon ALL the German officers wanted his boots and Dino was handsomely paid, in army rations!

That’s Dino for you, the ultimate charmer, the friendly, funny, gifted artisan who only did, beautifully, what he loved to do.

You were an inspiration Dino, travel well my friend. I know precisely who got to get a beautiful pair of Kangaroo leather’ moccasins, like the ones that I still have in my wardrobe. I never thought that I would be jealous of the Almighty because of an infinite supply of Dino’s shoes!

Ernesto Sirolli

Teaching Artists How To Make Money

2010-11-05T12:21:00.000-07:00

Ernesto Sirolli addressed the JUNCTION 2010 ARTS conference in Tasmania on August 28, 2010.

Ernesto Sirolli: the one who gets it

What do unemployed hippies, an Italian shoemaker, a nun, Western Australian fishermen and a man who knows nothing about business have in common? Passion, creativity and the makings of powerful storytelling.

Ernesto Sirolli's plenary address, Passion, entrepreneurship and the rebirth of local economies, had one simple but profound message: do what you want to do and find someone to do what you hate.
This straightforward message to the artists, community arts workers, business people and others in the audience was delivered lyrically, humorously and, like only the Italians can, with great gusto and feeling.

Sirolli narrated his experiences of developing entrepreneurs in Western Australia in the 1980s. He believes that the idea of an entrepreneur has been hijacked by corporate language which two-thirds of the population doesn't understand. He suggested that the first thing we need to do is reclaim the word 'entrepreneur' and its original, fundamental meaning: an entrepreneur is someone who 'gets it first'; who is innovative and courageous.

Through his engaging storytelling and grass-roots experiences, Sirolli urged the artists in the audience to dedicate their lives to finetuning their skills, to forget about trying to learn how to sell their work and to surround themselves with people they trust who can do that for them. That way, they return the gifts they have been given to the world.

And his belief about the universality of human experience? Every man and woman at any given time in their lives has a wish to better themselves. You don't have to take ideas into communities or tell people what to do - the people there already know what to do. You only have to take your passion and listen - not arrive with a 'briefcase of answers' - to help people do what they want to do.

What community wouldn't he inspire?

Author: Wendy Newton of Flying Arts

News from ENABLE Enterprise Facilitation® in North Liverpool

2010-10-12T12:03:00.000-07:00

The Journey so far...
North Liverpool is a place full of passions, vibrant, gritty and always tough and there have been many “top-down” initiatives that have tried to do things for the area but ENABLE is set to utilise local imagination and passion, using the Sirolli model, so that the area, its people and its communities are the engine of a real transformation. When Ernesto Sirolli, full of charisma and stories of his belief in people and his “bottom-up”, counter-intuitive approach visited the area in early 2005 many were sceptical. Much talking and thinking took place. People from most of the local community organisations got involved and by the spring of 2006 there was sufficient determination and will to go ahead and appoint a Facilitator. The selection process was very thorough and exhaustive and our facilitator was appointed to start work in December 2006. Much still lies ahead. The quality and effectiveness of this will depend on the efforts of all involved. We are determined to build our Panel further but a lot has been achieved already. We can celebrate much especially: -

That so many community organisations are firmly bedded into our work
That we have a good and positive culture and a set of core values that are respected
That our Facilitator has a growing and highly diverse band of clients – both existing businesses and new set-ups
That our belief that there is a strong flow of worthwhile business ideas awaiting expression in north Liverpool is now supported by evidence
That the special kind of highly personal support that we can offer is now making a real difference in many cases and is of the kind that is not available elsewhere
That a significant contribution is being made by the personal connections made amongst clients and with others.
That our Panel can repeatedly offer good and relevant ideas for our brainstorming
That our Panel has a wide spread of talent and is a place where hardnosed business people can engage and interact with community activists and public servants
That the Panel’s meetings are always accompanied by valuable informal exchanges of information
That our work is creating and enhancing a genuine “ripple effect” to create a distinctive culture of enterprise amongst people and communities that have long had a culture of dependency
That we are working in excellent harmony with the adjoining Sirolli projects.
That even at this relatively early stage successes are emerging that provide good role models and a base for convincing sceptical local businesses and people that the Sirolli methodology works.
What we have achieved to Date

What we have achieved to Date

New Businesses Created in 2006/07 ~ 2007/08 ~2008/09 ~ 2009/10 TOTALS
0 13 19 3 35
Existing Businesses 7 23 11 2 43
Jobs Created 0 17 27 0 44
Beneficiaries 23 81 129 16 249

Enterprise Development in Aboriginal Communities

2010-09-17T10:57:00.000-07:00

Gerhardt Pearson, 14/9/2010 9.45am

Australian Aboriginal culture is the world’s oldest, continuous, living culture. Our people have always been traders, artisans, environmental guardians, managers, builders and entrepreneurs.

When the Romans were conquering Britain in the year 43, when the Anglo Saxons took over in the year 410, when the Britons defeated the Anglo Saxons in 495, when the Vikings invaded in 793, when William the Conqueror took over England in 1066, when the Magna Carta was signed in 1215, when the Black Death arrived in England in 1348, when Henry the VIII (Eighth) was marrying and beheading his wives, when the English were fighting a Civil War in 1642, when the Industrial Revolution was revolutionising manufacturing, throughout all these years, and back a further 20-30,000 years before England even existed as a known habitable region, over all these millennia, the Aboriginal people of Cape York, and from around Australia, were travelling, trading and living prosperous lives.

Our Yolngu Aboriginal Colleagues in North East Arnhem land began the first commercial trade deals with China 400 years before European settlement in Australia, around the time of the European Renaissance. That commercial relationship continued, through the Maccassan fleet, every year until 1900. So set aside the common place concepts that Aboriginal people are not used to trade and commerce. Given the right incentives and opportunities we are as adept at business as anybody in the world.

But Europeans were slow to appreciate our skills and knowledge. When Captain Cook first came into contact with my direct descendents, the Gugu Yimmidhirr people at Cooktown, he wrote in his journal “Some part of their Bodys had been painted with red, and one of them had his upper lip and breast painted with Streakes of white, which he called Carbanda. Their features were far from being disagreeable; their Voices were soft and Tunable, and they could easily repeat any word after us, but neither us nor Tupia could understand one word they said”.

Even Cook, who must have felt like he was on the planet Mars, recognised the nobility of our people, but he did not recognise the way we did business.

The 1860-1880s for the people of Cooktown and Cape York, was a period very similar to when the Romans, Vikings and Normans invaded England. But unlike the Britons, we had no experience of foreign, invading armies. We knew what raiding parties looked like. But these usually involved a couple of dozen warriors at most. Most of our wars occurred when wives were in short supply or when our lands were in drought, suffered natural catastrophes and we had to find new sources of food and supply far from our homelands.

So we suffered very badly when William Hann discovered gold at the Palmer River in 1872. 35,000 miners invaded our country in 1873 and they took 26,600 kilos of gold from our rivers by 1912.

The Palmer River Gold rush is widely regarded as the wildest, toughest, most ruthless gold rush in Australian history. Palmer made the southern gold rushes, the Eureka Stockade and the California gold rush look like a picnic. One of the reasons was because the gold was so accessible. Anyone with a pan could access the gold from our rivers and streams. It was a free-for-all in which only the toughest and most barbaric survived. There was widespread lynchings, battles between European and Chinese miners and my people were randomly killed, forced from their lands and tracked down by prospectors, vigilantes and police alike.

Just, as during times of invasion in England, monasteries were a safe haven for nobles, the saviours, for many of my people, were three German missionaries Fierl, Schwarz and Poland. They created a safe haven at Cape Bedford, and many of our people were protected from police, vigilantes and indiscriminate violence, and survived there from 1886 to 1942.

From 1886 to 1967 most of our people lived under some form of mission or State supervision. However I want to emphasise that throughout all of this period, Aboriginal families were extremely industrious. There are many stories to tell of this period. However it should be noted that Cape Bedford mission was self sufficient for most of its history, despite it being a very barren agricultural area, and all of its buildings and churches were created by Aboriginal labour. Similarly, after WWII, the entire town of Hopevale, and much of its infrastructure, was built by Aboriginal carpenters and family members.

This was our period of learning about and adjusting to the European economy. Many of our people ran their own small businesses. My father ran the Hopevale butcher shop and he was a master of the art. Furthermore he knew about a few more cuts of meat than the European butchers. You see if you look at Aboriginal xray paintings you will see that one of the things that is set out there is the way to butcher native animals so that every piece of meat is used. There is also a long tradition of who gets what cuts of meat, how they can be traded and who they can be traded to, and in return for what. These trades came naturally to our people. (See Appendix One)

The problem for many of our people was that during this long period of “protection” we could not be financially or economically independent. It may come as a surprise to many here to realise that even if we could build, trade, and earn good money from our businesses or our labour we were legally forbidden from accumulating capital and assets. No matter how talented you were, you could not enjoy the fruits of your labour. We were not allowed to own our own homes. My father had to write to the State protector of Aborigines in Queensland to make any withdrawals from his earnings or to purchase something as small as a boning knife.

Imagine if you as small business people had to write to the Minister before you could spend any money on your businesses! Imagine if all of your wages and earnings were with-held from you!

So I hope this gives you some insight into what drives Cape York elders, me and my brother Noel forward into economic development. We want to regain our freedom to trade and be entrepreneurs in our right. I hope this also helps you to understand why we are so concerned now in 2010 that our economic rights are again at risk by the Wild Rivers legislation in Queensland. Just as we are reaching a time when Indigenous entrepreneurship is coming to the fore, when our children are excelling at their studies, and people are free to trade and to build capital and resources, our whole capacity to create enterprise is threatened by environmental legislation which is just as pervasive and destructive in its effects as the Palmer River gold prospectors.

We do not fear real conservationists here. We are the original conservationists. We are simply against puritanical, anti-human ecologists. We fear that another regime will restrict our economic independence and will mean that the environmental gold of our rivers is only accessible through a poorly funded national parks service with token aboriginal rangers and businesses which are inevitably financed (albeit inadequately) by government.

When we formed Balkanu – the Aboriginal Cape York Development Corporation - , in 1997, our goal was to create an organisation that would be an incubator for Aboriginal businesses and would fast track Aboriginal economic development into a new era. That was our dream and we have stuck steadfastly to it.

There have been many, many challenges.

One of our primary goals was to acquire, for traditional owners, the lands that were lost over the past two hundred years. For those who are not familiar with the complex world of Aboriginal land ownership, our job was separate to, but complimentary to, the Cape York Land Council.

Above and beyond native title questions, which is the domain of the Land Council, we have worked with government and private land holders

• to develop Indigenous Land Use Agreements,

• to authenticate traditional land ownership,

• we have facilitated land tenure arrangements and

• most importantly, we have on some occasions managed to directly buy back lands in the commercial market place that are outside the jurisdiction of native title settlements on behalf of traditional owners. Most of our traditional land that is of commercial value has needed to be bought back via the commercial real estate market. So this on its own is a monumental task.

Just dealing with the land issues would have consumed any ordinary organisation. But you can imagine how important this work is to our people. We are acquiring access, protecting or buying back the lands that were held by our grandparents and great grand parents but stripped away from them without any fair renumeration or compensation. For the great great grand children and grand children this is a very important job.

A second area of our work is to acquire a good mix of large and small commercial operations that will create long term economic prosperity in the form of income, jobs, training and skill development for our people. In this area we have had some successes. Balkanu owns and manages the Cape York Digital Network that delivers world class broadband digital communications across the major regions of Cape York Peninsula. So we are the equivalent of Telstra for the sixteen Aboriginal communities of Cape York and we provide access to everything from wireless hotspots to community internet centres to videoconferencing to remote accounting and health consultations. Over the next few years we hope that CYDN will become a real commercial force on the Cape that helps our kids become real citizens of the 21st century.

We have also been working for more than a decade on several large infrastructure projects including the Mossman Gorge Gateway project that will create a visitor centre and business hub for our people as well as provide better facilities for the more that 600,000 people who visit the Gorge each year. At Wujal Wujal at the other end of the Daintree rainforest we have also worked very closely with the Aboriginal Council to create a similar but smaller gateway project to the sacred waterfall that is also very well known to many of the international and national visitors to our region.

I could mention many other large and medium sized projects that Balkanu has supported, advocated and developed but I want to now focus on something that is at the heart and soul of this conference and the heart and soul of Balkanu. When you consider the scale and scope of Balkanu’s operations you might think that small and micro business were something that might be an after thought for us. But I can assure you that is not the case.

As you all know, if there are not small, family businesses or even micro sized individual businesses in your community, you can have all the big developments you like, and they will never directly touch ordinary people’s lives, aspirations and day to day reality. That is why for us Aboriginal small and micro business owners are very much heroic, front and centre enterprises, that we want to get behind at every opportunity.

I want to mention three businesses today that are renowned in the cut-throat, competitive Cairns tourist marketplace. The first is the Kubirri Warra brothers Linc and Brandon Walker and their family at Cooya Beach. The second is the Walker Sisters tour of the Bloomfield Falls at Wujal Wujal. The third is Nugal-warra elder Willie Gordon’s remarkable Guurbi tours.

These three remarkable Aboriginal micro businesses are linked together in a partnership with Adventure North to create a BAMA way tour from Kuyu Kuyu (Cooya Beach) to Wungaar Wari (Hopevale/Cooktown). (See Appendix two) Every single day of the week, rain, hail or shine, tourists from all over Australia and the world, come to hear and experience the skills and understanding of our people through these micro-businesses and to learn about our 40,000 years of cultural knowledge. For many, it is the most important part of their trip to not only North Queensland, but Australia.

Linc and Brandon, the Walker Sisters and Willie Gordon are real ambassadors for our people that bring enormous benefits to our communities through their work. Without them the big infrastructure projects, the big commercial operations and even the acquisition of lands do not mean anything to our grass roots communities and people.

Of course there are many other small and micro Aboriginal businesses throughout the Cape. Our job at Balkanu is to create the framework and supporting infrastructure that enables them to multiply and flourish.

But small and micro-business development is very different and a very specialised sphere of operations. I became the inaugural Chairman of the ISX (www.isx.org.au ) back in 2004, on top of my duties at Balkanu, to learn as much as I could about creating Aboriginal small and micro business throughout Australia. We were inspired by the model of social entrepreneurship in the UK and the USA and also, most particularly, by the great economist Muhammad Yunus. Yunus you will remember transformed aid and development work, through the Grameen Bank which makes commercial loans of as small as $A200 to Bengladeshi women. Yunus and Grameen transformed whole communities by creating hundreds of flourishing micro-businesses.

The situation here in Australia is very different. For a start the income scale and differentiation is different. Bengladesh does not have a welfare system like Australia’s that generally guarantees an income of roughly $20,000 per annum in family and individual payments. $200 is about 4 days payments from Centrelink. So building an asset base with $200 is not enough of an incentive for people to move from welfare to business. This incidentally is why many aid agencies prefer to invest their small development funds in third world countries and not Australia. They perceive they can do more good for more people outside of Australia than inside Aboriginal communities.

But though the scale is different, many of the principles of Yunus’s Grameen Bank do apply. Yes there are micro business entrepreneurs in every one of Cape York’s Aboriginal communities. Yes with the right incentives and infrastructure they can become successful entrepreneurs that do transform their own and their families lives. Yes loans with commercial pay back terms can make a difference. Yes these loans need to be tailored to the traditional and family structures of businesses.

