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Enterprise Support Groups |
We will work with you to help make this happen at your center, by phone conference call or at a congress!
FORMING AN ENTERPRISE SUPPORT GROUP
Why start it?
Would you like to be part of a support group to get and give help regarding talents and work?
How is your Subud group doing financially?
Would you like to own a Subud House?
Would you like to make your commitment to the region, but can't make the rent?
Would you like your enterprise to grow and change, but you're having trouble doing it on your own.
How to start it?
Talk to other entrepreneurs in your area about the idea of meeting to discuss mutual concerns you all face. Subud or non if it works for you. Everyone should make an initial commitment to come to the first 6 meetings. Try to meet in the same location for the first 6 meetings.
How often and when to meet?
Try to meet as often as you can consistently. Seattle-area members have been meeting once a month. You need to work this out with the group. No less than once a month is recommended.
The Seattle-area members have been meeting on Wednesday nights, starting around 6:00 p.m. and sometimes ending as late as 9:30 p.m. Find a time with which everyone is comfortable. Make it a pot-luck dinner.
How many?
The Seattle-area groups have between five and twelve entrepreneurs attending each meeting. They go around the table, each discussing what is happening with his/her enterprise, and suggestions are offered. It can take a long time to get to everyone. The pass-on method of going around the table is used (see subsection 6.2, paragraph 3).
What do you do?
In Seattle, they began because one person who was having problems with marketing her enterprise asked if other members would be willing to help her with some marketing ideas for her Winter season. The enterprise group began to invite more and more enterprises that they noticed were struggling to come and talk about their enterprises and a format began to emerge.
1. You talk about your enterprise or enterprise idea and what you are doing.
2. You set a goal that you think that you can achieve before the next meeting and commit to completing that goal before the meeting.
3. You come to the next meeting and report on how far you got with your goal, and we brainstorm if you need help.
Maybe all you do is come and share with everyone how your enterprise is doing. Maybe you can't formulate any goals for now, but you just want to feel a part of the group if you do need help. This a way that we can all share with each other and learn from each other.
What has Subud Seattle accomplished with their group?
They launched two enterprises and helped three to four others who were struggling with building momentum.
What members say about the Subud Seattle Enterprise Group:
· Members have a willingness to talk about what they want and share their ideas with the group and grow through their interaction with other members.
· Members have a willingness to listen, to accept what other people have to say, to talk about their weaknesses and needs for their enterprise, to be able to take a look at what their needs are and admit that they need help.
· You have to be willing to start out small with what you can do now.
· Work on goals from one meeting to the next. Commit to goal setting.
· Have a real business or business idea with a level of experience to accomplish your goals.
· Members feel that people in the group care about them and that they are able to get something of real benefit to their enterprise by belonging to the group.
· Don't wait. Get Started.
Setting up a new workshop
Enterprise Support Group "rules of the meeting" based on techniques from the Personal Development Group meetings at the UK's Loudwater Farm.
1. Listen to the speaker actively. (Don't be thinking about tomorrow's ball game. Be present! If you do other things, you send a message to the speaker that what they're saying isn't important.)
2. Create an atmosphere of trust and safety. Each member of the group should enjoy its protection. Anything said is confidential.
3. Rotate facilitators. Have a different person do it each time. If it's a skilled facilitator, all the better. She doesn't run the meeting, she nudges it.
4. The group polices itself. Everyone is responsible for adhering to the ground rules.
5. Statements of individual responsibility: "I am fully responsible for my experiencing." "I express my feelings here and now without censorship." "I say 'I,' rather than 'you' or 'one."' If someone says something that disturbs you, use the "I" message. First, describe the undesirable behavior, then identify the feeling it triggers in you, and express the consequences. (For example: "When you said that, I felt hurt. Then I didn't want to go on with the conversation.")
6. To create an agenda, don't go around the room. One person says their piece, then points to someone else who says their piece and points to someone else. The facilitator then reduces the topics to the minimum number from the list by synthesis.
It's best to put these rules on a big poster which everyone sees throughout the meeting.
It is essential that the first workshop in a new area be facilitated by somebody experienced in the operation of Seattle-model workshops.
· The cost of travel and expenses for such a person facilitating a meeting like this should be included in the annual budget of SES.
· At least two, and preferably three, new Seattle-model workshop areas should be established each year until they are able to be operated all over the country.
· It is important to identify a local 'hero' or 'promoter' so that the baton can be passed on to that person to continue to organize the monthly workshop thereafter.
~ Taken from Hanafi Fraval's document: "How We Do It"