Wednesday September 11th - Are We Entrepreneurs?

Today we had a very interesting meeting with another Genesis group and our course convener Stewart.

Both groups shared their top three failures and top three successes. The purpose of this exercise was to reveal how each group experienced more or less similar themes, despite having different personalities and different products.

The common theme we identified was of the challenge in holding people accountable to their roles and tasks, and avoidance towards getting into conflict. Stewart asked us, "what advice would you give to future Genesis groups?" and someone replied, "choose your groups very, very carefully".

We then got into a discussion about the benefits of perhaps being given predetermined groups, more time, varying numbers... the list went on. But Stewart insisted that in the past they have tried many iterations and yet this exact challenge keeps on reoccurring. Why might that be?

We tried to come up with theories as to why this might be, but nothing really felt satisfying, for me at least. Then as I was driving home a theory came to me that echoes a lot of the internal dialogue I've been having over the last few weeks. This dialogue related to a question: Surely if I was a true entrepreneur, I wouldn't be in a program learning about entrepreneurship? I'd be out there, entrepreneuring!

So here's the theory that came to me...

At the beginning of the year, the people in this course can be grouped into two categories:

1. People who are interested in entrepreneurship, but have never started a business - perhaps due to fear of failure
2. People who are looking for direction in life and hear good things about this program or thought it would be a solid platform to find direction

So people who are afraid and people without direction. Either way, there's some kind of theme of inertia.

Now, why is it that every year there is a theme of groups having conflict around people not performing and being held accountable? And why are people afraid to get into confrontation and conflict?

Of course this theme stems beyond just this program and cannot be reduced to one or two variable, but I think there is definitely something going on that's related to the personalities of the kinds of people who come to a formal program in entrepreneurship - versus those who drop out and just startup.

I think this is a very interesting topic, which also relates to whether or not entrepreneurship can be taught. Are entrepreneurs born and not made?

There's definitely something not being addressed in this program. The fear that prevents us from starting. I feel that it can be seen in the trend of people looking for jobs after the program instead of just getting started. As well as by the fact that we apply to this program. 

It's something of an identity-dialogue that's been going on inside my head. I'm interested to see where it leads... and that it results in more time acting, and less time thinking!