Social business : between barriers and brakes

obstacle

When you start a social business project , you do not realize all the barriers you will have to face . Otherwise there are chances that you would give up before you start, as the mountain may seem huge to climb (which is true and false ). Moreover, companies often do not realize that if they really implement a social business project, this does not mean installing a tool to streamline the flow of information and allow a kind of freespeech, but transform its organization and its business process.

Now everything should not face at once and it’s step by step that you’ll have to overcome these obstacles. However, we must distinguish barriers and brakes.

Quick overview about brakes, this is what blocks your project without reason, related to the bureaucracy of the organization, or a complete misunderstanding of what it represents. Like being social because « it is trendy. » In the best case a waste of time , in the worst case a failure.

But there are also barriers you’ll encounter, which are related to the maturity level of your audience. This can be long ( and these projects are long ), but it is necessary. Transform, evolve culturally takes time. You can not ask your audience to be at the maturity level you wish. In addition, just like learning to swim , listen to long speeches, read books or slides of consultants is not enough . At one time or another it must be put into practice.

Practice is the only way forward, understand, become mature. But it does mean, doubts, go back, breaking its own disabling beliefs. But above all make mistakes. You learn a lot more from mistakes and failures than successes. So without these obstacles there might be no real transformation of the mindset of your audience or their representations, then ultimately the organization transformation.

You pass from the age of 1.0 to the 2.0 if I caricature a bit. In many societies , the transition from one age to another lead to an initiation rite. Do not curse these obstacles, on the contrary accept them, see how to overcome them, they are an integral part of the learning cycle that will allow you to move forward in the right direction and not stay on the surface of things. They are the ones that will make your project succeed on a long term, especially after the departure of the team that initiated and led the project. Because if your processes continue to function over time, that will be largely thanks to the culture and understanding of each one.

Therefore avoid brakes, accept barriers. No barriers, no social project sustainable business because no real transformation or paraphrase a Chinese proverb

It is not the purpose of the walk which is important but the small steps that lead to it