So if this is the case, what do we now need to do to support small and micro businesses? Well, as everyone in this room knows, real organic small and micro businesses do not grow from economic textbooks. They do not grow up overnight. There is no homogenous formula for their development. They cannot be created from the top down. They evolve from the most elusive of human qualities: passion, self motivation, creativity and intelligence.

Unfortunately we have too few business incubators that focus on individual passion, self motivation, creativity and intelligence. We have lots that focus on business opportunities, projects, “good ideas”, production, financial management and marketing. We have endless numbers of government grants that will fund business plans.

But the great Italian small business guru Ernesto Sirolli (www.sirolli.com) says "A shift from strategic to responsive development can only occur, if we are capable of believing that people are intrinsically good and that the diversity, variety, and apparent randomness of their passions is like the chaotic yet ecologically sound life manifestations in an old-growth forest."

To carry on with Sirolli’s analogy, I can tell you that there are many people who are good at business who get lost in our renowned Cape York rainforest and who do not see the abundance of life and food and sustenance that are there. There are many people who are trained in formal economics who would not have recognised Willie Gordon or Linc and Brandon Walker or the Walker sisters as outstanding, commercially successful entrepreneurs.

There would have been very few banks who would understand their business products or their needs. There are also very few formal government economic schemes that will take the time and make the effort, over many years, to work closely with the human dimensions of small and micro business.

In addition we have to be very careful to nurture the human dimensions of small and micro businesses. You can provide money and infrastructure and business support; but if any of these things change the scale, change the passion or change the creativity of a small or micro business then sometimes the life can go out of the business.

So all of these things make Aboriginal small and micro business development a task that requires great patience and skill.

I am reminded of one of the outstanding Aboriginal business people and entrepreneurs of the Kimberley, Sammy Lovell. I met Sammy at the community trading floor of the ISX in Broome in May 2004. One of our colleagues asked one of small business developers from the Commonwealth government.: Would you provide a grant to someone who didn’t finish primary school, who used a passbook for his banking, who had no formal business plan for his business? The answer should have been: what other skills and opportunities does this person have to offer? But predictably the answer was: no! As such the most successful, internationally renowned, tourist operator of the Kimberley, Sammy Lovell and his family, would never have received any form of public small business support. Of course Sam and his family didn’t need it to be successful, but if we want to create more opportunities for Aboriginal entrepreneurs then these are the sorts of issues in Aboriginal small and micro business development we need to understand.

We continue to work away at these issues at the ISX and at Balkanu. Let me make these final concluding observations:

• There are no instant answers or solutions.

• You have to work for a long period. Five to ten years is, I think, the kind of period which is realistic to create one successful, independent small business or micro business.

• You have to be able to tailor capital, support and ideas to people and families. Above all, passion, self motivation, creativity and intelligence should be what we set our small business development compass to, certainly not to text book ideas of what a successful business or plan looks like.

• Finally, to be successful there has to be Indigenous and European risk and commitment on the table. When these things are in the right balance then we have a strong possibility of small and micro business success.

Thank you for listening and I hope that we at Balkanu and the ISX can look forward to working alongside, and with, many of you in the future.

Free Market and Capitalism are not synonyms!

2009-02-09T08:33:00.000-08:00

Author: Dr. Ernesto Sirolli

I was checking the Internet when I came across a blog that used a quote from my book “Ripples from the Zambezi”.

The quote was: “ ...an economic system which is beyond capitalism, that is a system which enhances the participation in the creation of wealth, not only its accumulation.

Civic economy can be defined as the economy resulting from generalized reciprocity, from people helping people to succeed, with the understanding that the well-being of each member of the community is to everybody's advantage. Whereas unbridled capitalism destroys diversity, competition, and ultimately the market and has to be controlled with anti-trust laws, civic economy encourages diversity and supports small and medium companies and cooperatives with legislative and fiscal tools.

The result is an entrepreneurial economy where reciprocity matters”.

Someone, not a real name, left a comment that said, among many other things:

‘It is not the "free market" that causes these problems. The free market IS diversity, it IS the economic definition of "perfect competition." “
.
I thought that the comments above where very much against the role of the government in the economy but I answered in the following matter to make a point; it seems to me that Free Market and Capitalism are used as if they where the same thing and the two terms interchangeable.

Here is what I wrote, please let me know what YOU think.

“I agree with you. It isn't the free market that is the problem”. In my quote I said: "Unbridled capitalism destroys diversity, competition etc. not the free market". There is a tendency to confuse FREE MARKET with CAPITALISM and I don't understand how this can be. Free market is probably as ancient as humanity itself whereas Capitalism is only as old as the existence of surplus capital. Nobody had any surplus capital to invest as early as the 1600. Before that maybe a few families, the Medici and the Rothschild’s, had enough surplus capital to lend to kings and queens, but 99.99% of the European, not to mention the world population, had no surplus capital to invest.

Capitalism is NEW! And we are still learning what happens when it is left unchecked.

In my book I make the case for a “civic economy” that promotes entrepreneurship. I believe that one million small businesses employing 2 people each is better that one business employing 2 million people. This is because if that one big business goes bust the economy looses two million jobs. Do I advocate smallness? No. Certain businesses have to be big for scale reasons. But to have all the chicken in the USA produced by one company, or the beef, the cars and the software would be suicidal. Fortunately in the USA there are anti trust laws that protect us from unbridled capitalism. And to be protected from it we desperately need because we cannot allow the free market to be destroyed whether by communism OR by unbridled capitalism.

A very big load of horse manure… and the next entrepreneurial revolution!

2009-01-26T09:53:00.000-08:00

author: Dr. Ernesto Sirolli

Futurologists are people who speculate about the future. They have their own magazines, journals and conferences. One such conference was held in New York City in 1880 and the question that the futurologists addressed was the following: “What will New York City look like in 1980?” The consensus was that by year 1980 New York City would not exist anymore. The reason, according to the futurologists, was that to move the ever increasing population of New York in 100 years, 6,000,000 horses would have been needed, and the problems created by the manure would have been impossible to deal with!

The preferred mode of transportation had been, for centuries, the horse and the horse could not meet the requirements of the new cities anymore…it was, like today’s cars, too polluting. Yet the average person could not imagine a future without them and Henry Ford famously said: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Instead by 1900 in the USA there were 1001 car manufacturing companies.

Small, tentative, entrepreneurial and private sector the pioneers of automotive transportation started a revolution in response to both the market needs and wants. In fact they started a revolution in advance of market wants.

Who are the entrepreneurs at work today? Where are they? What are they doing? Can we predict their appearance? Can we plan for them to appear when we want them to appear?

We believe that we are confronted by many “horse manure” problems in the world and that the need for original solutions will be addressed, right now, by entrepreneurs that are all but invisible not only to the general public but to many economic development practitioners as well.

What can be done to assist and expedite the work of entrepreneurs in our society? Old methods don’t work. Planning, for instance, is totally inadequate to the task as eloquently put by Peter Drucker who wrote: “Planning as the term is commonly understood is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy. Innovation does indeed need to be purposeful and entrepreneurship has to be managed. But innovation, almost by definition, has to be decentralized, ad hoc, autonomous, specific, and microeconomic. It had better start small tentative, flexible. Indeed, the opportunities for innovation are found, on the whole, only way down and close to events. (…) Innovative opportunities do not come with the tempest but with the rustling of the breeze.”

Facilitating Entrepreneurship

If entrepreneurs cannot be created nor planned what can the economic development professionals do? There are no doubts that the present economic and social crises will bring about a wave of innovations that are going to change, once again, the world we know. At the Sirolli Institute we believe that to be part of the change we have to be prepared to deal with entrepreneurs anywhere they may be, no matter how small, tentative or inexperienced.

Enterprise Facilitation is about capturing the passion, energy and imagination of our own people in our own communities and advocating for generalized entrepreneurship, no matter where it occurs.

It is also, and most importantly, about being prepared to offer, to a new generation of entrepreneurs, the management skills necessary to start AND sustain their ventures.

The economist and philosopher Ernest Schumacher once wrote: “I can't myself raise the winds that might blow us, or this ship, to a better world. But I can at least put up the sail so that, when the wind comes, I can catch it.”

We, economic development professionals, may not start the entrepreneurial revolution ourselves but at least we can prepare for it!

Since 1985 Ernesto Sirolli and the Sirolli Institute have worked with hundreds of communities worldwide to build their capacity to respond to entrepreneurs. We do so by working closely with the existing civic leadership and by training them to deliver this second leg of economic development. The Institute trains local Enterprise Facilitators by either establishing a new position or by re-training existing personnel to carry out the facilitation role.

Ernesto Sirolli on Africa and the first Enterprise Facilitation® project in the Democratic Republic of Congo

2009-01-09T08:33:00.000-08:00

From 1972 to1977 I worked for an Italian Agency of Technical Cooperation with African Countries call ASIP. ASIP was one of a number of private sector Agencies created after the passage of the Pertini Act of Parliament of 1971. Under the new law young Italians were able to volunteer for two years of work in Africa in programs designed and endorsed by the Italian Foreign Office. The role of my Agency was initially a recruitment and training role for young volunteers but very soon we became involved in designing the Technical Cooperation programs in a number of African countries including Zambia, Kenya, Somalia, Algeria and Ivory Coast.

What I experienced visiting our projects and our volunteers in Africa during the five years period was devastating. The experience shaped both my personal and professional life and Enterprise Facilitation®, the local economic and community development approach that we have developed over the past 30 years, is the direct result of it.

We failed miserably in Africa .Every single project failed to sustain itself and often we damaged the local people by introducing practices and technologies that were antithetic to local mores and inappropriate to local needs.

We started Training Farms by African rivers full of Hippopotami, only to see the crops eaten as soon as ripe, and we convinced the native people to come to work by “motivating” them with increasingly damaging enticements; from sunglasses and watches to beer and whiskey.

The Foreign Office started a faculty of Medicine in Mogadishu. My Agency sourced the books in the USA, had them translated in Italian and then established Italian Classes for students who, being well educated middleclass Somalis, spoke English.

During the period I came in contact with many foreign Aid Agencies working in Africa and I came to believe that it wasn’t only us Italians blundering in Africa. It seemed to me that all of donor nations had their own ideas of what the African people needed and were doing their blundering best to impose it onto them.

We collectively failed, and some still fail in Africa, because we made plans in our own countries and then we superimposed our programs, technologies and practices to people who did not ask us for our help and who did not need what we thought they needed! Our programs were about us, not them and without buy in from the locals we were always reduced to reward, motivate, cajole and bully people to do what we wanted them to do.

Instead of helping people do what they passionately wanted to do we paid them to do what we wanted done; as soon as the money would end the program would disappear!

Enterprise Facilitation is born of two ideas:

Only go where invited
Help people do beautifully what they love doing

The idea of “only going where invited” came from understanding the radical work of the German born economist Ernest Schumacher who, after working in Africa and Bangladesh in the sixties wrote “Small is Beautiful- Economics as if People Matter” (1973).

He famously wrote: “If people do not wish to be helped, leave them alone. This should be the first principle of aid.” The implication is that we should only work with people who sincerely want to be helped and that we should wait to be invited before showing up with our own ideas.

“Helping people do beautifully what they love to do” comes from studying Positive Psychology also called “Growth”, “Third Force” or “Humanistic” psychology.

Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Adler, Fromm and a host of post Freudian and post behaviorist psychologists, hence Third Force, advocate a person centered, respectful approach to working with clients that is steeped in the belief that people are always striving for self improvement. The role of the “helper” is to “remove the obstacles” that are stopping the individual from “growing”. But the growth is unique to the individual and has to do with “their” needs and aspirations not the helper, the program managers, the Aid Agency or “society”.

The idea is that better individuals make for better husbands, wives, parents and citizens and that by facilitating personal growth, by helping people become proud of their achievements for instance, everybody benefits including the community at large.

Enterprise Facilitation is the result of thirty years community practice in facilitating the transformation of good business ideas into sustainable enterprises, but Facilitation, a la Carl Rogers, can be used in many other fields; from counseling to the delivery of education, social and health related services.

If invited we, Sirolli Institute International, a non per profit organization based in the USA and Canada, train the community leadership to employ an Enterprise Facilitator who, for free and in confidence, helps anybody who wants to transform a talent or a passion in a way to feed his/her family.

The first Enterprise Facilitator, Fabrice Ilunga Mujinga, was trained, and will continue to be trained, by the Sirolli Institute both long distance and during his regular visits to the USA. It is hoped that future projects in the African continent will be established with Assistance of our first African’ Enterprise Facilitator (who speaks French, English and Swahili on top of two local languages) as soon as he will have completed his training and at least one year practice in his community.

For more information please contact us: info@sirolli.com

Inspirational News from a Sirolli Institute Project ~ Inspired Futures

2008-11-24T09:22:00.000-08:00

Inspirational words of wisdom were the order of the day for budding entrepreneurs and community leaders attending the launch of Inspired Futures, a Bradford-based organisation established that aims to assist young businesses.

Held recently at the Karmand Centre in Barkerend, BD3, the event featured a number of speakers as well as a number of exhibition stands from community and business organisations such as Community Works, BD3 4ALL and Inkopo.

Keynote speeches were delivered by Shabir Hussein, who established the successful Akbar’s restaurant chain over 13 years ago and Sarah Joseph, founder and editor of Emel, the only mainstream Muslim lifestyle magazine.

The proceedings, which attracted over 100 attendees, were opened by Richard Sara-Gray and Lukman Miah of Inspired Futures.

“No one can be a perfect entrepreneur,” explained Richard “and as such we are here to help people build the right team in order to build the right business.

“In Bradford we have some of the most wonderful entrepreneurs around and a real indomitable spirit. It’s upto organisations like Inspired Futures to help these people realise their true potential,” added Richard.

Lukman echoed those words: “Inspired Futures is here to positively influence the local economy and the community at large.”

Shabir Hussein, who founded Akbars aged just 18 and now has restaurants in a number of major cities, explained how he realised his dream: “It’s all about having goals and backing that up with the passion to achieve them.

“When I opened my first small restaurant on Leeds Road in 1995 I had a clear goal of establishing Akbar’s as a well known regional brand within five years and we achieved that. I’m now focused on getting the Akbar’s brand into 15 major UK cities and we are well on the way to realising that,” added Shabir.

Sarah Joseph set up Emel in 2003 and she has since gone on to carve out a visible media profile that has placed her as one of most recognised Muslim businesswomen.

“Every small business is a seed for its local community that will thrive with the right nurturing,” exclaimed Sarah “and will, in time, prove to be very fruitful.

“Everyone of us has skills and talents that should be pursued but the biggest barrier to our success is ourselves.

“I call it the whisperer who is there to put doubts in our mind as to what is and isn’t possible. You have to keep going and believe in what you are doing wholeheartedly,” added Sarah who made a clear distinction between maximising profits and optimizing profits.

“Maximising profits is all about squeezing the last penny out of your venture whereas optimising profits is a more holistic approach that takes into account your own lifestyle, happiness and the needs of the wider community.

“I adhere to the latter and despite all of the demands of running a business and a growing family I still get a great deal of excitement out of putting Emel together,” she said.

Bradford City Councillor Jeanette Sunderland was delighted by the event which also featured the launch of Inside Directions which is aimed at helping women develop their own business ventures.

“This is very much the launch of a new collaborative way of doing business in Bradford that will allow ordinary people to achieve their dreams,” concluded Councillor Sunderland.

