Dreaming impersonal dreams

THIS WEEK’S WINNER

MANILA, Philippines – Noel Navalta Oribio writes: “Besides reading and writing, I love to have a good laugh with friends. My nephews and niece are a happy bunch, I love them dearly. My two dogs keep me busy, one is graceful and the other’s just wild. To top it all off, I have just started a cactus garden in my backyard.”

We do a lot of things for reasons noble and not-so-noble. I am learning that we have to do the things we need to do to be able to do the things that we want to do.

Michael Gerber’s fifth reality of the entrepreneur is that “everyone possesses the ability to be an entrepreneur;” from his new book Awakening the Entrepreneur Within: How Ordinary People Can Create Extraordinary Companies.

Every morning on my way to work, I see a couple of men lounging under a mango tree, smoking and doing nothing. On my way home in the evening, they’re still in the same spot drinking beer and wine. Day in and day out, they persist in their happy-go-lucky ways.

On the other hand is a group of individuals who, from morning till night, go about their business of tending to their sari-sari stores, occupied with sweeping the surroundings clean, stocking their supplies and answering customers’ calls. They don’t have time to just sit around — they’re too busy earning a living 15 hours or more each day, seven days a week.

My entrepreneurial dreams were energized at the Academy for Creating Enterprise in Cebu City. I never thought that I could do other things. Though I have previously experienced being a technical customer care representative or call center agent, I thought that business wouldn’t be much different. With the cost of living going up, there needs to be an additional means of generating income. And it seemed that putting up a small business was the answer.

After the completion of my training, I got a post as a business development specialist wherein I got to visit small businesses in the countryside, from up north to down south. In each small business, I observed the owners having direct technical knowledge of their businesses. But I read the fatal assumption that “if you understand the technical work of a business, you understand a business that does that technical work.” Gerber said this in his earlier book The E Myth Revisited. These business people lack the managerial and entrepreneurial skills and attributes required.

Every person going into business needs a balance of these three personalities. First, the entrepreneurial personality looking at things as opportunities, dreaming visions, providing the energy behind every human activity, and living in the future. The managerial personality is pragmatic: he plans, restores order and predictability, and lives in the past. The technician is the doer, he loves to tinker.

But seldom does a small business prosper from infancy to maturity because owners fail to give life to the real entrepreneurs within themselves. A technician-turned-business owner who suffers an entrepreneurial seizure needs to learn strategic work to lead the business forward — not a tactical view wherein one believes that a business is nothing more than an aggregate of the various types of work done in it. We forget the purpose of going into business, and that is to be free of a job so we can create jobs for other people.

The entrepreneurial personality that comes into play in the creation of a new venture according to Gerber has four dimensions. The Dreamer dreams an impersonal dream, meaning he is not the direct beneficiary of the business he is dreaming about. He dreams results to people’s problems and he sees the future. He creates the vision. But aren’t Filipinos great dreamers? Especially those who sit around all day just snoozing and dreaming? Sad to say, it is not that kind of dream that makes one successful.

The entrepreneurial dream never becomes a plausible plan without the Thinker. He completes the puzzle, finds the missing piece to get a perfect picture. He makes the business model. The objective is to mold together the right-brained genius of the Dreamer with the left-brained genius of the Thinker. And here lies one of the obstacles to Filipino businesses, with a lot of philosophical geniuses, a business gets bankrupt even before it has a chance to grow.

The Storyteller paints a picture so grand it enraptures his listeners. He makes it possible for the Dream to take form in the minds of ordinary people. He is the voice of the Dreamer and the Thinker; he breathes life into the story. People from a specific industry, customers, and others who may or may not be significant in the future venture judge the story. They provide the feedback that spells success or failure. Through it, the dream becomes a reality. Lest we get confused, it is not similar to that cunning type of a storyteller that is very popular in the Philippines — the ones who can sell plastic for pearls or fake stones for jewels.

The Leader propels the business forward as he takes on the Vision and makes an enterprise. With the passion of the Dreamer, the intellect of the Thinker and the joy of the Storyteller, the Leader possesses the five essential skills of concentration, discrimination, organization, innovation, and communication. His motto is “From small things cometh great things.” And with this is one rule of thumb: “Start small, think big.”

Filipinos have been trained to become professionals, technicians, and some are trained to become managers or employees, but never as entrepreneurs, not as business individuals who might put up companies. It is high time that our educational system incorporates the principles and practices of business in our curricula, so those as young as grade-schoolers may learn the habits of saving. It is such a simple lesson, yet so significant a start.

The only way to secure the financial and economic freedom of the upcoming generations is to ensure that they have the tools needed in the global market. Not only as a workforce abroad, or as a salesperson in a mall, but tools that would enable them to dream impersonal dreams. To create solutions as entrepreneurs do.

A few years back, I came up with the Caring Touch Rehabilitation Home Care Physical Therapy Services business plan that won first place during my training in Cebu City and became a finalist in the Business in Development competition at the Asian Institute of Management in 2007. And it remains a plan. Why? I think that I am too comfortable being an employee. But would I remain the same?

“A business without a heart is like a life without a purpose,” Gerber says.

I am again seeing opportunities, having visions, and now setting up a business model, a system to make an online English tutorial program work. Once again, I am dreaming impersonal dreams, and now the entrepreneur within me is awakening.