 Several readers have asked me for a five-minute summary of the
iterative, lifelong process of learning what we're meant to do for a
living, and making that living through Natural Enterprise. I thought
this was a reasonable request, so I've illustrated it above. Here's
the five-minute walk-through:
- Now What? You're newly-graduated, outsourced, chronically
underemployed or seeking to start your 'second career'. Start with
yourself. Most of us have just fallen into the careers we've followed,
or taken the easiest or most obvious path. We don't know what else we
could be doing. We don't know what other people do for a living, what
their work is really like. We don't know what capacities (many of them
untapped) we have, or that we could develop that would open up worlds
of meaningful work. So step one is a two-way exploration, of our own
current and prospective competencies, and of the whole wide world of
work.
- Why are You Here? The next step is identifying your Gift (what you
are uniquely skilled at), your Passion (what you love doing),
and your Purpose (where that Gift and Passion intersect with real,
unmet human needs). These change as you grow and learn, but without
knowing what they are, at least here and now, there
will be no focus to your search for meaningful work.
- How Does Someone Make a Living? Most of us have bought into all the
myths about making a living: fitting into and competing in the
soul-destroying 'job market', or struggling with risky
'self-employment' -- beaten up by unreasonable customers and impatient
investors, indebted forever and forced to grow ruthlessly or die. But there are
models of joyful, responsible, sustainable, egalitarian enterprise
where you are beholden to no one, where you work with people you love
as an integral part of a healthy community. All you need to do is find
them, study them, and follow their example.
- Who Do I Make a Living With? The greatest challenge for Natural
Enterprises is finding partners whose Gifts and Passions complement
your own, and who share your Purpose. Many hands make light work, and
the entrepreneur's greatest mistake is often trying to do everything
alone. For some, it makes sense to start with this decision, to decide
first who you want to make a living with, and then, collectively, cycle
back and discover what's possible, what you really want to do, and how
best to do it. The process is continuous, and it doesn't really matter
where you start. And the best thing about Natural Enterprise is you can
always change your mind, and it will evolve with you.
The four steps above are inward-focused, about self-direction. Next you turn your attention outward, to filling a need:
- What Does the World Need? Real market research is about answering this
question, and also about understanding why that need isn't already being met
by some other enterprising group. This is the most difficult step in
the process, but answering it will guide you confidently through the rest of the steps.
- What Could Possibly Meet That Need? We live in a world of great
imaginative poverty, but with practice you can become very good at the
critical skill of imagining possibilities. There are all kinds of tools that can help you, and
nature, which has hundreds of millions of years' experience evolving
imaginative approaches to seemingly impossible challenges, is full of
ideas, free for the taking.
- What's the Business Model? Finding the way to convert a brilliant
idea into an affordable offering that meets the need, simply and
effectively, is the hard work of innovation. But we are
inherently very competent innovators, and with practice,
patience and help from others, you can excel at it. Where there's a will there's a way.
- Who Do We Work With? This is different from step 4, in that it
brings in customers, colleagues, the people in other Natural
Enterprises whose offerings mesh with your own,
and the whole community you are a part of. It entails extending your business partnership
to include the rest of the world, and learning important skills
in collaboration and networking, and new (or long forgotten) ways of working like
Open Source and Peer Production.
This process is not easy, but it can be great fun, it's always
rewarding, and it's never impossible. It's a continuous, creative
process of learning, discovery, paying attention, practice and
innovation. Those of us who do one job our
whole lives follow this process, in a simplified way, intuitively, and
there is no rocket science here. Creating a Natural Enterprise is,
well, natural.
Watch what creatures in the wild do to make a living, to care for and
provide for themselves and their communities, and it's identical to
this process. We've just (most of us) forgotten it.
We are
problem-solvers by nature, and all this is hard-wired in us. Just
waiting to come out.
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MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