For more information about Inspired Futures visit www.inspiredfutures.org.uk or call 01274 666283

Spirit of enterprise wins Tynedale national award

2008-11-14T13:15:00.001-08:00

By HELEN COMPSON

13 November 2008

The success of the Tynedale Enterprise Facilitation® Project was acknowledged when it was named one of the runners-up in the national finals of the Enterprising Britain Awards.

The project’s chairman, Gill Burgess, was presented with a trophy by businessman Peter Jones, of BBC2 The Dragon’s Den fame, during the ceremony at 11 Downing Street.

One NorthEast’s head of business, enterprise and skills, Tim Pain, said: “We’re extremely proud of Tynedale – the district has done a great job of showcasing North-East England’s growing enterprising culture. “I have no doubt that communities elsewhere can learn a great deal from its success.”

Tynedale Enterprise Project has helped to either establish or grow around 80 independent businesses since its inception just 18 months ago.

Read more... http://www.hexham-courant.co.uk/news/news_at_a_glance/1.269408

Mining and Community Development: From Rhetoric to Practice

2008-10-15T13:57:00.000-07:00

author: Dr. Ernesto Sirolli

“Conventionally, mining companies have wanted to take immediate measures to alleviate poverty they observed in the neighborhood of their mining projects. Typically this has been by building schools, clinics, or hospitals and by sponsoring external health and education service providers to create new programs.

Often these efforts, although appreciated as generous gifts to local communities, have not lasted beyond the life of the mine, and sometimes not even beyond the tenure of the particular company staff that instigated the projects. The reasons for this are because the projects:

• Were chosen by the mining company people and/or the local elites
• Were built or run by outsiders, with little management involvement from local community members
• Were only accessible by the more affluent members of the community and not by the poorer members
• Required technology or knowledge not locally available to maintain them
• Or because the capacity of local people to manage the programs was not built up to a sufficient level.

The sum of these factors is that, with the best of intentions, the projects were imposed upon local communities and they therefore did not feel any particular ownership of them nor did they have the needed capabilities to sustain them, resulting in a progressive decline once external support was withdrawn.

Further, if local communities and government agencies become accustomed to mining companies taking charge of the provision of infrastructure and services, an unhealthy dependency relationship can evolve, which works against sustainability.”1
What Not to Do
I was about to start this paper with a critique of conventional community development programs when I came across the Community Development Toolkit published by the International Council on Mining and Metals in 2005. (The ICMM was set up in 2001 to represent many of the leading mining and metal companies of the world.)
The critique of “knee-jerk” infrastructure development in the Toolkit is spot on.

For a number of reasons building infrastructures is the easiest thing for mining companies to do. Unfortunately, as recognized by the ICMM, the approach is not sustainable.

I had the opportunity to visit a mining community in the Amazon that had been the recipient, for 45 years, of what I would describe as the paternalistic attention of an international mining company. The mine had built the school, sealed the roads, built for the community of 6000 people the best regional hospital in the State and provided electricity for the town.

When I visited the community the mine had been closed for nine year and…nothing worked anymore!

The power plant had shut down, the roads were reduced to obstacle courses of mud and potholes, the school barely survived and the hospital had shut down. When we asked the local council members what had happened, they told us that they had no resources to keep those infrastructures open. “We are poor,” they said. “Don’t give us infrastructures that we cannot maintain.”

In Valdez, Alaska, we were told a similar story. The City, mostly with money from companies associated with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, built a multi-million convention center. The 20,000 square foot facility is now an albatross around the neck of the community of 4300 people that has little use for it. It costs the City $200,000 USD a year just to keep it heated!

I am sure that all those associated with mining would be capable of sharing with me many more stories on the subject …

Let’s simply say that I found the ICMM’s observations on the topic of infrastructure development both accurate and welcomed.

What to Do

Accurate and welcomed were also the recommendations of the ICMM in regards to the opportunities for mining companies in community development i.e. the “what to do”.
After discussing the obvious benefit of offering training and apprenticeships in trade areas to build the skill level of the local population, the Community Development Toolkit goes on to say the following:

“The challenge, however, is to not only build the skills but also facilitate the growth of other activities in parallel to mining.…
Mining companies can localize some of their product and service procurement policies to help build local supply capabilities.
In addition to helping train local community members to provide goods and services, companies can also consider supporting micro credit schemes to help encourage small business.”

The way I read the document is that mining companies should look at building the capacity of the communities to survive long after the mine has gone. To do so a parallel economy has to emerge that may be based, initially, on providing goods and services to the mine but that eventually would expand and diversify to provide the same to the community, the region and the State.

The Toolkit even mentions, by name, an enterprise that did, precisely, that:

“…The Lac La Ronge Indian Band initially developed trucking and catering skills with support from the local uranium mines in northern Canada. Over time, they expanded their business away from the mines and now have an annual turnover of $65 million CAD in 2005 supplying services in the surrounding region”.

The Wrong Tools for the Job

The Toolkit’s excellence, in both identifying “what not to do” and in suggesting the “what to do” was lost, in my view, when it started to suggest and enumerate the tools to achieve what it had so eloquently suggested.

The “17 Tools” proposed are all “top down”.

Some of them may be useful in identifying what areas of trade and apprenticeship can be offered to residents but, in our experience, they are useless in fostering entrepreneurship. To “facilitate the growth of other activities in parallel to mining” necessitates “facilitation tools” and facilitation tools have to be, by definition bottom-up and responsive.

The ICMM Community Development Toolkit comprises:
• Four Assessment Tools
• Five Planning Tools
• Three Relationship Tools
• Two Program Management Tools and
• Three Monitoring and Evaluating Tools

All of the above tools are “driven” from the mining company and are perfectly suited to achieve its objectives.

Working with entrepreneurs, on the contrary, requires an environment that allows local people to come and tell us what they want to do, when they want to do it and how!

Working with entrepreneurs in a community requires the creation of a “convivial” social infrastructure that allows for free, confidential, caring, competent and compassionate service to them. Unless such social infrastructure is in place would-be entrepreneurs will shy away from working with us or, even worst, they will come to seek our help for the wrong reasons.

Working with Entrepreneurs

Working with entrepreneurs over the past quarter century we have learned the following:

Assessing how many would-be entrepreneurs may reside in a community by doing community surveys or asking around, as suggested in the Toolkit, does not work. Entrepreneurs do not reveal, in public, their ideas for making money because they fear competition and/or ridicule.

Planning for entrepreneurs to appear to take care of the provision of certain goods or services doesn’t work either. In the words of the foremost scholar of entrepreneurship, Peter Drucker, “planning is actually incompatible with an entrepreneurial society and economy.” Why? Because by definition entrepreneurship is a creative process that starts small, is decentralized, ad hoc, tentative and close to the action. Entrepreneurs see opportunities that nobody else see…by the time the opportunity has been “discovered” by the planners it isn’t an opportunity anymore!

Managing entrepreneurs is futile. If we truly wish to foster an economy that can survive the closure of the mine then we have to have entrepreneurs capable of managing their own enterprises. Managing anything, on our part, will create dependency and achieve the opposite of our aim.

Monitoring is probably the least intrusive of the above tools. But monitoring is not going to create enterprises that will survive long after the mine has closed!

Facilitating Entrepreneurship

The change that is required to go from “planning for infrastructure development” to “facilitating local entrepreneurship” is huge. It is like going from open cut low grade coal mining to prospecting for gold nuggets! Not only the tools are different…everything is different, including the attitude and expectations of the people involved.

We, at the Sirolli Institute, know how to prospect for gold. We know how to find one nugget at the time and have developed a methodology that actually gets the nuggets to come to us!

In 1985 we implemented the first Enterprise Facilitation® project in Esperance, Western Australia. Since them we have been refining the process and have been developing tools for sustainable community development that are ideally suited for capturing the passion, energy and imagination of local would be entrepreneurs.

Fundamental to our work are the following principles:

• We never initiate contacts with local entrepreneurs

• We never motivate local people to do anything

If invited to work in a mining community we engage firstly with the mining company management and train a small team in the principles and practices of Enterprise Facilitation.

We then assist that team (called the Project Management Team) to recruit an Enterprise Facilitator. The Enterprise Facilitator is preferably a native of the country and is both culturally and linguistically suited to operate in the community.

The Enterprise Facilitator, whose selection is based on certain personality characteristics and life experiences, is then trained by us to respond to local would-be entrepreneurs and to facilitate the transformation of their ideas into sustainable enterprises.

As mentioned above, in our methodology the Enterprise Facilitators are taught not to approach local entrepreneurs to offer help nor to motivate local people to start businesses. We instead build a community team to introduce the Enterprise Facilitator, informally, to friends and family members.

These community “helpers” are also trained by us to assist the Enterprise Facilitator with local intelligence and know-how and, taken together, the Management Team, the Enterprise Facilitator and the local Resource Team constitute the “convivial” social infrastructure that we mentioned earlier.

In our view, building the capacity of the community to help itself is the precondition for sustainable development. A community that learns how to help its own people to transform their ideas into viable enterprises is also a community that can benefit from better infrastructures because, in the long term, it will have the resources to maintain them.

Conclusions

While working with mining companies we have noticed that the language and the thinking behind community development have made dramatic changes. It is as if the rhetoric is finally in place. It is the tools that have to catch up!

Reviewing the bibliography of the ICMM Community Development Toolkit I couldn’t fail to notice that some of the tools had been borrowed from international development agencies and institutions that I call, affectionately, the “agents of virtue”!

Affectionately because I have known them since the early ‘70’s, when I started my work in Africa, and they are like those dear but obnoxious relatives that keep showing up at family gatherings retelling those same old, ridiculous stories.

I saw “assessment, planning, managing and monitoring” done in Africa over the past forty years and it didn’t work.

In fact after forty years of international aid and $1 trillion dollars donated to the African continent, Africa is poorer now than forty years ago. Not only that, but the gap between African countries and the rest of the world has actually widened during the period.

The rhetoric in international development circles is becoming even more refined and the names involved even more impressive but what has been done is more of the same. More money to build hospitals, schools, water treatment and roads for communities that cannot maintain them.

Yet, as described in Paul Theroux’s recent book Dark Star Safari2 the agents of virtue are busier in Africa than ever before and, if possible, they are even more righteous. They speed by, whites in their white 4x4s, as angels of the Lord on urgent missions of mercy…it is understandable that they never stop to give a lift to anybody; they are too busy saving Africa!

1 Community Development Tool Kit: International Council on Mining and Minerals (ICMM), The World Bank Group, Energy Sector management Assistance Programme (ESMAP), 2005.

2 Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town, 2003.

Sirolli Institute Grassroots Development Process a Cure for Ailing Economy as New Business Sustainability Averages 95%

2008-04-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

Enterprise Facilitation from Sirolli Provides Hope, Sustainable Jobs to Foundering Economy Through Community Mentoring Process That Is Free to Entrepreneurs

MARION, SD -- (April 7, 2008) -- Sirolli Institute, a leader in the field of sustainable community and economic development announced the upcoming anniversary of the Southeast Enterprise Facilitation Project (SEFP), based in Marion South Dakota will take place April 16, 2008. With projects scattered throughout the U.S., the sustainability of new businesses started through the trademarked Enterprise Facilitation process far exceeds the national average, with independently assessed projects in rural Kansas experiencing a 95% sustainability rate, and SEFP having new businesses succeed at an average 79.5% after the first four years. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national average for businesses still in operation after the first four years is only 44 percent.
“We advocate for a civic economy, a model of development that supports the creation of wealth from within a community by nurturing the intelligence and resourcefulness of its people, and champion the development of community through the passionate mentoring of local talent,” stated Dr. Ernesto Sirolli, Founder of the Sirolli Institute. “By promoting quality local enterprises that diversify the economic base and create jobs while respecting the environment and infusing the community with local vigor and ideas, communities are able to successfully grow themselves from the bottom up. The fact that people from all walks of life in the community are utilized to support the process, and that the service is free to anyone with an idea for a business helps ensure long-term viability and creates a true sense of community, is something that is often lacking in today’s society.”
With Enterprise Facilitation projects based throughout the U.S. in states like New Mexico, Texas, Kansas, South Dakota, Minnesota, Oregon and California, the biggest impact can be seen particularly in disenfranchised rural areas, who have experienced renewed economic growth and vitality. The process supports home businesses, mixed use areas, liveable cities and the emergence of civic society to achieve indigenous growth. People often overlook that creating one job can have such an exponential impact. For example, in one of the project communities 450 people are supported by 104 new, expanded or retained jobs.
“The process is effective because it allows each entrepreneur to focus on his or her strengths, and connects them with others in the community who can help them tackle the areas of starting a business that can be overwhelming, such as developing a business plan and securing financing,” offered Nancy Larsen, Enterprise Facilitator for the SEFP. “While there is a financial investment made by the community to manage the process, there is never a cost to prospective entrepreneurs who receive services, and the process is complimentary to conventional development resources, which are scarce or inaccessible in rural areas. The fact that the sustainability rate for new businesses in a project area such as ours, are at 79.5%, or 35% above the national average after four years, and that 81% of the jobs created still exist is nothing short of amazing. The local investment really brings the community together as a team and is a catalyst for developing relationships and a willingness to work together that might otherwise never have occurred.”
With the entire population served in Turner and Hutchinson Counties totaling less than a mere 17,000 people, and the largest community in the area fewer than 1,700 individuals the SEFP statistics are remarkable. From June 1997 through February 2008 the project numbers include:
• 911 Inquires
• 496 Clients Enrolled
• 58 New Businesses
• 308 Jobs
• 21 Expanded Businesses
• 25 Retained Businesses
“A key component in the value provided by SEFP lies in the long-term success of those clients that were assisted and decided to follow their dreams. Statistically, our clients have remained in business longer than a typical new business venture, partly due to the research and educational processes involved,” offered John McDonald, SEFP Board Treasurer and original board member. “In addition, the assistance provided by SEFP may help a client realize that their dream is not feasible and we can help them avoid an inevitable failure. There is value in the research and educational processes our clients follow, that makes it a good investment and a win-win situation for everyone involved.”
“The ‘economy,’ to us at the Sirolli Institute, is nothing less than millions of people doing beautifully what they love doing. The better they are at it, the better the economy! The difference between poverty and riches is the presence, or not, of civic society, i.e. the combination of social conditions and reciprocity which allow creativity and intelligence to blossom or to wither and die,” explained Dr. Sirolli.
“Our rural communities are fighting and scratching to survive, and while the jobs and economic stimulus provided by SEFP is important, a more important aspect is the people, offered Dr. John Chicoine, one of the original members of the SEFP Board. “The people who are the entrepreneurs that use the resources of SEFP and the Board members who dedicate their time and expertise to serving those people who are starting a business or expanding a business are the real value. The passion involved in this organization with the board and the entrepreneurs is extraordinary, and that passion is what fuels the entrepreneurial spirit.” Dr. Chicoine went on to say, “Dr. Ernesto Sirolli shared his passion with us eleven years ago, and that passion that has enriched and changed lives cannot have a value put on it, it is priceless. He gave us the tools to follow the dream and begin the journey, and what we have created exceeded our expectations after the first five months. The rest is history.”
About Sirolli Institute
Founded in 1996, the Sirolli Institute is a global, not-for-profit organization of experienced professionals with the mission of introducing Enterprise Facilitation to communities seeking to grow their economies from within.
When invited, we help you to establish a community-based organization that works in concert with existing economic development efforts to assist entrepreneurs. This organization serves as a catalyst for renewed community pride and civic spirit.
Since 1985, thousands of new and expanding businesses resulting in thousands of new jobs have been started with the help of Enterprise Facilitators in dozens of communities in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, the UK and Canada.
For more information, please visit www.sirolli.com or visit SEFP online at www.sefp.com
# # #

Sirolli Visit sows seeds of Grass-Roots Dreams

2008-03-05T10:51:00.000-08:00

Glen Winney is a man with a mission. He has invested in property development on the Fraser Coast and he is prepared to invest in the economic health of the region.

