Possibly one of the issues that have gained the most notoriety within the different Latin American cultures from the financial and business globalization, has to do strongly with the entrepreneurs - entrepreneurs and the different models of organizational creation / development.
At The Organization Development Institute International, Latin America we receive many questions and concerns related to the topic of development of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, which represents one of our main focuses.
We ask the reader to please, at this point, distinguish entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs from those that have developed in the world of companies and businesses as contractors of the State.
One of the questions that is asked is related to: Why do the data of the “macro-economy” show growth and improvements while the “micro-economic” indicators show the opposite?
Do macroeconomic indices not reflect reality, or at least some important components of it?
Another fairly common question - especially within Argentina, which was located among the 7 most developed countries in the world in the 1940s of the last century - has to do with: What can be done to develop SME companies? In the last 10 years, the various national, provincial and municipal organizations have spoken - and still continue to do so - regarding their promises of assistance to SMEs and various programs with which they say they are willing to support SMEs.
A third question is related to wanting to find out about the mechanism by which funds are transferred from those who (people, groups and organizations) generate "genuine work" to (people, groups and organizations) who obtain payments that are not related to "genuine jobs "
A few years ago, we were the first in Latin America to disseminate the findings referred to by Dr. Donald W. Cole in his pioneering book: "Professional Suicide or Organizational Murder" that was published in 1981. A Spanish version its co-author, with Dr. Cole, is Eric Gaynor Butterfield, and it was titled: “Professional Suicide or Organizational Murder” (edited by The Organization Development Institute International, LA - 2003).
Among other aspects, mention is made of the phenomenon by which capable, creative and highly committed people with their companies suddenly find themselves, against their interests, outside of them.
In Organizational Creation and Development Days carried out during the year 2005, many entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs have stated that, for a significant majority of them, the amount of sales has been reduced in relation to historical values.
And that said reduction has not been more dramatic due to the fact that some competitor / competitor SMEs had closed their doors.
On the other hand, executives, managers and professionals who "no longer belonged to corporate organizations" were finding it increasingly difficult to re-insert themselves as such. Another finding is related to the fact that many young professionals with a short career in the corporate world were now trying to move towards the development of their own businesses, companies, ventures, and in much greater numbers, people over 40 who their subsequent insertions in organizations were even more reduced.
Some preliminary field work shows how graduate professionals and those “about to graduate soon” find it more difficult to be recruited and selected within the business world.
And lately some statistics show how some people who usually worked “outside” of a SME company - either working as self-employed, within the public sphere, or within the corporate world - were entering the still existing SME company as a last option.
The initial question that we have encountered and to which we mention at the beginning of this Conference seems counterintuitive since - it seems reasonable - that micro and macro economics had to go hand in hand, which is not true in any way.
Possibly one of the most devastating attacks on economics as a science from an economist's point of view is that provided by the notable Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises ("Theory and History" - 1957): "The fundamental thesis of historicism is the proposition that, apart from the natural sciences, mathematics, and lodge, there is no knolwedge but that provided by history.
There is no regularity in the concatenation and sequence of phenomena and events in the sphere of human action. Consequently the attempts to develop a science of economics and to discover economic laws are vain ”.
The importance of handling data and information in the field of economy, both in relation to that which arises in excess as well as that which manifests itself in defect, as well as the misuse of the same, may be another reason for the which macro-economic data are not "seen" by micro-economic entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs.
The Russian Wassily Leontief makes it clear ("Natural resources, environmental disruption, and growth prospects of the developed and less developed countries" - 1977):
“Throughout the history of their discipline… economists have had to work with very little data and, therefore, have developed methods for reaching conclusions with a minimum of information. Economic theory is constructed in such a way as to extract the most from very little data; it is a theory that uses averages, general index numbers, and very general arguments. In the past thirty years, as many more data have become available, economists have found themselves in the situation of a man stranded on an island with nothing to eat, who, when he is rescued and given food, gests indigestion. The challenge for economics at the present time is to develop a theory that can absorb data without ruining them, and that, at the same time, will permit us to use detailed information instead of arguing in broad generalities. »
One of the typical characteristics that appears in entrepreneurs and businessmen is that of paying partial or little attention to macro-economic data, since in the search and exploration processes that are natural to them (Eric Gaynor Butterfield: “The entrepreneur ”; 1999) tends to make use of the inductive method over the deductive one that economists privilege.
Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs have not needed to read the Scottish historian and critic Thomas Carlyle (“The nigger question” - 1904) who states that the (macro) economy is a sinister, painful, dire (“dismal”) science, nor to the economist Joan Robinson (“Metaphysics, morals, and science” - 1962) who suggests that the economy limps and walks on one leg where on one foot it has hypotheses that have not been tried to verify and on the other it contains slogans not subject to verification.
That is why Keynes was content that economists could reach the level of competence of dentists… ("Economic possibilities for our grandchildren" - 1930). Therefore we should not be surprised when we find that entrepreneurs - at crucial moments in their business - deploy a strongly inductive methodology for the creation, maintenance, growth and transformation of their company ("Entrepreneurial Creativity Workshop"; Eric Gaynor Butterfield - 1997).
On the other hand, the "appearance - creation" of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs begins to glimpse difficulties, especially with those who have dedicated many of their years of their lives as executives, managers, professionals and executives.
The things that these people do in the day to day of their activities within corporate environments, has little to do with the requirements, capabilities and competencies of an entrepreneur. Attachment “A” includes a series of aspects in which some differences are exhibited between the expected behavior for each of these two different profiles.
We can tentatively conclude that - after many years as a corporate officer - not many executives are in the best conditions to become, in a very short time, as entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs.
Corporate life is based on many “principles” that are foreign to the entrepreneur, such as the power to delegate to “others”.
The entrepreneur has taken over the areas of production, marketing and administration / finance from the start of his business, and generally does not delegate them very quickly.
And there are many entrepreneurs who become specialists in such specific matters as taxes, legal, and labor lawsuits; corporate executives, on the other hand, are used to referring these situations to "their Legal, Labor or Tax department".
Expecting national, provincial or municipal government officials to take the role of innovative entrepreneur - please, again, not to be confused with that of a state contractor - may be a "beautiful manifestation of wishes", but unfortunately, the facts do not show that Many genuine entrepreneurs emerge from this important category in terms of numbers.
Many people may want to be entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs as a result of becoming familiar with the concepts and ideas that prevail with respect to these in society, as is the case of university students and graduates who are exposed to a large group of professors and academics, some of them experts in specializations. And here the following question arises:
Do these expert teachers, who even speak and teach courses, seminars and workshops regarding "Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs", manage any particular company themselves?
The evidence shows that this is not the case, and therefore it is quite possible that the community cannot access this important group of experts who are generally employed at prestigious Universities and Centers for Higher Studies, or Postgraduate.
But the most unfortunate thing is not the fact that this important body of professors, academics and researchers do not become entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, but rather as a model in the eyes of their best students, they do not perceive them as appropriate role models. of entrepreneurs.
In the case of this select group of senior managers of multinational corporations made up of very few executives who have been able to reach the top of a "multinational affiliate", there are some aspects that we need to highlight. As a senior executive of a world-leading multinational company in the service area told us, sustaining the top of a CEO of a multinational subsidiary is strongly related to his success in handling two key variables:
- The (largest) dividend turn: The reduction in terms of the “head count” of its personnel.
These two factors are generally incompatible with the management philosophy that an innovative entrepreneur must assume, since if he forwards the dividends "outside his company" in times of innovation and relaunch, he must have to access the higher financial costs to which they are subject.
Furthermore, the innovative entrepreneur within Latin American cultures cannot make use of the principle of management aimed at reducing the head-count as a counterpart to a strong investment in information and communication technology, since its own economy of scale - in the case of growth - privileges Exactly the opposite: the need to increase staff rather than replace it with new digital innovations.
An additional fact that I want to share with you.
SMEs companies have been significantly reduced as a result of financial, technological and commercial globalization processes. Some sources suggest that at the moment there are no more than 30% of the SMEs that were in force in 1995. It is not unreasonable to think that this is true; the huge number of unemployed and underemployed personnel, as well as the significant number of citizens living under a regime of poverty and indigence, together with the Government's programs in assistance to some 2 million people, suggest that the Genuine work has been dramatically decreased.
Official figures regarding people who travel on trains, subways and bus lines (the most common means of mass transportation in Buenos Aires) show that they now travel - and consequently do not go to work - 33% of the people who traveled do 10 years ago. If we add to this the fact that people who used to get around in cars now do so in one of these three means of transportation, the huge drop in individuals headed for their jobs reaches the highest level in history in the country.
This table that we have tried to summarize - based on data, information, observation and field work - allows us to recapitulate and focus again on the initial questions that we have asked ourselves.
