How to Avoid the Growth Trap… and Flying Solo.
Tip number 6 to fellow and aspiring (Social) Entrepreneurs, from my lived experience.
I often speak to social entrepreneurs. The most common questions they ask me are: What do we need to know in creating our own social enterprise? How did you do it? Where do we start? This is one in a series of articles where I try to answer those questions and more.
Dear fellow and aspiring social entrepreneurs,
Tip no6 is a work in progress for me. I hope that one day my struggle with rapid growth vs consolidation will get easier. Perhaps my exploration of these issues will help you in your entrepreneurial journey.
Tip number 6. How to avoid the growth trap… and flying solo.
A necessary evil for ambitious and passion driven social entrepreneurs is “the growth trap”. In a business which is not a social enterprise, the growth trap is typically found in the relentless need to increase profits for the benefit of the shareholders. In a social business, the growth trap can be found in the permanent need to support an increasing number of people, every day. In the case of the two organisations I founded, Micro Rainbow and the Micro Rainbow International Foundation, we constantly aim to increase the support we provide to LGBTQI people fleeing persecution or who find themselves in poverty because of the discrimination they face.
The “growth trap” in our case feels infinite. There are over 60 countries in the world that criminalise LGBTQI people. A few have the death penalty for people like me, a gay man. At any given time, millions of people fear for their lives just because of who they are and love. When we started at Micro Rainbow, we were supporting about 100 LGBTQI people a year. We now reach more than 1,200 annually. There will always be that one additional person we could help to avoid persecution.
Navigating the journey of expansion is not without its challenges. There is nothing wrong with embracing ambition and wanting to grow our organisations. I believe in personal ambition. I enjoy the experience of organisational growth and the power of teams to change the world. These are aligned with my values, desires and dreams. Yet, one of the greatest challenges I’ve stumbled upon is the growth trap.
In the case of Micro Rainbow, the growth trap can be found in our desire to increase the number of people we help requires us to expand. That means securing more funding for more projects to help more people. There is a continual danger that we create too much work for ourselves in order to service our ambition for growth. Of course it is for a cause, but we still need to be able to manage our workload. We also have a duty of care towards the people we serve, our beneficiaries: if we are overburdened with work, how realistic is it for us to provide caring, compassionate and professional services?
There is an additional component to the growth trap. It is what I call “flying solo”. Like many entrepreneurs, I have a track record in creating new projects in record time (not so humble of me!). I have come to realise that my speed of working is not universal. “Flying solo” for me means being so focused on the mission and passion and the desire to grow, one almost forgets that we cannot achieve it alone. The danger is that we may forget to bring the team with us. I have caught myself several times falling into this trap. I often realise that in my desire to grow, I might not be sharing my vision fully or clearly. There have been other times when I have realised that people are so busy staying on top of the growth I have generated, we are at risk of forgetting why we do what we do, the impact of our work or even to celebrate our wins. The result is a bit like an orchestra playing without being synchronised. We risk missing the joy and the beauty that different instruments can create together when they are playing from the same music script.
In my temptation to grow, I have sometimes overlooked the fact that growth (and sustainability) comes from the team, not from the founding CEO (more humble now!). I now put as much value into the “consolidation phases” of Micro Rainbow as I put in the “growing phases”.
In my experience, the consolidation phases are critical to propel future growth and to prevent you from flying solo. It is the time when we stop. We take a breath. We assess where we are, both inwards and outwards:
Inwards:
- we pay attention to the needs of our colleagues (How are they coping? What support does the team need? Do we have the right people to grow again?);
- we assess our internal structure (what else do we need to put in place before we grow? Do we have enough people?); we also look at our governance (does the board have all the skills it needs to grow again? Are our policies waterproof?);
- crucially, we also ask ourselves: are we a resilient organisation or are we on an endurance race?
Outwards:
- we evaluate our impact: what is the impact we are achieving? How does it compare against our mission and theory of change? What needs to be improved to maximise our impact before we grow again?
- we listen to our beneficiaries: what do they have to say?
- we look at the ecosystems around us: who else can help us grow? Who are we missing that should be on this journey? Who can we inspire?
My vocation for LGBTQI equality and social entrepreneurship gives me pleasure and is fun. “Flying solo” is lonely and not much fun and probably not sustainable. If you are feeling isolated as a founder and you are not having much fun perhaps it is the time to wonder “Am I flying solo?”. If so, I hope that my reflections can help you do something about it and find your mojo again.
With my very best wishes for your social entrepreneurship journey
Sebastian
To know more about me, you can check my profile on medium or connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter.
Are you, like me, also interested in social entrepreneurship and start-ups? What question do you have for me? Leave it in the comment and I will be excited to answer it from my lived experience.
If you missed the first 5 tips on how to create a social enterprise, here they are:
