Work - WAH Business Archive 06-07

Whole Life Entrepreneur II

11 Dec 2006

Whole Life Entrepreneur, Part II

By Tim Drake, Author of "I Want to Make a Difference"

Dr Johnson, the great eighteenth century lexicographer, was a man of great perception and wisdom. He could skewer the truth, and present it in words that stay fresh and resonant down the centuries. One such example of kebabed truth is this thought on gratitude: “Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation. You do not find it amongst vulgar people.”

The venerable doctor is right. Each of us knows that all too frequently we are too timid, or too busy, or too self-focused, to express our thanks to others who deserve our gratitude. In failing to express our gratitude we show a lack of grace, and a lack of humanity.

This is true in all aspects of our lives, but particularly true of the time we spend at work. In survey after survey the major complaint by workers is that their contribution is not recognised. Ironically, the people being complained about – the management – suffer from the same affliction. Directors complain that Chief Executives don’t recognise their best efforts, and Chief Executives complain that their Chairmen don’t recognise the magnificence of their contribution. Chairmen, in turn, complain that their board of governors, or their shareholders, just don’t understand how hard they’ve worked, and how much they’ve achieved.

What we have here is a massive recognition deficit in all areas of the workplace (and in life generally). We all expect people to be grateful to us for our efforts, but, to use Dr Johnson’s word, we are all too vulgar to express our own gratitude to the people around us who are creating value for us. We lack the refinement and basic good manners to say thank you to people who deserve it.

Entrepreneurs Create Value

What’s this got to do with work/life synergy, and becoming a Whole Life Entrepreneur to achieve it? The relevance is central. It goes to the heart of the understanding the nature of the value our entrepreneurship can create. All of us have latent value to give to others. This value often doesn’t see the light of day, not because we are too mean to produce it, but because we don’t realise our potential to create it. We simply underestimate our capacity to create value for others.

Expressing gratitude – specifically and sincerely (not programmed praisings, which are embarrassing and counter-productive) – is a simple and powerful act of value creation. If there is a yawning recognition deficit in everyone’s life, then significant value can be created by taking steps to fill at least part of it.

We have to recognise that achieving this is far from easy. In this regard, gratitude is very similar to praise. For some reason, most of us find it very difficult both to express gratitude, or to give praise. We also find it difficult to acknowledge gratitude, or to accept praise.

If we are praised, we either make a joke, or mutter something that the person giving us praise cannot hear. We lack grace in accepting what is due to us. The perversity of our condition is given a certain further irony by our not being able to look the person in the eye, and say “thank you” for praise, or “it was a pleasure” for gratitude. Not acknowledging someone gracefully for their gratitude, or their praise, has the effect of belittling the person addressing us.

Little wonder they don’t bother on subsequent occasions.

This is where the courage needed to be an entrepreneur comes in. Business entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, or Whole Life Entrepreneurs all share two overarching characteristics. The first is of wanting to create value, and benefit, for other people (the return being financial, or spiritual, reward, or both), and the second being the courage to persevere endlessly in the face of consistent rejection and failure.

Entrepreneurs charge windmills, and take on impossible odds, for a hobby. They hoist themselves up from the ground after being given a good kicking, without thinking twice about it. If they don’t fail several times before they succeed, they fail several times after they have succeeded (just look at Steiios’s projects after the initial success of Easyjet). Beware the tidy case histories of success. At the time it was messy and uncomfortable.

So being a Whole Life Entrepreneur includes moving outside our comfort zones, and stepping up to the mark to be counted. If we can create genuine value by communicating our sincere gratitude to our colleagues (above, below, and around us), then it has to be worth the effort of doing so. We may get it wrong a few times, even to the extent of being sniggered at, but eventually we’ll find a way to do it naturally and without embarrassment. If our efforts go a small way to reducing the recognition deficit in our organisations we will indeed have created value.

Creating Value is about Desire and Effort

Unless we get our heads round how we create more value at work, it will be difficult to apply the lessons in our home and social lives. All of us have huge reserves of latent value to give to others – at work and outside – but we must first understand some of the forms that value may take.

