Social entrepreneurs surround themselves with great people
#3 of 12 Great Qualities of a Social Entrepreneur
I have worked with a large number of quite extraordinary people. Perhaps because I have set up and worked in so many different enterprises, I’ve had an opportunity to encounter many people with different qualities, knowledge and experience.
The benefit of having a lot of minds on a challenge is something that I have learned over the years. For me, the best innovations and enterprises are ones that have involved plenty of dialogue in their implementation.
For the most part I have been privileged to work with a fantastic group of people who were highly aligned with the work and the clients we served. At my first enterprise in my 20s we were all passionate about vegetarian food and its impact on the environment. Building an ecovillage drew architects, engineers, builders, plumbers and others who were inspired to create a new type of housing and a new way of living. At Connect Assist, my final enterprise, the people I worked with were quite outstanding, speaking on the phone all day to people facing challenging and sometimes traumatic circumstances in their lives.
And then there were those on the outside who were key advisers and supporters of these enterprises.
I’ve learned over the years to build a network of experts who I know and trust. These are people whose experience and wisdom lie in areas where my skills and experience end and who I know will be available to help at any time. Many of them were there to help at moments of risk.
They include:
- An outstanding crisis communications expert who helped with reputation management when we were in the media for perhaps the wrong reasons.
- Lawyers, quite a few of them, covering employment, commercial, property and other legal issues. I have worked with my employment lawyer for 20 years and made it through a few challenging situations as a result.
- For the last 11 years, I had an IT infrastructure adviser and data security consultant as the enterprise managed confidential data.
- I worked with two excellent corporate finance experts who helped me find investment and finance that I didn’t know existed. They both gave me confidence to take sensible risks when borrowing and raising funds.
- I have always had a few trusted industry experts. I started at the Ecovillage with a corporate sponsorship adviser who knew the building trade. At Teacher Support Network I formalised this into an advisory group that meant all the key stakeholder organisations were ‘inside the tent’.
- I have always had a great accountant, who has advised on a range of financial and commercial issues.
These people were happy for me to call their mobiles almost any time of day or night, and in some cases I worked with them for over 25 years and across multiple organisations.
Creating Social Enterprise is a book and newsletter by Patrick Nash, lifelong social entrepreneur.
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