That thinking was behind the decision of Glen and his brother Alan to commit their Seashift Developments company to sponsoring the visit to Hervy Bay last week of Dr. Ernesto Sirolli.

To read more: http://www.sirolli.com/resources.cfm?cat=2

Sirolli Institute- Fraser Coast Chronicle

2008-02-27T09:17:00.000-08:00

Sirolli - breath of fresh air for council

A powerful message about a simple catalyst for change will be delivered to the Fraser Coast on Friday.

It comes just weeks before the new Fraser Coast Regional Council elections and shines a strong light on a path down which the new council could walk.

The Dr. Ernesto way of invigorating local economies by tapping into entrepreneurs at grass roots level has given a vibrant new lease of life to hundreds of towns in a dozen or so countries.

His inspiring message is both simple and complex.

The simple part is to help a town (or in our case a region) appoint a facilitator to draw the threads of funding, markets, transport and expert advice to get a business venture off the ground.

More complex is the way the facilitator is trained to draw out the entrepreneurs. they have interesting riding instructions; they are not allowed to initiate anything nor are they allowed to motivate anyone.

If the passion comes fro the person with the dream, the facilitator helps turn it into reality.

The Sirolli initiative is a breath of fresh air in the midst of our current council election. After the messy smear campaigns and anonymous venom on the Internet, we have genuine interest from good people who sincerely want to give our united region a quick leg-up.

Nancy Bates-Editor
article posted in Fraser Chronicle on February 22, 2008

for more information:
http://www.frasercoastchronicle.com.au/

The Sirolli Institute in Leeds

2007-12-07T07:42:00.000-08:00

L-R Mike Chitty, Yvonne Fizer, Anne Sherriff (Re'new) and Ernesto Sirolli

Ernesto Sirolli and Yvonne Fizer visited Leeds this week to bring the message of Enterprise Facilitation to the City. As invited guests of Re'new Ernesto and Yvonne spoke for a couple of hours on the importance of responsiveness in economic development as a compliment to the more traditional infrastructure led and strategic approaches to economic and social development.

It is hoped that the interest shown in the message might lead to a project in the City.

Rob Greenland, one of the participants at the meeting, has already blogged on the event. You can read his thoughts here.

If you attended the event or have a view on the appropriateness of Enterprise Facilitation in Leeds then please do leave us a comment.

African aid: Fairport's Kamina Friends

2007-11-23T08:33:00.000-08:00

After visit, Kamina Friends decide to help war-torn village thrive:

(November 18, 2007) — When the Rev. Ann Kemper entered the African village of Kamina in 2003, she said it was a spiritual awakening.Villagers were trying to recover from a war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that had left the area impoverished and without a sound economic system.
"It was tremendously eye-opening to all of us," said Kemper, of Covenant United Methodist Church, 1124 Culver Road. "We were the first group (of Americans) to have visited Kamina since the war ended."
Slowly, several small businesses have emerged which Kemper, of Fairport, and others traveling with her from the United States, witnessed upon returning to Kamina in 2005.
A bicycle repair shop was found operating under the shade of a tree. Soap, rice, ground corn and other items were available at a roadside kiosk. A women's sewing cooperative was formed. Problems with roads and other infrastructural issues persist, but commerce is present.
And Kemper, along with the seven other members of Kamina Friends, a Fairport-based nonprofit, have committed to be a financial and business training resource for the village.
Kamina Friends Kemper and Jeff Tyburski, with representatives from other groups, traveled to Kamina in September with a strategy to further bolster the economy. The group hopes to implement an Enterprise Facilitation program developed by the Sirolli Institute, a nonprofit specializing in growing sustainable markets here and abroad.
The model establishes a volunteer board of residents who then train a full-time facilitator to work directly with residents wanting to start businesses.
Kamina Friends would pay the village facilitator's salary for three years until the village could afford to pay it.The Sirolli model has been successful in more than 200 communities, said Tyburski, adding that its effectiveness stems from people taking responsibility for growing their economy from within.
"The philosophy is a very bottom-up, people-centered approach," he said. "We're hoping Kamina is just a pilot study" that will lead to assisting other countries in Africa and other regions.
None of this would have been possible in Kamina, said Kamina Friends members, without the leadership of Bishop Ntambo Nkulu Ntanda, a leader in the United Methodist Church in the Congo; his wife Mama Nshimba; and Kamina's residents. They said the 2006 democratic elections in the Congo further underscored the socio-political changes in the region.
Kamina Friends will hold a community event at 7 p.m. Nov. 29 at Fairport United Methodist Church, 31 W. Church St., Fairport, to educate and train those interested in helping with this project.Special guest Ernesto Sirolli will discuss the Sirolli Institute, and representatives from Kamina are expected to participate as well.
Talks have begun with USAID, the United Methodist Committee on Relief and other groups to secure more resources for Kamina, and address its health care and infrastructural needs. "These relationships are real," Tyburski said."There's no walking away from this."NLEE@DemocratandChronicle.com

Tynedale Progress

2007-11-06T04:12:00.000-08:00

Mark Reed, one of the newest Enterprise Facilitators, has just published this piece on our forum:

Hi, just a quick note to say hello to all the forum readers from our facilitation project in Tynedale. For those of you that don't know, Tynedale is situated in the north of England, and it is such a great place that the Scots have been trying to invade and conquer us for hundreds of years. Hadrian had a problem with this so he built a wall between us and our Scots cousins. These days we manage to coexist (mostly) peacefully and Hadrian's wall has become one of our biggest attractions.

We have been running our project since July and are starting to see results for the clients we are working with. One of them, Chris, is running his business from Hexham but has a clientele across the globe. He has been quite successful in getting press cover and you can read about his business using the following link.
http://www.gonomad.com/transports/0710/motor-home-swap.html

We just had our third board meeting and are starting to get a feel for the process. We all realise that we have a long way to go but the momentum we have now built up is tangible.

Feel free to get in touch and pass on your stories of success, failure, laughter and tears, in all aspects of your roles and experience.

My favourite quote this month comes from Banksy, my favourite vandal " A lot of people never use their initiative, because no-one told them to."

Mark.

Glad to see it is going well Mark. Thanks for the post!

Dream team goes to the Extreme for security

2007-10-27T04:30:00.000-07:00

DREAM High, an Enterprise Facilitation project helping residents to start their own businesses, has helped three partners with the formation of Extreme Security.

And already the firm has secured several five-figure-sum contracts.

John Elliott, Denzil Estridge and Richard Pickett drew on their experience in the sector to create their own business.

Dream High, which was inspired by the international Sirolli enterprise network, introduced them to funding agencies and recruited the help of existing local businesses through its enterprise facilitator Claire Chang.

OK Ball Success!

2007-10-15T04:16:00.000-07:00

The recent Opportunity Kintyre Ball was a great success - raising funds for the project; raising the profile of the project and giving everyone a great time.

You can read more about it here.

If you were at the Ball and have any photos please share them with us!

Ernesto Back in Oz

2007-09-27T01:16:00.000-07:00

Ernesto has recently been back to Australia where much of the early work on Enterprise Facilitation was done more than 20 years ago!

His message was that finding the strengths of a community and the individuals within and encouraging them to work together can drive employment and business success.

FINDING STRENGTHS!

So much of what we see is aimed at redressing the weaknesses - low educational attainment, low self esteem, lack of self confidence. Of course these need to be addressed - but not always head on. Help people to make progress where they can - and to ask for help where they cannot.

If you are working on a project to encourage entrepreneurship are you 'finding the strengths' or shoring up the weaknesses?

Read More Here

Blame is a primitive response - Entrepreneurship is a much better one

2007-09-24T01:18:00.000-07:00

"If journalists spent as much time studying the lives of the poor as they do gazing at the rich, it would help us all keep our heads on straight. We would marvel at a world economy strange enough to sustain such gaps. We'd learn not to blame the rich for the poverty of the poor, but we'd also learn not to blame the poor themselves. Blame is a primitive response. Entrepreneurship is a much better one."

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs ,the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University.

The Sirolli Documentary - Available online Now!

2007-09-21T09:16:00.000-07:00

The Sirolli Documentary put together by our friends at Westex is available to view online now.

You can view the whole video here!

Or you can watch a sample 7 minute video in the player below.

Ernesto Back in Australia

2007-09-21T04:38:00.000-07:00

The West Australian coastal town of Esperance seems an unlikely setting for an economic development program that is being rolled out across the globe.

But the man who pioneered enterprise facilitation in Esperance in 1985, Dr Ernesto Sirolli, told audiences in Maroochydore and Maleny last week that all communities could benefit from the model.

“Every community, and the Sunshine Coast, would be no different to Esperance or any of the 300 communities around the world the Sirolli Institute is working in, has a huge amount of untapped entrepreneurial potential,” he said.

PEER Recognition!

2007-09-18T00:27:00.000-07:00

People Encouraging Enterprise in Rossendale (PEER), has been recognised for its invaluable role in turning the economic fortunes of the borough of Rossendale around by encouraging the creation and growth of businesses and social enterprises throughout the area.

Historically farming and cottage woollen industries formed the backbone of Rossendale’s local economy. Like so many other manufacturing areas before it, the borough experienced sharp economic decline.

By 2002 Rossendale had become an economic backwater with one of the lowest average wage levels in the North West. The Borough Council struggled and was rated as one of the worst performing local authorities in England. Rossendale had the weakest results in East Lancashire for business start-ups, well below the national average. With all this to face, perhaps unsurprisingly, perception surveys at the time recorded that local communities had a very poor self-image, and had become dejected and disengaged.

By early 2002 community leaders had had enough and were eager to stimulate change.
Read the story of how PEER worked with the Sirolli Institute to make a real difference in Rossendale here.

Siroli Chair in UK Named Enterprise Champion

2007-09-17T00:06:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Gary Millar, chair of the Liverpool City Centre Enterprise Facilitation Project - Ripples on the Mersey.

Gary has just been named Liverpool ECHO 2007 Enterprise Champion. Gary has played an important role in helping with the development of Enterprise Facilitation in the City.

South East Enterprise Facilitation Project

2007-09-12T00:43:00.000-07:00

Great project website here from an Enterprise Facilitation project in South Dakota.

I especially like the way they provided a page on project funders (over 40 different sponsors contributing to keeping this service running).

The information they provide on results from the project is also great.

Congratulations to all involved with the project and such a great way of communicating to a range of interested parties what you are all about.

A Kansas Success Story

2007-09-06T00:18:00.000-07:00

Since 2002, five Kansas projects involving 28 counties have begun using Enterprise Facilitation. The results have been spectacular:

94 per cent of the businesses started in these projects are still active in 2007
each project averages 10 to 15 business startups annually, producing 40 to 60 new jobs each year per project
all this on an annual budget of $75,000 to $90,000 per project, an average of about $2000 invested per job created
in 2007, the Kansas state government recognized the success of Enterprise Facilitation by passing legislation providing up to 30 per cent of ongoing annual funding for the five projects
with over 20 years of proven best practices in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and the USA, Enterprise Facilitation projects around the world retain an average of 80 to 90 per cent of new businesses after five years.

Please find out more and download the full case study here.

Opportunity Kintyre Late Summer Ball

2007-09-05T04:18:00.000-07:00

Opportunity Kintyre, Scotland’s first Enterprise Facilitation Pilot Project for rural communities, is holding A Late Summer Ball on Saturday 29th. September 2007 to celebrate the talent, style and produce of Kintyre and to set the agenda to re-establish Kintyre’s place in the new economic development of Scotland.

Special Guest for the evening will be Dr. Ernesto Sirolli, the founder of the Sirolli Institute, whose international (not for profit) Company believes “The future of every community lies in capturing the passion, imagination and resources of its people”.

The evening will be a rare opportunity to hear him and enjoy traditional and modern Scottish entertainment.

Music will be provided by The Wild Sarachs, rock band The Twisted Melons and Norman McKay's Ceilidh Experience.

The venue will be Campbeltown Grammar School, Hutcheon Road, Campbeltown, Argyll, PA28 6JS, with the evening commencing at 8 p.m.

Tickets £25 individual. Corporate tables available.

For further information or to book your place, please visit:http://www.opportunitykintyre.org.uk/ballinvitation.pdf

STEPS Celebrates

2007-08-28T01:59:00.000-07:00

The Southeast Team for Entrepreneurial Success, or STEPS, celebrated its first anniversary last week with a visit from Ernesto Sirolli, whose Sirolli Institute is providing training to the group.

This is one of four Sirolli projects in New Mexico.

The others are in Deming, Silver City and Taos.

You can read more here.

So What Might We Achieve in the First 6 Months

2007-08-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

We recently received the following reflections from Lawrence Holden, Chair of the Enterprise Facilitation project in North Liverpool, UK called ENABLE.

ENABLE North Ltd

1^st Half year – Achievements

Travels in the Kalahari have given me a different perspective of time and space but it has been a delight to sit down with Lynne Jones and consider what has been achieved in her first six months as Enterprise Facilitator.

Thinking about the nature of her work with clients has confirmed my belief that the Sirolli method of Enterprise Facilitation might have been designed for the needs of north Liverpool. As we are a segment of a vibrant, gritty and highly distinctive northern English city going through a process of rebirth, rather than a rural or township we do not appear to be a “typical” Sirolli project. The fact that our project is firmly bedded in a core of five or six community organisations has given us an abnormal pattern of contacts and introductions and a certain focus to our Panel.

Our Panel is not as large as we would like to be. But we have much to celebrate, be positive about and use as a firm base for really strong development ahead.

In order to strengthen our resolve this note will list, in a random order, as many things as I can that I think are good and worthy of celebration: -

That so many community organisations are firmly bedded into our work
That we have a good and positive culture and a set of core values that are respected
That Lynne has a growing and highly diverse band of clients – both existing businesses and new set-ups
That our belief that there is a strong flow of worth while business ideas awaiting expression in north Liverpool is now supported by evidence
That the special kind of highly personal support that Lynne can offer is now making a real difference in many cases and is of the kind that is not available elsewhere
That a significant contribution is being made by the personal connections that Lynne is making between clients and with others.
That our Panel can repeatedly offer good and relevant ideas for Lynne’s clients in our brainstorming
That our Panel has a wide spread of talent and is a place where hardnosed business people can engage and interact with community activists and public servants
That the Panel’s meetings are always accompanied by valuable informal exchanges of information
That our work is creating and enhancing a genuine “ripple effect” to create a distinctive culture of enterprise amongst people and communities that have long had a culture of dependency
That we are working in excellent harmony with the adjoining “Dream High” and “Ripples” projects and have an ambitious fundraising programme with them and the two other Merseyside projects.
That even at this relatively early stage success are emerging that provide good role models and a base for convincing sceptical local businesses and people that the Sirolli methodology works.

We must not be complacent – we have much to do – but these facts are encouraging.

Lawrence Holden

Chair of Panel

3 July 2007

Wonderful to get such positive feedback and a clear indication that the benefits of working with Enterprise Facilitation extend far beyond start up rates!

If you live or work in North Liverpool and would be interested in joining this community project then please do get in touch.

