Having looked last time at some of the traits that characterise entrepreneurial leaders as people (i.e. who they are), I now want to share some of the things they do. Put simply, they are connectors, and they are learners. They are magpies, collecting people and ideas wherever they can.
This idea of being a connector is perhaps not surprising, given the literal translation of entrepreneur as ‘go-between’ or ‘middleman’. One interesting definition is that entrepreneurs use resources that do not belong to them. What they do is, they join the dots. They make connections between people, ideas and resources, to create new ways of addressing long-standing or newly-emerged problems. Classically, they have been described as ‘making new combinations’, that is, putting pieces together in a different way to see if the situation can be made to work differently. They tinker, they cobble together, and they try stuff out, to see what happens. There’s even a word for that in the entrepreneurship literature – bricolage (which is the French term for DIY).
Those who I have interviewed have been good at developing partnerships. They are networkers, with lots of contacts in different circles, and they have been able to bring these contacts together to work on the issues at hand. They are also good at team recruitment, that is, motivating people to get on board with the vision and give of their time, energy and insights. This aspect came across time and again in the interviews – “I had this base of people who were game for getting caught up in the thing that was evolving, and they all had skills they could bring to that”, “they brought professional skills, knowledge and networks of their own”, “having a good, thoughtful, articulate team has been very important to us”, “we had a network who were prepared to listen, and a smaller amount of people who were prepared to give it a go”, “the team thing was really important”, and so on. Here’s one interesting comment, though – “I hate networking. I’m actually an introvert. But I know it needs to be done, so I force myself to”.
Not surprisingly, they also had to be good at acquiring financial resources. It didn’t have to be much to start with – £5000 or so was enough for some. Others got more, but it all depended on their level of contacts. For some, this was hard work – “the finance has been challenging” – and for others, gifts in kind were necessary. I got the impression that, for most, the money stuff wasn’t as energising as the people stuff, but it was a necessary evil and they just had to do it.
They are voracious learners. One thing that surprised me is that few, if any, of the entrepreneurial leaders I interviewed had much prior experience in the specific field in which they are now engaged. What they do have is a strong sense of personal agency. They are the kind of people who say “someone should do something about that …. and that someone might as well be me!”. That means that they learn on the hoof (or build the plane as they fly it). This fits with the bricoleur and magpie metaphors. They said things like, “I have gone out and found out how to make it myself, befriended people who have helped me no end”, “they have learned to be learners”, and one commented of his first pioneering project, “when I look back at it now, it feels more like a learning ground than a successful project I ran”.
This learning is very diverse. It included (a lot of) learning from others – “spend a lot of time researching, to learn but also to network. And don’t rush that”, “we’ve had lots of conversations. It’s been a two-way thing”, and “it really helped me to rub shoulders with people who challenged and showed me that there were many other ways to look at it”. Prior experience was some help, even if it was in a different field – “I started to realise that I actually had these skills”. And learning from outside the church was also mentioned – “a lot of learning could be done from things that are going on outside of the church”, “what can we learn from outside of the church, outside of Christian mission … who else is doing something similar”?
So they connect, and they learn. They’re also flexible, and they learn from difficulties and failure. We’ll look at this next time.
Just About Leading 