There is no doubt as expressed by the highest authorities of developed countries such as the United States of America, Canada, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Spain, among others, that the organizational model that leads in job creation is the company. SMEs. Furthermore, official figures that do not admit any discussion even show that this leadership position that SMEs have with respect to any other type of organizational arrangement tends to increase when we carry out marginal and forward analyzes.
The evidence shows that more than 96% of the "new" jobs have to be generated by SME companies and some wonder how this is possible if government entities grow beyond 5%; The answer is very simple, the big world corporations are reducing their personnel.
We suggest that in this dilemma where many talk about how "SMEs can be helped" - but that little is done in practice - there is a situation that has not been given due consideration: the problem is not merely Create a SME company that will allow later to create work for "others".
This is where most of the people who rhetorically refer to "helping SMEs" do not take into account that most of the time SMEs what they mainly need is "not to do things against them". And something else: the problem does not consist merely in creating SMEs "legally", that is, as legal persons.
Natural persons are those who then shape, in a second stage, the legal figures.
Therefore, the relevant independent variable is not SMEs, but rather SMEs Entrepreneur.
And the question now has to do with how you can generate "SME Entrepreneurs", that is, people who have the profile of SME Entrepreneurs. When in the United States of America it has been a matter of State and of greater importance for the President of that country to generate business, they have not doubted that what was needed were entrepreneurs, who of course would need to generate and develop jobs for others already that there is not a single businessman on this planet who has become wealthy on his own.
By working alone only one succeeds - when he succeeds - in exploiting himself. Therefore, and following the line of action we were in, the SME Entrepreneur only needs that they do not hinder him: he does not need the regulatory and control entities to put into operation the “delay” machine in the first instance, the “Prevent” in the second instance, and, finally, if the SME Entrepreneur is still successful despite them, then ultimately these bodies launch the red button that corresponds to the “destroy machine”.
A society in which many people are unemployed and many of whom are not responding to genuine work, must stop talking that "they are going to encourage and help SMEs" and must self-analyze to observe the different machines to "delay" to "prevent" and to "destroy" that exist in the different corners of the country.
We have said that the SME entrepreneur is highly inductive and sensitive; It is capable of perceiving the enemy in the same way that a gazelle knows of the proximity of a wolf even if it does not see it.
Now, and before we go to the break and back, let's explore some work in groups of 6 people, let's review the "current availability" of available Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs:
- Historically, there is no evidence that government officials, at the national, provincial or municipal levels, stand as Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs who generate genuine work; Directors, executives, professionals and managers of large multinational corporations show the profile of “development in their career ”that dramatically contrasts with the personality, competences, skills and motivational profile that are characteristic of the entrepreneur and entrepreneur, the vast majority of teachers, academics and researchers do not show evidence of experiences beyond their cloisters, and even less as Workforce generators: Self-employed professionals in the exercise of their profession mostly operate functionally in a way that contrasts with the figure of the entrepreneur;The bodies in charge of “promoting SMEs companies” and that act as promotion, regulation and control mechanisms, include professional profiles where their competences have more to do with “what is done once the business is up and running” than with the “own management of creating and generating a company”, the main non-delegable function of every SME entrepreneur: We are, of course, left with the “career professionals” who belong to different organizations that are linked abroad, such as those who make up the body belonging to Consulates and Embassies. We believe that you yourselves are in a position to respond on this matter.They include professional profiles where their competences have more to do with "what is done once the business is up and running" than with the "proper management of creating and generating a company", the main non-delegable function of every SME entrepreneur; Of course, the "career professionals" who belong to different organizations that are linked abroad, such as those who make up the body belonging to the Consulates and Embassies. We believe that you yourselves are in a position to respond on this matter.They include professional profiles where their competences have more to do with "what is done once the business is up and running" than with the "proper management of creating and generating a company", the main non-delegable function of every SME entrepreneur; Of course, the "career professionals" who belong to different organizations that are linked abroad, such as those who make up the body belonging to the Consulates and Embassies. We believe that you yourselves are in a position to respond on this matter.such as those who make up the body belonging to the Consulates and Embassies. We believe that you yourselves are in a position to respond on this matter.such as those who make up the body belonging to the Consulates and Embassies. We believe that you yourselves are in a position to respond on this matter.
In any case - fortunately - there are those who really "have been", "are", and "will continue to be" SME entrepreneurs despite the machines to delay, to prevent, and to destroy.