Kevin Koym - Exceptional Entrepreneurship

2007-07-10T00:58:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Kevin Koym for his kind words on the Exceptional Entrepreneurship blog. In this post he touches on the role of psychology and philosophy in building entrepreneurial communities.

The Institute for Open Economic Networks

2007-07-09T05:53:00.000-07:00

"No small group of people, no matter how gifted, can hope to manage the complexity within our communities. Our prosperity will be built on new patterns of civic leadership. These patterns will be more open and networked than they have in the past. We will find collaborations stretching across both organizational and political boundaries.
The communities and regions that embrace this new approach to civic leadership will prosper. Those that do not will likely fall farther behind."

Institute for Open Economic Networks

Sounds a bit like Enterprise Facilitation?

Well at first glance perhaps. In fact the Institute for Open Networks is arguing for is a different approach to strategic planning - one that is more fluid, more inclusive and definitely more action orientated. They talk about 'strategic doing' rather than 'strategic thinking'. But the intention is the same - to develop and implement strategy.

We would argue that the strategy needs to be to learn to respond to and nurture the talent, passions and skills that are already in the community. Instead of thinking strategically we need to think and act responsively.

Local people, their passions, their skills and their connectivity in pursuit of making the community a better place are the ultimate cluster.

How Many New Starts is Enough?

2007-07-06T01:35:00.000-07:00

At the recent Rossendale Open Day one of the key topics for discussion was the number of new starts that the project had managed to facilitate in the first 30 months or so of operation – 100.

Is this sufficient evidence of success?
If this rate were replicated elsewhere would it help to achieve objectives for increased entrepreneurship?
Should we strive for a level of entrepreneurship in a community that planners believe to be sufficient to achieve their economic goals?
Should we respond effectively and sensitively to enterprising people as they come forward and then use their success to encourage their peers to follow in their footsteps - setting up a feedback loop that inspires local people to achieve more?
Should we have sufficient belief in local people and their own capacity to grow to set up programmes that respond?
Do we have the courage, patience and faith to let communities develop an enterprise culture at their own rate or do we believe that is something that has to(and can)be forced?
Can we identify rates of entrepreneurship that will represent 'success' and then manage a series of interventions to achieve them?

As Schumacher wrote in Small Is Beautiful over 30 years ago - 'If people do not want to better themselves they are best left alone. This should be the first principle of aid.' Schumacher went on to say that there are always people who do want to better themselves - but do not know how. By engaging with this group at their invitation and responding to their needs and aspirations you can change the economic future of a community one person at a time.

The alternative approach is to motivate and incentivise large numbers of people to do something that they would otherwise not be willing to do. And in our experience this is not a recipe for success.

In our experience this is not a difficult choice between two potentially viable approaches.

One of them works consistently to contribute to the re-birth of local economies in a sustainable and cost effective way.

The other does not.

Good Luck to Peer in the Enterprising Britain Awards

2007-07-06T00:53:00.000-07:00

The first Enterprise Facilitation in the UK, PEER, has been short-listed for a major national prize - Enterprising Britain for its success in helping with the re-birth of an enterprising culture in the Rossendale Valley.

People Encouraging Enterprise in Rossendale (PEER), the winner of the regional heat of Enterprising Britain 2007 in the Northwest, has been visited by judges from the Social Enterprise Coalition, the Department for Trade and Industry and Enterprise Insight to decide which business deserves the National Enterprising Britain 2007 title.

Enterprising Britain 2007 is the DTI’s search to find the most enterprising town, place, city or area in the UK, and was launched on 29 January 2007. The competition has been run in two phases - a regional stage and a national competition. During the regional stage which took place between 29 January and 31 May 2007 regional winners were selected from across the UK, to go forward to the national final along with twelve other finalists from around the UK.

You can read more here.

A Brief History of Global Development

2007-07-05T05:56:00.000-07:00

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/140

This is a great presentation by Hans Rosling on the state of Global Development. An amazing video for anyone interested in economic and social development.

In Praise of the 5 Day Training

2007-07-02T09:09:00.000-07:00

A core part of the way we teach communities Enterprise Facilitation is a 5 day training programme taken by the Facilitator and up to 12 of their panel members. The training provides a solid foundation for the practice of Enterprise Facilitation and really helps to build a strong local panel of management.

In the Sirolli folklore the 5 Day Training is sometimes referred to as Bootcamp - making it sound like some sort of militaristic passage of rites. This not the case at all - as I hope this feedback from a recent training makes clear.

"The course was quite simply a joy to participate in as a Panel member. I felt right from the start that Ned set the standards high in a gentle, yet authoritative style with good natured humour which immediately put all of us at ease. I was amazed at how quickly he got all participants to open up so quickly, which is not easy for Scottish people especially the men in the group who were really relaxed with him.

The materials were excellent, well chosen, intelligent and interesting and set the tone of the course with a refreshingly different start which had a remarkable effect on the group. (I watched people reading the materials and I could see their eyes light up as they absorbed the knowledge taking care to get the right meaning across as they prepared their mini lectures). I enjoyed hearing all of the inputs to the day and left day 1 with a new perspective on my own thoughts and although day 2 was a re-hash of all that I had read before – it was amazing how much I learned again by listening in a different way than I had done in the past.

Days 3 and 4 were a great insight into people struggling with their dreams and aspirations and I felt truly humbled by the trust that they gave us – which could not have been easy for them in our close-knit community.

Ned’s skills as a course facilitator were astounding and the back up of the differing styles of Nancy, Linda and Mike – all offering varied insights and their own experience of Enterprise Facilitation worked really well. I liked the team approach with different tasks assigned to each one of them.

I think we would all agree that the Friday was an amazing day – I think we experienced every positive human emotion that is possible to feel – we laughed, we cried and our hearts were deeply touched and what was left was a warm glow of human understanding and a feeling that now –anything is possible. So THANK-YOU all so very much for a wonderful life enhancing experience which I will never forget."

“The training was useful, interesting, and enjoyable. It was a great opportunity to get to know the panel members better and our Facilitator.

My learning style is about active engagement and reflection so I enjoyed the interactive nature of the course. I thought the reading activities were very useful and I’m looking forward to reading the ones I missed and revisiting others. The most memorable quote for me was: “Self interest rightfully understood”, so pertinent.

The practical workshops with clients were great. A truly insightful experience and good for developing understanding of the enterprise Facilitator’s role.

I thought the three trainers were excellent their skills as trainers and facilitation made the week enjoyable as well as valuable. They were effective, yet compassionate; Focused, yet positive; friendly yet still objective.”

“At the start of the week I said that I did not expect to be surprised by the week. That was not to say I would not learn anything, but I did not expect that I would meet anything surprising. Since I encountered Ernesto a couple years back the overriding philosophy of enterprise facilitation has seemed to me to fit perfectly with my belief system.

However, with no business experience myself, I had not expected the strength of feeling that the folks who want to start their own business have.

I have really enjoyed the mixture of activities that we’ve gone through- discussion, reading, practical; well mixed and balanced. I’ve really enjoyed meeting my fellow panel members and getting to know them and it has been a joy to have three such enthusiastic, skilled and relaxed facilitators for one week.”

“The first two days were quite heavy going though I cannot see anyway they could be anything but. The readings were very helpful and helped concentrate the mind on the task of the week. I particularly enjoyed the participative nature of the training. The analytical tools were for me what I had anticipated as being the central issue, But discovered that this is just one part albeit a most important one. I found Ned, Nancy and Linda’s enthusiasm and energy invigorating and they brought fun and joy to the course.

I was a little confused as to why there was so many of us carrying out the training but was sure it would become clear and it did very quickly.

In conclusion, the course has been superb, leading to my understanding of the essence of Sirolli.”

The (course) leaders quickly established a relaxed but controlled environment where participants felt confident to express themselves and unrushed, yet were guided to ensure schedules were adhered to and sessions did not over-run. A group rapport was formed, and the atmosphere was positive and encouraging throughout.
Feedback each morning reinforced the previous day’s learning, allowed participants to give others fresh viewpoints of the material, and to clarify anything they might have felt unsure about on reflection. Although some academic rigor was demanded most of the time, a lighthearted friendly atmosphere was maintained.

The basic concepts of the training were very simple, but were explored through various methods to re-present them from a variety of viewpoints, or in different contexts to draw out the subtleties of their meaning and application.

The choice of material (eg in the readings) and varied activities (reading/interviewing/discussion, etc.) was excellent and kept the participants’ attention level high.

There was a danger that participants would feel “I know it already” and that the ideas were too obvious, but the presentation ensured that the concepts were explored deeply enough to keep up interest either by making participants check the correctness of their prior knowledge, or realize that there were aspects they had not appreciated.

I valued the clear explanation of the objective of the course for panel members, making it clear that my presence was justified, and not just peripheral (to the main purpose of training the facilitator). Although I think I appreciate the main thrust of the various basic points about facilitation, the course gave me time and focused my attention on these so I can not feel more confident and I appreciate them and understand them correctly. On at least some points of course, I think I was guided to a better understanding or even corrected. (for example on the particular intentions of the “brainstorming”.)

My congratulations to the presenting team for their efforts.”

"I liked framing of each day.

Really appreciated the degree of practice and positive feedback.

Appreciated the panel being there.

I liked the pace overall.

I was simply surprised by the panel’s member’s understanding and greatly encouraged by the way everyone was brought along the path.

I started with no questions just an open mind. I feel that I have soaked up so much. I appreciated the “actual experience shared by Ned, Linda, and Nancy. I look forward to connecting with you again.”

"The five day course provided to be a thorough explanation of the background, theory and implementation of Sirolli’s original insights, the ‘Trinity of Management’, the ‘two legs of economic development’. The practical interviewing and reviewing of real potential clients was interesting, informative, and exhausting, and the efficiency of the rules and methods of brainstorming was a revelation. I was left realizing just hoe much time is wasted in other brainstorming techniques.

The network of resources and person centered approach to clients was amply expounded by the four-strong team of experts giving the course. The ratio of trainers to trainees was impressive in itself, with the tone of the course being light-hearted and keenly purposeful at the same time. The course was reinforcing for the panel where they had already had basic training and informing where they had not. For our newly-employed Enterprise Facilitator, the informing was augmented by the network and client “seeding” which occurred deliberately in the carefully casual atmosphere

The sessions came across as well planned, with quality reading material and videos. The trainers’ enthusiasm was undeniable, and all questions were answered well. The choice of Training rooms was admirable, as was the catering. I would definitely recommend this course to others, and exhort that it be made available to more panel members at a later date."

Unconsciously She Clips Their Little Wings

2007-06-13T03:40:00.000-07:00

I had just been doing some work with a City Council who were determined to help their poor (whether they wanted help or not). We had talked at some length about Schumacher's first principle of aid - 'If people do not wish to be helped - leave them alone' - but was not sure that they had really heard me. It was just such a long way from their world!

When I got home I picked up the Ipod and the dog and went walking. When I walk I often just select 'shuffle songs' and enjoy whatever pops up. The first song was 'Mother Glasgow' by Hue and Cry and it just resonated - even though I only understand parts of it. (Can anyone shed light on the second verse?)

Mother Glasgow

In the second city of the Empire
Mother Glasgow watches all her weans
Trying hard to feed her little starlings
Unconsciously she clips their little wings

Mother Glasgow's succour is perpetual
Nestling the Billy and the Tim
I dreamt I took a dander with St. Mungo
To try to catch a fish that could nay swim

Among the flightless birds and sightless starlings
Father Glasgow knows his starlings well
He won't make his own way up to heaven
By waltzing all his charges in to hell

And the tree
And the fish
And the bird
And the bell…

Let Glasgow Flourish!

What is the Sirolli Institute?

2007-06-12T00:35:00.000-07:00

“We are an advocate for a civic economy, a model of development that supports the creation of wealth from within your community by nurturing the intelligence and resourcefulness of your people. We champion the development of community pride through the passionate mentoring of local talent.

We promote quality local enterprises that

diversify the economic base,
create jobs,
respect the natural environment and
infuse the community with local vigour and content.

We support home businesses, mixed use areas, liveable cities and the emergence of a civic society.

The methodology we use in achieving indigenous growth is Enterprise Facilitation® a social technology that is recognised as a viable complement and, at times, an alternative to traditional top down economic development strategies.

Enterprise Facilitation is based on the passion, entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity and the fundamental needs for love, respect, quality and beauty found in every community. It maintains that every object we use, the clothes on our backs, our houses, our food, our music, our beliefs and our pathways in the forest are the result of passionate people transforming their talents and visions into good work.

The “economy”, to us at the Sirolli Institute, is nothing less than millions of people doing beautifully what they love doing. The better they are at it, the better the economy! The difference between poverty and riches is the presence, or not, of civic society, i.e. the combination of social conditions and reciprocity which allow creativity and intelligence to blossom or to wither and die.”

Dr. Ernesto Sirolli

Zen Entrepreneur: The Bootstrapper’s Dilemma

2007-06-11T06:28:00.000-07:00

Zen Entrepreneur: The Bootstrapper’s Dilemma

This is a great post that I think describes well a dilemma that is experienced by many new starts. For me the acid test is: Would this be work that I would love to do, and can I do it really well? If the answer to both of these questions is a genuine and resounding YES - then perhaps the marketplace is trying to tell you something?

The Growth Entrepreneur

2007-06-11T02:47:00.000-07:00

"The most valuable new firms tend to be those with high growth potential."
Kauffman Thoughtbook 2007 p 121

Most valuable to whom is the question.

Recently I have met three small business owners who are all resisting the pressure to grow. They have the potential - but not the aspiration. They are all small businesses employing people, paying mortgages and feeding families. And their owners are people doing beautifully what they love to do - and they want to keep it that way.

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2007-06-08T00:17:00.000-07:00

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Deficient or Sufficient?

2007-06-07T02:14:00.000-07:00

You may be interested in a new Brookings Institution report, "Restoring Prosperity", that makes the case for the state's role in the revitalization of older industrial cities -- indicating that parks were used in the past to shape cities, and can be used to help remake them today. Here's an excerpt:

"states need to recognize and leverage the physical assets of cities that are uniquely aligned with the preferences of the changing economy, and then target their investments and amend outmoded policies so as to help spur urban redevelopment. States should focus their resources on upgrading crumbling infrastructure in cities and older areas; provide support for major
projects—such as waterfront redevelopment or improving large public parks—that have the potential to catalyze reinvestment in the core; and implement laws and policies that encourage, rather than inhibit, the management and marketability of vacant and underutilized urban properties."

To read the entire report or an executive summary, see the link : http://www.brook.edu/metro/pubs/20070520_oic.htm

Now this is a great example of a 'deficiency led' approach to regeneration. The underlying belief is that

"our city is not doing as well as it could because it does not have enough of the 'right kind of people'. If we can attract more of the 'right kind of people' to make us economically prosperous then everything will be all right. So let's beautify the parks, build wonderful office spaces with subisdised rentals and then attract the 'right kind of people' into the city. Once we have done this they will create jobs and the wealth will trickle downwards and outwards to local people as they get jobs. As long as we can attract more of the 'right kind of people' than competing cities we will indeed 'move up a league'."

The logic is, on the surface at least, sound. This thinking results in large scale investment and visible improvements in the city (which developers and politicians like). Along with the great office space, modernised railway station, growing airport and the investment in parks may also come a half dozen or more lap-dancing clubs and a night club and bar scene that is at best a 'mixed blessing' but well that is the price of prosperity in a modern city.However the money does not trickle downwards and outwards. Local people on the whole do not benefit from the jobs created - certainly not the well paid ones - and the gap between the rich and the poor in the city continues to widen.