Much of this value normally never sees the light of day, not because we are too mean to produce it, but because we don’t realise our potential to create it. We simply underestimate our capacity to create value for others. Not only do we not realise the richness of our latent ability to create value for others, we labour under the misapprehension that it will cost us dearly to create it. The truth is that we can create significant value without putting our hands anywhere near our wallets.

Attitude is free. Attitude can create or destroy value quicker than anything. Take the Virgin brand as an example. The brand is about value created by the attitude of the entrepreneur who invented it. Richard Branson is the buccaneer who takes on the big boys. With a conspiratorial wink, he takes out cost, talks to us like equals, and provides new value. He has stepped over the fence, put his woolly-jersied arm around our shoulders, making us co-conspirators. We are in it together, having a laugh, and saving money by not being ripped off by the big market incumbents.

Even when he cocks it up, like Virgin Rail, attitude comes to his rescue. A couple of years ago, some business friends of mine were sitting on a non-moving train from Manchester to London. Getting more angry by the minute, a Virgin employee pushing the refreshment trolley hove into view. Pushers of refreshment trolleys aren’t generally from the top drawer, as far as customer service goes, but Branson selects good people and trains them well. They have the Virgin attitude.

As you can imagine, the businessmen in the carriage dumped on the poor guy. They gave their views in a forthright manner, on Virgin, its trains, and its founder. The trolley-pusher waited patiently until they had finished their dump. He then smiled patiently, and said, “Don’t worry gentlemen. It’ll be all right when Richard gets his new trains”.

In how many organisations would an employee in that situation have talked about their chairman using his Christian name? And how many could have explained the company’s strategy with such accuracy, and such grace? And it’s down to attitude. Attitude of Branson as an entrepreneur. And attitude of his staff, who have willingly been inculcated with his values.

Ideas are Free. Most of us are now living in a weightless economy. With ten percent or less of us actually manufacturing things, the vast majority of us are involved in services – from retailing to call centres, from Information technology to financial services.

Important to manufacturing, but crucial to service industries, ideas are the life blood of commerce, because they are the only source of competitive advantage. The only way to stay ahead of the competition in a world where organisations copy each others’ products and services at the speed of light, is to have more good ideas, more frequently.

The only way to have more ideas, more frequently, is to have more staff
understanding that it is an integral part of their job specification. Not just an integral part, but one of the most enjoyable and rewarding parts. To achieve this staff need to be engaged, enthusiastic, and thus creative. Also they need to be leading lives that are more balanced, and less stressed than most working lives are currently.

Creativity experts from Edward De Bono to Ken Robinson confirm two things. Firstly, that we are all much, much more creative than we think we are. Secondly, that once we have re-discovered it, we need a favourable, supportive environment for our creativity to flourish.

I remember sitting in a meeting where a trainer asked us as a group to come up with alternative uses for a paper clip. When he stopped us ten minutes later, we had about eighteen uses, some practical, some funny, and some plain daft. He drew the lesson from the experiment that a team can always produce more than an individual. That was true, but what also came out of it was how unexpectedly creative everyone can be given the opportunity and encouragement.

The good news is that it’s never too late. With encouragement, we can be creative now – and keep being creative right into old age. If Colonel Sanders, at the age of sixty seven, didn’t sell his first franchisee his finger lickin’ good recipe for fried chicken, then there aren’t any excuses for those of us under that age.

So there is much value we can create from within our existing talents and capacities. The next article will look at some more. Hard work is sometimes involved, but it is usually hard work with a sense of achievement coupled with a sense of proportion. When the messenger who carried the last sheet of his Dictionary to the publisher returned, Dr Johnson asked him, ”Well, what did he say?” The messenger answered, “Sir, he said, Thank God I have done with him” Dr Johnson smiled, and replied, “I am glad that he thanks God for anything”.

(c) Tim Drake, author of "I want to Make a Difference", available from Amazon.com

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