Key Enterprise Skills

©Matthew Draycott, 2010 unless otherwise attributed

All images accredited to: www.sxc.hu

What does it mean to be entreprising?

Team Role Description Strengths WeaknessesPlant Are you good at generating crazy, creative ideas

without getting too bogged down in detail? If so then you might just be a Plant; Someone who is great at putting a new spin on something with original ideas, but is also prone to wander off on flight of fancy every now and again.

As a Plant you will tend to be creative, unorthodox, imaginative and have the ability to solve difficult problems due to you’re unique perspective.

Because you tend to work on a different level creating you’re own solutions it can be very hard for others to communicate with you or have any input in you’re ideas.

Resource Investigator

If networking and developing contacts is more your thing then perhaps you’re a Resource Investigator. In this role you can give a team a great boost at the start of a project by finding contacts and opportunities, however you tend to be very focused outside the team and have a tendency to loose momentum as time wears on.

As a Resource Investigators your a great networker, able to move outside the team and communicate with anyone to explore opportunities and develop contacts.

However because you tend to be externally focused you can loose interest quickly after you’re initial surge of optimism especially if things don’t go to plan.

Coordinator As a Co-ordinator chances are you’ve be organising things since you were young; bringing people together, delegating tasks and making sure all the jobs got done…even if that left nothing for you to do.

As a Co-ordinators your always a likely candidate to lead the team; your confident, stable and mature, and are great at recognising peoples strengths allowing you to put the right person in the right job.

While you might seem like the perfect team member you have a tendency to over delegate and can be seen as manipulative. In the worst cases you might even take credit for the work of the team by yourself.

Shaper Is always ‘winning’ is your passion? Then you must be a Shaper. Someone who will aggressively pursue objectives driven by a need to achieve. You are deeply committed to projects and great at getting things done, but won’t abide people standing in you’re way.

As a shaper if you are given something to do it’s getting done, no matter what the problems might be. If your really good you even get the rest of the team to follow you’re lead.

Your probably not someone people argue with, right? That's because as a shaper you tend to be easy to provoked and can often offend others as you pursue you goals.

Reproduced by kind permission of Belbin Associates - www.belbin.com‘

Reproduced by kind permission of Belbin Associates - www.belbin.com‘

Team Role Description Strengths WeaknessesMonitor Evaluator

Are you the one in a group that can always offer a fair and logical opinion on any activity, without bias? Then you might just be a Monitor Evaluator. Someone who tends to take a broad view of problems working slowly and analytically to pick the best option.

As a Monitor Evaluators your a fair, broad minded individual who will review all the available options to find the best solution for everyone.

Being analytical can be good but you need to make sure that you don’t become too critical or you might start to dampen the mood of everyone your working with.

Team Worker Do you keep your team running smoothly; quietly working away in the background sorting out the problems and brining people together? If so then you’re a Team Worker; the ultimate diplomat and listener your the team member that really holds the whole thing together.

As a Team Workers your a conflict resolution specialist able to help different parties understand each other without confrontation, allowing projects to keep moving.

Being the glue is never a very high profile role, in fact you probably avoid the spotlight and the pressure this entails meaning that it’s unlikely people will turn to you for help or recognise your input.

Implementer If you like to plan out projects and get them working even when other people avoid them you might just be an Implementer. You really are a crucial team member as it implementers like you that actually get projects moving forwards .

As an Implementers you’re reliable, efficient and self disciplined. Motivated normally by loyalty to the project you will work tirelessly to see it up and running.

Striving to deliver at all costs can make you pretty inflexible as you have a tendency to stick to you’re plans and not to change for anyone.

Completer Finisher

As a Completer Finisher you have to like things perfect and be willing strive that extra mile to make sure everything is just right. Your probably someone obsessed with accuracy who will set your own high standards for a project to meet.

If implementers get it running, completer finishers like you are the ones who get it right, you will polish an idea until there are no flaws left and encourage the rest of the team to follow suit.