Now supposing that we had made some different assumptions? That local people have passion, skill and aspirations? That if we develop a process that enables local people to explore and develop their own skills and passions, and use them to make a living doing work that they love - then who knows what they might achieve? This model of development assumes that all of the resources that a community has for its own sustainable development are already there. They just need to be harnessed.

This is based on an assumption of sufficiency. And it can work.

Sirolli Institute Volunteer of the Year Award

2007-06-05T04:08:00.000-07:00

The Sirolli Institute - International Enterprise Facilitation® Inc. is proud to announce the Sirolli Institute Volunteer of the Year is:

Mr. Bret Mills of Anton, Texas.

Mr. Mills is the Chair of the WesTex Allied Communities Enterprise Facilitation project operating in Lamb County and Anton, Texas and he has been nominated by Mrs. Laura Harding, the Enterprise Facilitator servicing the project.

The nomination read as follows:

“With an absolute passion to improve the lives of those who live in his communities, and with a complete understanding of the Sirolli model, Bret has worked tirelessly to make WesTex Allied Communities an unrivaled success in Texas. Further, Bret’s belief in this project has prompted him to work with other communities to expand the Sirolli Enterprise Facilitation model throughout this great state, sacrificing personal time to do so, so that others can live the transforming experience and restoration of hope that Enterprise Facilitation can bring to them and their communities.
It is my honor to nominate Bret Mills for this prestigious award.”

Laura Hardin, Enterprise Facilitator.

The Volunteer of the Year Award has been created by the Sirolli Institute to allow Enterprise Facilitators to honor the individual who has helped them the most during the often challenging initial months of their new careers. Only Enterprise Facilitators undergoing training can nominate Chairs, Board Members or community mentors to be considered for the award. The Sirolli Institute, in making the final adjudication, considers not only the services in supporting the Enterprise Facilitator but also the volunteer “passion” for Enterprise Facilitation and their advocacy among the community at large.

Bret Mills has been an indefatigable champion for Enterprise Facilitation and we are proud to present the Inaugural Sirolli Volunteer of the Year Award to him.

As recipient of the award Mr. Bret Mills is the official Sirolli Ambassador for the year 2006/2007 and will be offered the opportunity to visit a community in training, either nationally or internationally, at his convenience and in consultation with the Institute, all expenses paid.

We sincerely hope that Bret will enjoy sharing his passion and considerable experience with communities that are celebrating their own Enterprise Facilitation projects and that he will take some of that special “can do”, Texan approach, with him!

Rise of the Creative Class

2007-06-05T00:03:00.000-07:00

Richard Florida's Rise of the Creative Class (2002) argues that regional/community development depends on: novel combinations of knowledge and ideas, that certain occupations specialise in this task and that people in these occupations are drawn to areas providing a high quality of life Therefore Florida argues that an essential development strategy is to create an environment that attracts and retains these 'Creative' workers. An analysis of recent development in rural US counties, which focuses on natural amenities as quality of life indicators, supports the creative class thesis.

Evidence from urban areas also shows a strong relationship between creative class presence and growth, although natural amenities play a smaller role.

It seems to me that the focus of Enterprise Facilitation is less on attracting the creative classes by providing great amenities. It is more about valuing and developing the creative and collaborative potential in local people.

Wasn't it Schumacher who said that all of the resources a community needs for its own development are always already present?

Enterprise Facilitation: Growing Entrepreneurs One Contact at a Time

2007-06-01T00:23:00.000-07:00

Article by Patty Clark
Director of Community Development
Kansas Department of Commerce

Owning your own business is the dream of many Americans, and more Americans than ever are taking advantage of opportunities to become entrepreneurs. This trend is especially promising for rural communities, where homegrown businesses are fuelling economic growth a handful of jobs at a time.

Like other rural places in the Great Plains, many small, agriculture- based Kansas communities have been losing population as the next generation chooses not to return to the farm. However, new and exciting efforts are under way to create economic opportunities in Kansas from the inside out. Many of these initiatives began at Prosperity Summits – interactive workshops held around the state about the future of economic development in Kansas – at which there was a resounding call to focus time, energy and resources on the rural communities that are the state’s backbone. One of these initiatives is “Enterprise Facilitation,” a concept the Kansas Department of Commerce implemented in 2001 to help rural entrepreneurs get started and keep their businesses thriving.

Few people had heard of Enterprise Facilitation at that time. The brainchild of Ernesto Sirolli, founder of the Sirolli Institute in Sacramento, California, Enterprise Facilitation is a model that cultivates a “barn-raising”mentality among citizens, which can then be applied to business development. Sirolli’s program is being used successfully in rural areas throughout the United States, Canada and Australia. The Kansas Department of Commerce contracted with the Sirolli Institute to use its regional approach to economic development in Kansas.

Enterprise Facilitation uses the best resource rural Kansas has – its own citizens – to jumpstart the process of increasing local capacity. Business owners are motivated by different needs, but those taking advantage of entrepreneurial networks such as Enterprise Facilitation generally fall into these categories:

Lifestyle entrepreneurs – individuals with a desire to live in or move to rural communities and would like to see their quality of life and communities prosper through more job creation.
Growth entrepreneurs – existing entrepreneurs who want to enhance their communities by expanding businesses to create more jobs and better resources.
Immigrant entrepreneurs – second and third generation immigrants who possess a desire to become successful business owners and operators.
Transitional entrepreneurs – agricultural producers who must transition to more value-added and direct marketing business creation, and former employees of manufacturing firms who have lost their jobs to out sourcing or downsizing.
Youth entrepreneurs – enthusiastic and less risk-averse youth who want to start their own businesses.

Through Enterprise Facilitation, communities take ownership of their future and create an entrepreneurial culture in a system-based, accountable approach to business and job creation.While still in their early stages, these projects are already showing promise not only as a way to create new jobs but also as a way to create a renewed sense of community.

There are now five separate Enterprise Facilitation projects throughout Kansas, organized in groups of five to six counties:Western Kansas (including Wichita); Prairie Enterprise Project, in central Kansas; Sunflower, in south central Kansas; QUAD, in the Southeast; and Northeast Kansas. Each region faces unique challenges and opportunities, but by drawing on local resources, they are finding success.

How Enterprise Facilitation works

Enterprise Facilitation operates under the premise that an individual possesses the skills and passion to perform one or possibly two functions of operating a business – marketing, production or financial management – but can’t operate a business effectively without assistance in those areas where talent or passion are lacking.

Communities start by forming an Enterprise Facilitation board that is a broad representation of the communities and various stakeholders within their region. Citizens are invited to serve on this board and are interviewed by consultants from the Sirolli Institute. Between 35 and 50 citizens are selected and each citizen must attend board training sessions, which are the first step in developing local capacity. The board is engaged, in a confidential way, to use local knowledge and resources to help entrepreneurs create a product or service, market it, or build financial management capacity.

The board receives training from the Sirolli Institute on developing policies and board member responsibilities and on recruiting an Enterprise Facilitator. A professional search is conducted to hire the Enterprise Facilitator, who along with the new board members, receives one-week, in-depth training to build local capacity. Key among the responsibilities of the board is the personal commitment board members make to introduce the Enterprise Facilitator to 10 people each. This creates a network through which potential entrepreneurs can learn that a free, confidential service is available, and the Enterprise Facilitator can learn of entrepreneurs who are looking for assistance. The goal is not only to make connections in the short-term but to create a sustainable, long-term network for entrepreneurship.

The Enterprise Facilitator makes connections between entrepreneurs and various people in the community who can assist with business development. Facilitators rely on the introductions of their board members to advertise their services and let the entrepreneur initiate the working relationship. The board training and salary of the Enterprise Facilitator are paid with funds raised locally from local public and private sources.

One example of Enterprise Facilitation at work is the experience of Diamond S Manufacturing in Eureka. Mark and Denise Stewart are not typical entrepreneurs. Mark owns a ranching operation and a manufacturing and welding business, while his wife Denise operates a family-owned retail store, a Laundromat and oversees several rental properties.

The Stewarts were familiar with the type of help available through Enterprise Facilitation. They saw the opportunity to combine what they were doing at Diamond S Manufacturing with the services provided by Denner Welding, a long-time Eureka business whose owners were ready to retire.Without a buyer for the business, the community would lose a shop for farm equipment repair and other services the Denners had provided.With the help of the QUAD Enterprise Facilitator, the Stewarts negotiated a deal to purchase all the assets of Denner Welding and expand their operation in Eureka. This helped retain jobs that otherwise would have been lost, and also maintained valuable services in the community.

The benefits for Kansas communities

Enterprise Facilitation creates jobs, draws together resources and helps companies prosper. Perhaps equally important, it also can provide a reality check for entrepreneurs who are looking to get started. They may realize after talking to the Enterprise Facilitator and putting a plan in writing that their business might not be profitable, an assessment that ultimately can save money and effort from being put into an enterprise that is unlikely to succeed. It isn’t the Enterprise Facilitator’s role to tell the entrepreneur if the idea will work or not, but the Facilitator can help the person to put the pieces of the business puzzle together to determine the chances of success for themselves.

To date, using $1.26 million in state investment and approximately $312,000 in local investment, Enterprise Facilitation projects have assisted 663 clients, created 64 businesses, retained 34 businesses, expanded 20 businesses, and created or retained 302 jobs. After initial setup of an Enterprise Facilitation project, the cost per job created averages less than $3,000. For rural Kansas, that’s money well spent.

See the original article online here

Hail, the returning economic-development hero! from the Albuquerque Tribune

2007-05-29T23:23:00.000-07:00

This is a great post by Albuquerque Tribune writer Gene Grant which shows the kind of impact that the Sirolli Institute, working in partnership with local communities and agencies can have - in this case on the City of Albuquerque and the wider State of New Mexico.

Of course since Ernesto did the key note at the conference a lot of other people have been involved - including the Sirolli Institute Implementation Team - and a whole bunch of quite remarkable local volunteers.

It just shows what can be done when people really embrace Enterprise Facilitation®.

From Agricultural Production to Entrepreneurial Farming

2007-05-29T06:44:00.000-07:00

Several years ago I travelled to Italy, my country of birth , to visit a region called Emilia-Romagna. I was there with a delegation of Canadian Government and Industry representatives wishing to take a look at a region which was attracting the attention of economists all over the World for its phenomenal economic growth.
In Emilia-Romagna, a region of 4 million people, there was one business for every 11 (eleven) people. On top of that, there were 7,900 cooperatives of which 2,400 operated in the rural sector.
Farmers market their produce together, process it in their own cooperative processing plants and finally own cooperative supermarket chains which operate both in Italy and throughout Europe. It seems that in Emilia- Romagna, farmers maintain control of their crops all the way from the fields to the market.
My visit there contrasted with what I experienced at a public meeting in a small country town in Western Australia. Prices had been depressed for years and the anger of farmers in that wheat-producing region had reached boiling point; guest speakers travelling there from the city were confronted by the sight of effigies of politicians being hung and burnt outside the Town Hall.
During the public meeting I made the remark that farmers should learn to add value to their products, but my comments were shouted down and I wasn’t able to explain what I meant. I remember one of the farmers becoming very agitated and saying: “The next bastard who comes from the city and tells me to add value to my crop I will shoot!”
I could not help but reflect on what makes the difference between farmers in Emilia-Romagna and farmers in Western Australia? Do they truly differ that much? Could it be that farmers in Emilia-Romagna started suffering earlier than those in Australia and have had the time to get over the anger to concentrate on survival?
History seems to confirm the latter hypothesis. Farming in Emilia-Romagna in the 1850s – 60s went through a catastrophic phase with so many rural people displaced that rural mutual aid societies were created at the grass roots to provide for widows and starving children. Out of that, and a century later, a rural sector has emerged which has put leadership and management talent at the service of both farmers and commerce. It has created a rural economy which is not only wealthy, it promotes, protects and represents the interests of those who work the land and produce the crops.
On the other hand, the farmers in Australia had it so good that they started to be concerned about prices only in the 1970’s and 80’s. Government-run Marketing Boards had lulled them into believing that the world would forever need their bulk wheat and greasy wool. Farmers became price takers...until price no longer covered costs!
The anger, the soul searching, is therefore recent and the solutions seem too hard and unpalatable. It took me some time. But I finally understood why that Western Australian farmer was so angry at my suggestion to learn to add value to his crop; in his eyes I was both arrogant and insensitive to rural needs and aspirations.
What he implied is that farmers have a dignity, a culture that we have to understand and respect. Many of them have deliberately chosen farming precisely because they don’t want to get mixed up in commerce, in marketing, in dealing with merchants and brokers. They simply want to farm beautifully and to provide an abundant harvest for their family, their country and the World.
They have earned respect for that, and should not be dismissed as non-value adders!
Yet prices are low, costs are high and farmers go to the wall every day while food corporations prosper and consumers scream for better and healthier food.
What can we do to help farmers?
Is there a way to transform production farming into entrepreneurial farming without offending and alienating the very farmers who need business advice so badly?
The solution, I believe, lies in only working with the farmers who ask for help and stop preaching to them.
And when they ask for help let them do what they love to do - but make sure that they find someone to work with in their business who loves to do the things that they hate.

Community or Enterprise?

2007-05-28T04:04:00.000-07:00

Over the last few months a number of people have said to me,
‘the trouble with Sirolli and Enterprise Facilitation® is that people have you in the wrong box’.
Half of the people go on to say,
‘They have you in the ‘Enterprise box’ and you are all about community development – you should be working with the community people.’
The other half say,
‘They have you in the ‘Community box’ and you are all about enterprise and entrepreneurship – you should be working with the enterprise people'.
We only go ‘where we are invited’ and sometimes we are invited by people interested in community development and sometimes we are invited by people interested in promoting enterprise and entrepreneurship.
It is worrying how difficult it can be to break down the barriers between these silos with public sector funders and planners.
It is encouraging that once working ‘on the ground’ with local people they soon recognise that these are two sides of the same coin – enterprise is a social phenomena and it thrives in effective communities.

Beautiful Night in Bradford!

2007-05-17T14:25:00.000-07:00

I have just got in from a magical night in Bradford. Over 40 members of the local community came together to elect the executive group that will see the Enterprise Facilitation project in Bradford move to its next phase.
Nancy and I were overwhelmed at the number of nominations that were put forward for election - and the number of people that were happy to offer their services.
They really have a great community led panel and should help the City enormously in the years to come.
It is great to have a new UK project out of the starting blocks! Congratulations to the new executive team and whole panel. And so many thanks to the steering group who have nurtured the project to this stage.

Congratulations to Prizewinning PEER - The First Enterprise Facilitation Project in the UK

2007-05-15T23:24:00.000-07:00

As part of the nationwide competition the NWDA, the Institute of Directors (IoD), Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and Ethnic Minority Business Forum North West have searched the Northwest seeking the area that best demonstrates the entrepreneurial spirit of the region.

Enterprise Facilitation in Rossendale has been managed for around 5 years now by a social enterprise called PEER - People Encouraging Enterprise in Rossendale. Working with the Sirolli Institute they have pioneered the practice of Enterprise Facilitation in the UK.

People Encouraging Enterprise in Rossendale (PEER) has won the regional heat of Enterprising Britain 2007. This year PEER has been awarded the Northwest honours for inspiring and empowering the local community to support local businesses and social enterprises set up and develop.

