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Social Entrepreneurship – Changing Paradigms

Posted By Stephan Polomski On January 8, 2010 @ 19:35 In Corporate Social Responsibility, Human Resources, Leadership, Management | Comments Disabled

Why am I doing it almost every day, five days a week or even more?

What is motivating me to do what I do almost every day of my life?

What is the vision for myself when I am doing it almost every day, and on the basis of which values, for which purpose?

What do I expect for myself by doing so almost every day?

What is the legacy, I intend to leave?

Where do I focus on?

What is it exactly which gives me a positive resonance, inside my heart and outside in my social environment?

Do I have a personal mission?

Do I know my life´s personal assignment?

Am I ready to embrace life´s absurdity?

Do I know my place of belonging from where I am able to lead change for myself and thus for others?

Do I really live now, in this very irretrievable moment without procrastinating my move towards my essential aspiration to later when structures, conditions, practical constraints might be less demanding?

Do I have contact to something which might be called my inner light, my spark, my hope and do I follow it?

Am I ready to overrule life´s obstacles, may it be with the aid of this light, spark or hope?

What have I done today for myself that makes me really happy?

Have I done something today, which had positive impact on others?

Do I really care or am I just and deliberately selfish, which is a free choice as well?

These and more other questions I would hand over someone who asks me if he or she would qualify to be a social entrepreneur.

A social entrepreneur is not a business person who takes action in order to generate profits in an aggressive, highly competitive business world with clear and cruel patterns like survival of the fittest.

A social entrepreneur is a business person who takes action in order to do good in an aggressive, highly competitive world with clear and cruel patterns like survival of the fittest. He is somebody who shifted the focus of his entrepreneurial activities and who underwent a change of economical paradigms: I invest my intelligence, my life-time, my activities into a good cause and I am still securing material and economical existence of my company but not with a mere profit-driven motivation.

A good cause might simply be to change my behavior in a way that I charge my environment in a positive way.

Well, you might say, fine, this text here is the seasonally contemplative New Year´s blog on The Care Guys´. I am afraid, guys, it is not that easy.

Have you read the questions above? Really one by one?

Did they resonate inside yourself? Did you try to answer them honestly to yourself? Not yet?

So, try again, please, take it seriously.

Feeling any hesitation? Any resistance? Well, nothing to worry about, this is just a sign, that you are reaching a personal border.

Done?

How are your feelings? Did you find all the answers?

“Are you really on track? On track of your own road map? That inner map where you find the objectives you really desire and truly aspire?”

Are you really on track? On track of your own road map? That inner map where you find the objectives you really desire and truly aspire?

Heading for wealth, fame and immortality?

Or have you seen or felt shadows whispering: it might be wrong what you are currently doing? Wrong for yourself, wrong for the people within your range of influence?

Have you ever thought about the possibility that executing the rat race inside the framework of the economical principle and its paradigm of profit maximization might not be truly inspiring you, not truly fulfilling you, not truly granting you the meaning and the inner conviction, you are looking for, this yes, it is right what I am doing here?

Have you ever thought that it might be an option to give up the paradigm of mere profit maximization in favor of a more social vision in order to escape the exhausting rat race and still living the power of your competencies and the principles of good economical management and leadership?

What it needs, this is a change of paradigms, a change in our set of values, a change in our way of setting priorities.

When in 1983 Muhammad Yunnus [1] started the Grameen Bank [2] and gave mirco credits to people who were not considered worthy of any credits by other banks nobody would have thought that meanwhile and nowadays social entrepreneurship became a worldwide movement.

What Yunnus achieved is that he forced people to take responsibility for themselves by trusting them and thus he enabled them to secure their existence on their own endowed with a small credit. At the same time, he created a win-win-situation for both, his bank and the beneficiary, by establishing a working consensus. The measurable success of the Grameen Bank is of course not one of interest rates and the profit out of them. The measurable long term success is a reduction of fierce poverty in Bangladesh.

Certainly, poverty is not a figure or index which is taught in MBA programs throughout the world.

Again: it needs a change of economical paradigms in order to integrate upcoming necessities of our worldwide society. This might initiate a second globalization.

It needs more and more people who understand the need for caring leadership which is based on the principles of good management and new targets and figures which are not profit-related. This will shift the focus of our economical actions.

It needs people who are taking responsibility, who are ready to change the course of their professional lives and head towards new targets and a new focus on the whole system.

Do not say it is not possible: in the year 1945 Franz Werfel [3] drafted a world without economical principle and profit maximization in his visionary science-fiction novel “Star of the Unborn” [4]. It describes our planet in 80.000 years from the middle of last century.

Yunnus and others started to move towards this direction now. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for that.

Are you ready to cross your personal border towards meaning and self-responsibility today?

You might want to revise the questions above.

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URL to article: http://www.thecareguys.com/2010/01/08/social-entrepreneurship-changing-paradigms/

URLs in this post:

[1] Muhammad Yunnus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPk2gRuIdj0

[2] Grameen Bank: http://www.grameen-info.org/

[3] Franz Werfel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Werfel

[4] “Star of the Unborn”: http://amzn.com/B0007DQM3O

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[8] immigration and naturalization: http://immigrationandnaturalizationnow.net/

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