Being obsessive is in itself a problem, you tend to worry about every detail and will never delegate anything you feel you can’t trust someone to do, meaning that delivery suffers.

Specialist Is there one topic you love above everything else, something you could talk about for hours? Then you’re a Specialist. As someone who has developed one narrow set of skills to an expert level you can provide valuable insight on key elements any project.

As a Specialist your a fountain of knowledge who will freely share you’re insights with others and love developing you’re expertise through research and learning.

Narrow knowledge means that a your only very useful in you’re area and not be able to provide a breadth of insight. In some cases you might can even ignore factors outside your own knowledge that are important to the project.

MBTI Test

If you want to take a free online MBTI test go here:

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgiwin/JTypes2.asp

Stop: Give yourself time and space to come up with ideas by getting away from other people and distractions, and finding somewhere comfortable to just sit and think.

If you do think of anything else, any other problems or things you need to do, make a note of them and park them until later using a note pad.

The trick here is to give yourself time to focus on the problem at hand and not get distracted

Look: Investigate all the possibilities you come up with and create a short list of the best concepts, don’t throw away any ideas at this stage as even the whacky and crazy one might provide radical new solutions to your problem

Think about some of the techniques discussed in the video as ways of developing these early ideas into more concrete concepts

Think: Come back to the best ideas and give them thorough evaluation possibly with external input, thin out your short list till you reach the best ideas and then spend some time developing them.

4R’s of Strategic Thinking:

1.Resources2.Risk3.Reactions4.Return

Resources:Before you start any new project you need to consider the resources it may need and not just cash; time, skills, facilities and other people may all be important elements that you require in your resource mix.

To work this out, try using our downloadable PDF. In the first column break down your goal, project or activity into key actions, in the second column list the resource that each action will need and in the third column your activity, what you need to do to get the resources for each action; this might be a note that you already have these resources, some ideas about how to get them or a point highlight the difficulty of accessing this source.

Once you’ve done this for all the actions you should have a plan showing you what you have, or need and how, or if you can get hold of them... And at this stage if you can’t get access to something, you need to re-think the plan.

Key Action(s) Resources Activity Risks Reactions

Risk:

Once you understand the resources that are necessary and how you can mobilise them you need to think about the risks involved , here at enterprising you we like to look at risk as a function of lost opportunity, let me give you an example:

If your project or idea was to set up a small business and a resource was your own money then you need to think about what you might be doing with that money otherwise? What the possibility is of loosing it, and if you can afford too. This isn’t us trying to make you a pessimist, just to look at the situation and see if you can tolerate the risks involved.

Look at your PDF and go through each action, what are the risks involved and the potential opportunities lost... If these are starting to get overwhelming you might need to think about other less risk alternatives, but don’t make any rush decisions, work through the next two sections before you decide on anything.

Reactions: Here at enterprising you we have a unique test for projects, ideas and plans, we call it the Mum test, its really simple, before we do anything we just ask how would our Mum’s react if they found out about this? It’s our test of reactions.

Of all the 4R’s reactions are about the hardest thing to measure because first you need to work out what reaction you want and then ask if people will feel that way, possibly for more than one group; but that doesn’t make them any less important if you misjudge peoples reactions it can make getting anything done pretty hard work.

So here’s an idea, for the entirety of the project or idea think about all the people who will be affected by it, the reactions they will have and if this is what you want, great get on with it, but if it isn’t then you need to think about why this and what needs to change...this isn’t make or break, but it should be stop and think.

Return:This is perhaps the simplest element, but also one of the most important because here you need to examine what will be the return from the project what will you, or others get back from it...this might be financial, but it could also be skills, experiences...anything could be a meaningful return, that’s up to you.

The return is important because like a see-saw if the return is right it can balance out all the other elements and make your plans worthwhile, but equally you need to be careful of going for high returns and sacrificing things that are important to you along the way.

You should already have an idea of the potential returns your looking for, but always be open to others, and again be realistic...there's nothing worse than getting through something and getting let down.

Goals Actions Requirements Constraints Help Target Date