Winning the regional heat means that PEER is now eligible for a grant of up to £75,000 from the NWDA to further develop its enterprise activity. The organisation will now go forward to represent the Northwest in the national final of Enterprising Britain 2007, where the overall UK winner will be selected.

PEER and the 11 other regional winners will be visited by members of the judging panel over the summer, with the national winner being announced at an Awards event later in the year.

If you would like to find out more about the work of PEER and about the reality of making Enterprise Facilitation work in the UK we are holding an Open Day on July 3rd 2007.

In the mean time please join with us in congratulating Ronnie, Rob, David, Andy and the wonderful volunteers and entrepreneurs in Rossendale who have worked so hard to make Rossendale one of the most Enterprising communities in the UK.

Jigsaw Cities

2007-05-15T02:55:00.000-07:00

At the book launch for Jigsaw Cities its author, Professor Anne Power and John Houghton, emphasised the importance of understanding cities as made up of a number of different jigsaw puzzle pieces with no picture on the cover to help put it all together. For physical regeneration there was discussion about renovating existing stock, using micro-spaces, and developing mixed use communities.

Why is it that the presumed starting point for regeneration is still physical - rather than psychological? In my experience it is when individuals find confidence and hope that a community can start to regenerate. It takes more than uPVC windows and doors to bring a community hope as this article by Sue Townsend so brilliantly illustrates.

Sirolli Institute Masterclass

2007-05-07T15:14:00.000-07:00

The Spring 2007 Masterclass is well underway in San Francisco, with Facilitators being introduced to some new online tools.
These include the Online Forums and this Blog.

Good News from the State of Kansas!

2007-05-01T11:14:00.000-07:00

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 27, 2007

FOR MORE INFORMATION
Contact: Senator Derek Schmidt
(785) 296-2497

LEGISLATURE OKs ENTERPRISE FACILITATION FUNDING

TOPEKA -- (April 27, 2007) -- The legislature today gave final approval to legislation that will provide a reliable source of funding for a successful rural development program, sending the measure to the governor. She is expected to sign it into law.

“For our state’s least-developed counties, enterprise facilitation has proven to be a successful program in starting and nurturing new businesses,” said Senator Derek Schmidt, R-Independence, who sponsored the measure. “This will give some certainty to the enterprise facilitation projects so they can focus on doing their work instead of worrying whether they will be funded year-to-year.”

The new provision of law is included in legislation that extends the rural development tax credit program. The provision requires that 5 percent of the funds raised by sale of rural development tax credits statewide be distributed among the enterprise facilitation projects. If all tax credits are sold, that would generate $30,000 per year to help sustain each project, which is about half the total annual cost of running an enterprise facilitation program.

In Southeast Kansas, the Quad County Enterprise Facilitation project has helped nurture business start-ups and economic development in Chautauqua, Elk, Greenwood and Woodson counties. Wilson and eastern Cowley counties also have participated in the project. The Quad County project has nurtured about 100 business startups since its inception.

Enterprise Facilitation® UK Open Day

2007-04-19T07:55:00.000-07:00

We are pleased to announce our first ever Enterprise Facilitation® UK Open Day. This will provide a chance to visit the community of Rossendale in Lancashire, where the Sirolli Institute have worked with a social enterprise called PEER (People Encouraging Enterprise in Rossendale) to develop an Enterprise Facilitation® project - the first in Europe.
The project has been running for 5 years now and has achieved some remarkable results, both in terms of supporting individual entrepreneurs, but also in helping to transform the enterprise culture of the community.
The open day will provide the chance to meet with and learn from the people in the community who have helped to make this project a success. You can find out more at UK Open Day
There will be a charge to attend the open day with surpluses being used to help support the work of PEER.

No it wasn’t the set of a Disney movie...the indians were real!

2007-04-17T06:17:00.000-07:00

You may recall the postings about the visit to the Sitting Bull College and to the Standing Rock Indian reservation few months ago. In North Dakota we met an outstanding leader and educator named (Big) Dave Archambould. Dave is also the Chairman of the American Indian Business Leaders association, a non per profit organization that aim to prepare American Indian students for leadership positions in business and in life.

The association encourages college and high school students to gather once a year to listen, learn and exchange ideas. The trick is that it is the students who pick the venue for their meetings and who have to raise the funds to attend the gatherings. You can imagine then why we met across the street from Disneyworld in California!

Fun aside, we did some work, and in particular we explored the Trinity of Management® as it applies to start up businesses. Many Indian Colleges have both entrepreneurial classes and micro lending for future entrepreneurs. As you can imagine to accesss the funding prospective entrepreneurs have to enrol in business classes that focus on business plan preparation with an emphasis on literacy and numeracy skills. The results are not good and few entrepreneurs finish the courses and avail themselves of available finances. Those who do often struggle in the business once removed from the comfort of the classroom environment. A better way needs to be found and the Trinity of Management® could offer a more natural way for American Indians to go into business. After all they understand very well that in a harsh environment you don’t survive alone. I told them that in business the problems can come at you from every direction and that it is therefore important to keep an eye on the entire horizon. It takes three people to keep a clear focus on 360% of horizon…one person will never be able to do it alone!

Will they remember when they will start their businesses? Who knows, but I am pretty sure that they will link my face to a very happy time in their lives, with all thos

Spring in Napa Valley, California. Green everywhere, including the MBA class!

2007-04-17T06:10:00.000-07:00

The New College of California has recently launched a “socially responsible and ecologically sustainable MBA program” that aims to fuse “social justice, ecological considerations, and community involvement and alternative forms of management ownership”. John Stanton, the director of the Green MBA program, and Jane Lorand who is faculty at the School, extended an invitation to meet both students and alumni in Santa Rosa. Martha and I made the drive from Sacramento on a spectacular spring day last week.

We decided to go there the “wrong” way and we braved the Silverado Trail, a narrow, ancient, winding road thru the hills that gave us the opportunity of take in the California spring.

John and the students met us initially in town. The first lecture I gave in their classroom, an old railway yard! The evening meeting was in a beautiful student house, in open country, surrounded by fields and trees.

Students and alumni, some 50 of them, had “Ripples” on their study course and the day was therefore more of a “getting to know each other” than a one way lecture. They knew what we were all about and that gave me the possibility of listening to their hopes and to answer their questions. It seemed to me that what is pioneered at the NCC will become the norm throughout the academic world. It is not possible nowadays to do an MBA without understanding the social and environmental implications of commercial decisions. It is equally impossible to conceive of environmental decisions that cannot be financed or even of a personal lifestyle that cannot be sustained for economic reasons.

The Green MBA students are neither hippies nor “wall street” types; they are a new brand of individual for which there is neither name nor stereotype. May they prosper and multiply!

Dr. Ernesto Sirolli

Sirolli in the Press!

2007-04-04T08:37:00.000-07:00

Enchanted Circle Project Graduates, Taos, New Mexico

2007-03-27T01:19:00.000-07:00

A 10 minute video clip of Ernesto Sirolli speaking on the occassion of the graduation of the Sirolli Enchanted Circle Project in Taos. Just click on the image to watch the speech.

WHAT’S N.I.S.E.R. THAN NOOSA?

2007-03-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

Noosa, the Queensland holiday resort, is hard to improve upon. Its natural beauty is legendary and its people are among the most environmentally aware anywhere in the world.
Yet a number of locals led by Lew Brennan and Charles Shewring believe that they can improve on the long term sustainability of the town by creating the Noosa Institute for Socio Economic Research. It was Lew, a Noosa City Councillor, who invited us last year and again ten days ago to address a gathering of local decision makers.
Council, University, environmental and business groups spent a day with us at the Noosa Blue Resort to discuss Enterprise Facilitation® and its implication for the community and the city. NISER also organized a meeting in Crows Nest in the highlands, one hour drive from Brisbane, Queensland’ capital city.
The day saw many representatives from a number of rural country towns attending our seminar. In particular the Crows Nest and Rosalie Shires attended and committed themselves to follow up soon with an organizational meeting to discuss our method for community capacity building and local economic development.
Dr. Ernesto Sirolli
CEO
Sirolli Institute
1 877 SIROLLI
(916) 446-9264
www.sirolli.com
http://sirolli.blogspot.com/
"The future of every community lies in capturing the passion, imagination, and resources of its people."

Bendigo Bank, a lesson in community organizing from Down Under!

2007-03-20T14:06:00.000-07:00

Second stop on a three weeks conference tour of Hawaii and Australia was a visit to the City of Greater Bendigo in Victoria. The invitation to address the community came via the Bendigo Bank one of the most remarkable examples of community banking we have ever seen.
Bendigo Bank pioneered, nearly ten years ago, a model of community banking that has been adopted by nearly two hundred communities Australia wide. At a time when major banks abandon small and rural communities Bendigo’s Community Banks are growing like mushrooms providing not only a needed service but a financial return as well. Every year hundreds of thousands of dollars are returned to the communities that establish the local franchises of the Bendigo Bank, funds that can be invested in community activities to spur new growth.
Our visit to Bendigo allowed us to meet with Bendigo Banks officials, including John Sirolli (maybe a long lost cousin from my region of Italy?) and to observe two more projects started by the Bank: Lead On, an exciting youth initiative, and TELCO, a community owned and operated telecommunication company. Yvonne Fizer and I addressed a meeting sponsored by the Central Victoria Business Network (yet another spin off from the Bendigo Bank) and discussed the possibilities of future work in Bendigo with both the Bendigo Bank and the community.

Dr. Ernesto Sirolli
CEO
Sirolli Institute
1 877 SIROLLI
(916) 446-9264
www.sirolli.com

http://sirolli.blogspot.com/

"The future of every community lies in capturing the passion, imagination, and resources of its people."

Moving ceremony in Honolulu

2007-03-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

The first stop on a three weeks trip to Hawaii and Australia was Honolulu where I spoke at a conference organized by the University of Hawaii Business Center Program. One evening at a reception at the Art Exchange in China Town I was surprised by being the guest of honor at a beautiful Samoan ceremony that culminated in me receiving an "Ie Toga".
An "Ie Toga", or ceremonial fine mat used in Samoa, Tonga and Fiji, is the most sacred of Polynesian possessions. It was presented to me by Papalii Dr. Failautusi Avegalio, Director of the University of Hawaii Pacific Business Program on behalf of Honolulu' Mayor Muliufi Hanneman. Present at the ceremony where ranking chiefs of American Samoa, High Chief Liufau and High Chief Alo. Representing Mayor Muliufi Hanneman was his wife Gail Hanneman.
Dr. Ernesto Sirolli
CEO
Sirolli Institute
1 877 SIROLLI
(916) 446-9264
www.sirolli.com
http://sirolli.blogspot.com/
"The future of every community lies in capturing the passion, imagination, and resources of its people."

Opportunity Kintyre Completes 5 Day Training

2007-03-13T01:42:00.000-07:00

We had the great joy last week of spending 5 days on the Kintyre Peninsula training new facilitator Lynn Hammal and members of her Panel in Enterprise Facilitation®. We were made to feel tremendously welcome - and on the last day of our visit were surprised when a piper in full regalia burst into the training room playing Mull of Kintyre. He was one of the original pipers from the Paul McCartney video.
So big thanks go out to Mary, Lynn, Shelagh, Morag, Mary,Rob, Isobel, John, Trevor, Pamela, Archie and Les for a memorable week.

Sirolli Project In Taos Graduates

2007-03-10T03:41:00.000-08:00

Here is an online video where Christopher Madrid, Enterprise Facilitator in Taos, talks about the achievements of the Enterprise Facilitation project in Taos New Mexico.

Watch the video here

Problem with Entrepreneurship Education - One-Off - or Widespread Malaise?

2007-03-01T23:59:00.000-08:00

We recently received the following e-mail from a student of entrepreneurship:

The course I am currently studying (Entrepreneurship) is under new management. Until last year it was a course that encouraged individuality and basically everything that Ernesto talks about in the third section of his book. Students were encouraged to take hold of their own learning, they were not babied, they were not inundated with theories and concepts of business but rather encouraged to learn them and more often encouraged to get out in the real world and learn real lessons. The course was passively mentored and whilst help was there it had to be sourced more personally to really take advantage of what was there to learn.

My dilemma is that under this new management has come a total death to these philosophies. Students are being babied, forced to learn theories and concepts rather than get hands on experience in the world of entrepreneurship. They are being monitored closely to ensure they are learning all the lessons that the organisation deems important rather than using their own initiative and motivation to learn what they need to know.

I really feel that the entrepreneurial thinking that was facilitated through this course is becoming extinct and rather the institution is setting students up with skills to fit well into an organisation.

I know this is probably quite off the topic of what your people are use to dealing with but I thought if you could help us it might pose more credit than coming from us the students.

So is this a sign of a widespread problem in enterprise education? Is it a problem in education more generally? Or is it just a 'one-off' that we should not worry too much about.

Let us know what you think by leaving a comment or entering the debate on our public forum at http://sirolli.informe.com

Taos – the enchanted project- completes two years of Enterprise Facilitation® training

2007-02-20T00:10:00.000-08:00

They call it the “Enchanted Circle Sirolli Project” and they refer, of course, to the Land of Enchantment i.e. the awe inspiring mountains of Northern New Mexico. If you have never been there…go, and you will understand the “enchanted” bit!

Martha and I arrived immediately after a snow storm that had managed to transform the high desert into a landscape of sparkling whites and blues all set against a background of rocks that had been washed clean of dust and that seemed painted in ochre. The Two Year celebration was beautifully organized and Board Members , clients, Christopher Madrid, the Enterprise Facilitator, and Jean Kenin, the Board’ chair, were at hand to share stories, celebrate their successes and partake some excellent food offered, for the occasion, by the Don Fernando Inn of Taos.

State, regional and local government representatives shared congratulation and so did the McCune Foundation and the Los Alamos National Laboratories two of the non government founders of the project.

The highlights of these events, however, are always the clients. It is their stories and their emotions that remind us why we are doing what we do, why it is so important to care for the dreams and aspirations of people. One of the clients of Christopher was a young doctor, he had been left with the seemingly impossible task of trying to keep the doors open at the local children’ clinic. The private clinic, dealing with the poorer and uninsured children in the community, had lost one of the founding partners and was just about to be closed when it sought the help of Christopher and the Board. Not only the clinic was saved, but state legislation was enacted to change the legal status of such entities and now the clinic has become an example of what can be done in the field.

So many clients and so many stories!

During my address I told the gathering that it did not surprise me that the magic of Enterprise Facilitation happened, again, in the Land of Enchantment. It was the people that I met on my very first visit there that did it for me. John Otis, Don Francisco Trujillo, the Mayor Bobby Duran and all those who came to listen to our presentation with open hearts and mind. You could see it in their faces, the love they had for their ancient land and for the people who have made the Land of Enchantment their home.

Dr. Ernesto Sirolli
CEO
Sirolli Institute
1 877 SIROLLI
(916) 446-9264
www.sirolli.com

As a child in Italy I always wanted to be an Indian not a Cow Boy, finally…!