These people have come to create, to generate and they have to do it because they have a “generator” engine within themselves and also a vocation to generate work for others. Eric Gaynor Butterfield, in light of these circumstances, suggests developing a new and different organizational typology from the one usually in use, such as that which is made up of public companies, national private companies, multinational companies and corporations, and companies. non-profit - NGO.
Gaynor ("Organizational Development Congress"; Buenos Aires - 1999) suggests the use of the following taxonomy based on the generative capacity of the company as a social body at the service of the community: generating companies (which would be SMEs and those that generate value through genuine job creation); Re-generating companies (which would be those educational and research entities that are oriented to develop new generating companies) and de-generating companies that strive to have fewer staff every day… but with more Clients.
An organizational typology of this type, which in turn is rewarded on the basis of its different contributions, must make it relatively unnecessary in the short term to talk about "helping SMEs", since the internal engine of the SME Entrepreneur when encouraged externally and with a favorable context it has to be multiplied geometrically.
To do this, just take a look at what happened in Argentina from European immigration and until about 1940; and as a double verification, but on the contrary, it only remains to recognize the limitations to the creation and development of SMEs and entrepreneurs that took place thereafter.
We can point out that fortunately, there is still a 7th. Option: still existing SMEs entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs.
If we take into account the survival and closure statistics of SMEs that were given from 1995 to the present, when more than 70% of them succumbed, we find an endangered species.
Within this small portion of survivors, their preferences, their motivations, their challenges, and their interests for generating above what is already created are still forged.
And if these are the ones that have this enormous amount of initiative and enlightenment that is capable of powering an entire community, we must turn to them; people are characterized by being mortal.
Many of these SMEs have stated that they are in the process of "selling their company" to exchange it for financial liquidity as they are tired and overwhelmed by the 3 existing regulatory machines through the different manifestations for which they operate.
A large number of SME entrepreneurs have closed their doors due to the high financial costs to which they have been subject by the Banks, others have done so due to the workloads that do not allow them to be competitive in a globalized economy and another important portion have stopped operate by labor lawsuits to which they were subject.
If there is no action on the part of the regulatory and control bodies to self-observe themselves in their different manifestations (machines to delay, impede and destroy) these SME entrepreneurs in Argentina - as well as in other Latin American countries - must be seen very highly. soon as fossil dinosaurs. But, of course, many state contractors, rulers and directors of multinational corporations have to choose “prestigious” universities for their children where they can develop a career.
And in the event that it occurs to these children to eventually become independent sometime in their life, their creativity should not go beyond operating a “franchising” of minced meat or women's clothing.
Now, it is possible that we are now faced with the fact that we have a fairly good diagnosis but we do not know exactly what we have to do to generate - worth the redundancy - "generators" of companies.
The question that we now ask ourselves has to do with whether it is really possible to develop Entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs.
Here we are going to link with the publication edited by The Organization Development Institute in its Newsletter of August 2004, under the editorship of Terry R. Armstrong - RODC. There, Dr. Armstrong, as an expert in the profession of change and organizational development, wonders if it is possible to train new professionals in this Profession of Organizational Development and highlights that many years ago most of the current consultants and Advisors were trained through mentoring and members who developed the practice at the National Training Lab.
Armstrong notes that today most of the people interested in the profession of change consultant and organizational development graduate in Masters programs that do a good job of educating students on theories and conceptual frameworks of Organizational Development..
But these institutions do not seem to be doing a good job in relation to the activity of practitioners that these graduates must exercise after completing their studies.
It seems that something similar is happening within the different Latin American cultures with the entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs who, already rounding their 50s or 60s, are heading towards perceiving that they themselves are mortal, and also see the difficulties their children have to continue - successfully - the businesses that parents created and consolidated.
There are many examples of the problems experienced by so-called family businesses that - unfortunately, and in their vast majority - collapse in the short term once the life of the founder is extinguished.
So there is an urgent need to access these entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs who have been successful for many years of their lives, supporting companies that, possibly, many graduates from the best universities on the planet possibly would not have supported.
And it is the task of rulers, academics, researchers, professors, consultants, managers and executives of companies, professionals, among others, to rescue the need for the existence of Entrepreneurs and Entrepreneurs before it is too late and we find franchises that go more beyond the level that characterizes fast-food businesses today, among others.
The founding fathers of companies in many Latin American countries, as inspiring and illuminating, did not presage the existence of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs who - among their functions - had to comply with a Procedures Manual, which was created in another culture.
Therefore, we demand to create and develop organizations where we can generate genuine work for others, without being a mere replica or copy of what is "done" elsewhere.