2007-02-13T00:45:00.000-08:00

It was with a sense of trepidation that we accepted an invitation to address the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council in North Dakota. We had been there before, at the invitation of the Sitting Bull College, and had been impressed by the talent, determination and skills of the tribal people that we had met. But to be invited to address the Tribal Council was a totally different experience! First of all I felt honored. These are the descendants of the ancient inhabitants of the Americas with ancestry spreading all the way from the Artic Circle to the Yucatan Peninsula. Secondly these are the beloved Sioux of my childhood games (pronounced SEE-U-K-S in Italy!). Who would ever have imagined that one day I would have been invited to address their Tribal Council!? Yet Yvonne Fizer and I had a tremendous reception that started at the airport in Bismarck and continued for an entire day. The invitation was extended to us by the Tribal Chairman, Ron His-Horse-Is-Thunder, who had attended our presentation at the College last year and who has become a champion for our methodology. This time however we met many other tribal leaders including the formidable (Big) Dave Archambault, his wife Betty and a number of members of their family including his son Dave Jr. and daughter in law Nicole who are very successful entrepreneurs.

Big Dave, among many other duties, runs the local tribal radio station and we were interviewed after addressing the Tribal Council. We left the community with the hope of being invited back, this time to establish an Enterprise Facilitation® project. It would be the first such project established by an Indian Tribal Council in America and the idea sends shivers down my spine! We repeat time and time again that THERE IS NO GEOGRAPHY TO PASSION. We also know that race and culture have nothing to do with it either and we look forward to demonstrate what we teach right here, in the majestic planes of North Dakota, under the watchful eye of Sitting Bull!

Ruth's Letter to the Institute

2007-02-08T15:06:00.000-08:00

“The past seven years have been a grand and glorious journey. The local board and I have always enjoyed a special relationship and we have moved Baker County forward together! However, we couldn't have done that without the advice and support of folks at the Sirolli Institute. Thank you for everything you have done to help us be a success. A dedicated, passionate, and creative board chair is an important of any project's success. The best board chair we have ever had was Nancy Peyron, and you were farsighted enough to hire her as part of the Institute Team. Lucky you!

At the end of February, I will begin a new chapter in my life, and am looking forward to whatever the future brings. Perhaps our paths will cross again. Thanks again for the wonderful birdbath. I will fondly remember my Enterprise Facilitator days whenever I watch the birds splashing around and enjoying their lovely bath.

I wish special blessings on all of you!

Ruth

Ruth Townsend, Enterprise Facilitator

Baker Enterprise Growth Initiative (BEGIN)”

Ruth Townsend, Enterprise Facilitator, Retires

2007-02-08T00:42:00.000-08:00

Ruth Townsend has decided to retire on March 1st after almost seven years serving the Baker Enterprise Growth Initiative as an Enterprise Facilitator. In that time she has helped launch 74 new businesses and added 124 full-time jobs to the local economy.
Well-wishers, including BEGIN board members and many of the clients Townsend has helped to begin their business, praised Townsend's dedication toward business development and the trust and admiration she has earned from her clients.
Enterprise Facilitation®, a business development technique developed by the Sirolli Institute, teaches prospective business owners they must do — or hire or barter with someone else to do — three things to be successful: develop a product, market the product and keep accurate and detailed financial records and projections.
Ernesto Sirolli, who founded the system that trains enterprise facilitators and board members, stresses that entrepreneurs should follow their passion.
Sirolli couldn't attend Townsend's retirement party, so Yvonne Fizer, the Sirolli Institute's business development manager attended in his place.
BEGIN was one of Sirolli's early projects in the USA, and it's one he often holds up as an example, Fizer said.
"We look for certain qualities (among enterprise facilitators) because they've got an exceptional job to do," Fizer said. "What you have here is known around the world — in Canada, the UK, New Zealand — because of the work Ruth has done. There are countless people I have directed to Ruth."
In fact, Townsend and the BEGIN board are personally responsible for five Enterprise Facilitation® projects being developed in Kansas, Fizer said.
Sirolli sent Townsend a letter which praised her for transforming people's passions into lifelong careers.
Townsend wasn't the first choice for the job as enterprise facilitator, and Baker City wasn't Townsend's first choice, Zimmerman said. The committee selected an economic developer whose wife decided she couldn't live in Baker City, and Townsend opted for a job as chamber executive in a town in Washington. She soon discovered that job was not as advertised, so she agreed to come to Baker City for an in-person interview.
Fortunately for the fledgling program, Townsend and her husband, Malcolm, stopped at Geiser Pollman Park just before the job interview to walk their dogs (which was lawful at the time).
At the park they met Kathleen Chaves, who talked to the Townsends for an hour about her high hopes for the new program.
Board members share memories:
Peggi Timm said she enjoyed her time on the BEGIN board "because I got to serve side by side with people with whom I haven't agreed on anything for 25 years."
The secret to Townsend's success? Timm said it's her appearance.
"She doesn't look like a business lady," Timm said. "She looks like a friend."
Glynn Murphy of Unity dropped the moniker "Dr. Ruth" on Townsend, a name that Townsend said she is finally getting used to.
"Dr. Ruth has nursed a lot of businesses around here," said Murphy, a BEGIN board member. "Not only has she nursed businesses, she's nursed our board through a lot of trials and tribulations. She's given of herself, she's taken pay cuts, and she's gone way beyond what anybody could have asked."
City councilors Dennis Dorrah and Terry Schumacher, both members of the BEGIN board, were also on hand.
Dorrah said he's seen Townsend in action from at least three perspectives: as a city councilor, he's watched her "come to the city asking for money." As a client, he's been grateful for her help launching an Internet presence for his business. "We started selling on the Internet two weeks after meeting with Ruth," he said.
The last vantage point has been as a board member. "Ruth spends a lot of time obtaining funding," he said, "and I think that's paid off."
Added Schumacher: "Ruth and I may be at the opposite ends of the political pole, but we both get fulfillment out of seeing someone being successful and excited about what they're doing."
Schumacher said he had the privilege of offering the job to Townsend in 2000, because Zimmerman was out of town.
"You should have heard her. She was whooping and hollering at the other end of the phone, she was so happy," he said. "Now we're glad to call you Dr. Ruth, because you love to help people."
"It's been a grand and glorious journey," Townsend said at the event's conclusion. "It's been so satisfying to know that you've made this much of a difference in Baker County.
"Will some of these new businesses grow to become big businesses? Who knows? A lot of them just want to support their families.
"We do a lot of our work below the surface. We work on self-esteem and developing passion, and that's not something that's seen by people.
"But you don't bring money into the county without building the person up first."

2007-02-01T14:08:00.000-08:00

I spent a day in the village of Pari, in Tuscany, with Dr. David Peat, his wife Maureen, his daughter Eleanor and various artists and writers who were staying in the village at the time. The village is a pristine, medieval, Tuscan hilltop of great beauty that has been David Peat’s refuge and inspiration since 1996. I went to see Pari in the hope that it could host our European Master Classes since we will soon have ten or more Enterprise Facilitators in training in the UK. The village came to my attention after receiving an email by David Peat who is writing a book on “Gentle Action”. Maggie Calloway, author of “the Energetics of Business” had spent some time in Pari while writing her book and had given David a copy of my book “Ripples”. David tracked me down and very soon we were making plans to meet. Doctor Peat has a PH.D. in physics and has been described as “one of the most interesting and innovative thinkers today”. He is an eclectic writer who has authored twenty books, but what fascinated me was his interest in people, especially in thinkers who are stretching the boundary of our understanding: from quantum physics to art, from music to consciousness.

And yes, the village could host our Master Classes. I can already see our trainees sitting in the garden behind the “palazzo” at the top of Pari, among the trees, and looking down at the valley below. While in Pari I sampled the food and the local wine and I can report that they may be a problem…some Enterprise Facilitators may decide to stay in Pari never to go back to the UK. After all thats what happened to our Liverpudlian David Peat!

Dr. Ernesto Sirolli

Visit the Pari Centre on the Web

Sirolli in Dundee

2007-01-29T09:59:00.000-08:00

We had a great few days with communities and agencies working in Dundee, Scotland last week. At the invitation of the Scottish Executive, Scottish Enterprise and Communities Scotland we got to meet with a wide range of people including Dundee Council, business leaders (good luck to those of you who are starting the new Dundee Chamber of Commerce)and local community groups including the Stobswell Forum amongst others.

Communities in Dundee have the opportunity to bid for funding to bring an Enterprise Facilitation® project to their neighbourhood. More information can be found at:
Scottish Centre for Regeneration
and
Sirolli UK Site

It was great also to see friends from Enterprising East Perthshire who continue to make steady progress on their aprenticeship with the Sirolli Institute.

Blogging from the Lone Star State

2007-01-11T23:02:00.000-08:00

North Texas Enterprise Project: Our (small) Steps

Great to see a Sirolli Apprentice Community using a BLOG to increase visibility and accessibility of the project. Visit the North Texas BLOG to meet Melvin Hall, the Enterprise Facilitator, and get a sense of the progress that they have been making.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T from Isla Mujeres

2007-01-05T15:05:00.000-08:00

Just returned from the usual 10 day break in Mexico and Isla Mujeres, the Island of the Women, exerted the usual healing and regenerative powers leaving me to readjust, nearly painfully, to “normal” life here at home in Sacramento. What’s wrong with me? Why can I do on a beach in Mexico what I can never do here at home? Maybe it is because what I do on a beach in Mexico is NOTHING and here at home I had 482 emails waiting for me!

The regenerative powers of doing nothing have to do, possibly, with the way our brain works and the fact that, when we are silent, we allow thoughts to bubble up from a different place. Once I heard somebody describe meditation as shutting down the computer’ terminal as to be able to communicate directly with the mainframe!

And one thought did bubble up from the mainframe! It came to me that the fundamental, distinguishing feature of our work is that we respond to people and to communities. By responding I mean truly respond not like responding to famine or to poverty, in the abstract, like an NGO in Africa for instance. Everywhere you look these days you see people doing good work. Social enterprises, philanthropic organizations, Bono at the White House, even famous actresses adopt African orphans. The difference with us is that we only go where invited! What’s the big deal about it? Well actually it is a very big deal.

To be invited by the local people you have to deserve it, you have to have done something that makes people wanting you to be there. To show up uninvited is easy; it only requires the belief that you are better than the local people and that you have something to offer them. And don’t we western people, by definition, are better than anybody else’ in the world?

There is uneasiness with unrequited charitable work. People question the wisdom of past and modern “missionary” work. And I am not talking about the “Poisonwood Bible” here. I am talking about the criticism by many people, including African people, of aid that pours into their countries creating more problems than it solves. Andrew M. Mwenda’ article “Foreign Aid Sabotages Reform” in the International Herald Tribune is just one of the examples of what I am describing here.

The fundamental principle of aid is respect. If you don’t respect people how can you help them? And to show up uninvited, no matter how well intentioned, in somebody else’ home is not respectful. To conceive what to do in a village without being invited there is not respectful. To conceive what to do in a community without being invited there is not respectful, and to conceive what to do to a country or to an entire continent without consulting the local people and being invited there is still not respectful no matter how well intentioned you may be and how much money you are bringing.

Much more bubbled up on that beautiful beach on the Island of the Women, but I don’t want to bore you…after all you haven’t asked me to talk to you!

Ernesto Sirolli
5 January 2007

Reframing the Future 2006: Dr Ernesto Sirolli

2007-01-02T01:10:00.000-08:00

In November 2006 Ernesto was invited back to Australia to provide a key note at a conference in Sydney for vocational education and training (VET) professionals.
The 45 minute speech is now available on the internet and as a podcast on i-tunes.

We would love to hear your comments on this wonderfully recorded presentation.

http://talkingvte.blogspot.com/2006/12/reframing-future-2006-dr-ernesto.html

If people are paid to do nothing, that's exactly what they'll do

2006-12-27T04:00:00.000-08:00

Just before Christmas, Jeff Randall, a leading Industrial Correspondent in the UK, wrote an article outlining the need for fresh policies to reduce the number of people in the UK who are fit to work - but instead 'choose' to live on state welfare. The language that Randall uses to describe the problem is powerful.

'at least 100 000 scroungers...locked into a culture of can work, won't work...gimme-gimme-gimme attitude of some welfare claimants...reform the eternal layabout...loafers...require rockets up their backsides as well as alarm clocks in their bedrooms...an embarrassing surfeit of work-shy locals...welfare junkies...2.7 million recipients of incapacity benefits, about one million of whom the government believes are fit to work...those whose indolence makes a mockery of his work ethic...'

The language promotes a lack of connection, a separateness between us and the million or so who choose not to work. We are good people, they are bad. We pay our taxes and they devour them.

But how can this separation, this disconnectedness between them and the working population help? What purpose does it serve?

If they really are eternal layabouts and loafers then it absolves us of any responsibility to engage with the problem and offer them help. Why would we waste our time helping bad people?

One of the central beliefs underpinning our work is that all people, at their core, are essentially good. And, unless we hold them in 'unconditional positive regard' we will be powerless to really help them to help themselves. We may be able to force them to find different ways of funding their lifestyles by closing down benefits - but we will not be able to help them with the real challenges of personal and economic development.

The language of separation and blame is commonplace. The language of understanding and compassion much less so. However without understanding and compassion we are reduced to policing the problem, Jackass management by 'stick and carrot' rather than any possibility of meaningful development.

You can read the original Jeff Randall article here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/12/22/do2201.xml

Economic Gardening

2006-12-13T08:32:00.000-08:00

Economic Gardening is a process of economic and community development that works on the premise that sustainable development starts from where a community is at. Everything that the community requires for its own development is already present in the community - intelligence, passion, commitment and motivation. Development happens by nurturing these resources and helping them to flourish. Economic gardening is about looking for, and building on, the assets that the community already has. It is an asset based approach that seeks to create jobs and opportunities by supporting companies, actual and latent entrepreneurs that are already in the community.

Economic Gardening contrasts with 'Economic Hunting' - trying to attract companies from other communities. This is a 'deficit based' approach to development. It assumes that development depends on attracting something that is missing (an employer) into the community. Such 'Inward Investment' strategies are usually both expensive and risky. We have seen inward investors negotiate tremendous deals from local governments and then continue to request support to keep their business in the community. They usually have no real loyalty to the community - they are simply there because of an inward investment offer that was put on the table. Even when the inward investor is successful and is retained in the community - usually the profits generated are not retained locally but go back to shareholders elsewhere.

In our experience the gardening approach to community and economic development is lower risk, lower cost and leads to more sustainable long term economic development than inward investment and economic hunting strategies. It also promotes the development of local people in pursuit of their own passions, dreams and interests, rather than as the labour market 'cannon fodder' of the new employer. It also fits with our own values and beliefs. First you grow people. Then they grow communities, social enterprises, businesses and economies.

Season's Greetings From Everyone at the Sirolli Institute

2006-12-13T03:42:00.000-08:00

Welcome to the very first post of the Sirolli Institute Weblog. We have just completed a planning meeting in San Francisco and are working hard on the development of the Institute.

2006 has been a very busy year for us with significant development underway in the UK, Australia and North America. 2007 looks to be even busier and we hope to establish a record number of new communities for the Institute and to find time for Ernesto to make progress on writing the new book. This will further develop our understanding of the Trinity of Management®.

Key actions arising from the meeting include:

Improving the level of service that we offer existing and new communities in the implementation and development of Enterprise Facilitation®;
Developing the capacity of the Institute by partnering with graduate communities to build their capacity to promote Enterprise Facilitation® and to train new communities in how to make it work;
Increasing business development activity through better use of communications;
Improved internal communication through regular teleconferences.

Our passion for the work of the Institute is higher than ever. It comes from two sources. Firstly the beauty of the work itself - seeing the ideas put into practice and communities making great progress. Secondly it comes from the people that we get to work with who show such commitment and love for their own community and the potential that exists within it.