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  Marta Zaragoza 9:30 am on January 30, 2012 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaborative management ( 25 ), company ( 12 ), enterprise 2.0 ( 90 ), entrepreneurs ( 21 ), teamwork ( 23 )   

  The golden rules for entrepreneurship 

  Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

  I started out on ZyncroBlog by commenting my ideas on what enterprising initiative means in a wider sense of the word. I encouraged you all to be enterprising and carry out all initiatives possible through a journey of constant learning that enables you to develop new and better skills and competences.

  Retaking the comparison we made of the entrepreneur’s journey with Snakes and Ladders, today I’ve got some golden rules to remember when traveling around the board to achieve your mission and vision.

  Golden rules that are essentially factors that affect any enterprising initiative:

  Firstly, our competences that represent our integrated set of knowledge, skills, aptitudes and attitudes that we put into play in any situation or activity.

   

  We need to identify our competence resources!!

   

  Both resources acquired in informal and formal contexts. The goal is to be able to design an improvement plan that will help us to achieve our objectives, while being sufficiently inspiring and motivating to encourage us to continue to develop our professional and enterprising competences.

  Secondly, values or beliefs that limit us or build barriers against our enterprising initiatives; some our own, others imposed by our surroundings.

  For greater comfort and quality of life, understood as the level of goods and services we’re capable of acquiring and consuming, we have adopted behavior and attitudes characterized by:

  • Wanting a stereotyped success, which brings us far from any initiative that involves going out and finding our own concept of success;
  • Seeing a job “for life” as the best option for us;
  • Believing that as employees we’re not paid to think, and less still to propose and even carry out our own initiatives, and:

  Being true inter-entrepreneurs!

   

  • Or simply, running from any situation that involves risk or failure, giving up on the only factor in life that involves true learning.

  All these beliefs have been fed, among others, by an authoritarian, hierarchical business culture and a “human resources” management model that doesn’t take into account that those resources are “people”.

   

  People with extraordinary competences waiting to be discovered…

  
  

  And willing to be promoted in order to contribute to the good progress of those companies, with initiative, independence and creativity.

  Thirdly, we should mention alignment with the environment. This involves being able to identify and analyze all information emerging from the surroundings, be they economic, socio-cultural, political, technological, environmental, etc. in order to prevent threats and design measures and leverage opportunities.

   

  Any successful initiative with vision for the future will have to watch for the wellbeing of its people and care for the environment.

  
  

  Last but not least, cooperation and online work. Working as a team with all the people involved and being able to commence shared projects in all areas. Undoubtedly here the role of Enterprise Social Networks for Enterprises, like Zyncro, is key, as they enable an optimum management of knowledge in the company, which in turn aids cooperation among and between teams.

  To conclude, I sincerely believe that the most interesting and exciting part of the journey is not reaching the end, but being able to develop our competences and share success and being in harmony with our own values and our surroundings.
   

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  Marta Zaragoza 9:30 am on January 10, 2012 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: business ( 26 ), entrepreneurs ( 21 ), startup ( 11 )   

  Enterprising initiatives: A good resolution for 2012 

  Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

  Editor’s note: At Zyncro, we wanted to mention the concept of entrepreneurship in our ZyncroBlog because, as you already know, we’re an enterprising, young and dynamic company… that is motivated by “enterprising initiatives” and by a desire to learn and grow day by day. We also want to take this opportunity to share with you the article “5 Spanish start-ups to look out for in 2012”, which mentions us as one of the 5 most promising Spanish start-ups for 2012. Thanks to everyone for making this possible!

  Coinciding with my first post on this space, I’d like to propose a good resolution for this upcoming year. Before that, a few words about me for those that don’t already know me: as an economist and entrepreneur, my career is linked with company startup and consolidation processes, especially within the area of business strategies and assessment, and improving professional and entrepreneurial skills. So obviously, my resolution is linked with this experience!!

  My “positive resolution” is for enterprising initiative, and although for many it is synonym of “setting up a company”, I can assure you that it is a much wider, constructive and interesting notion. It can represent any initiative that you want to develop within any given field, without its size, resource or scope of action being directly proportional to the value provided.

  With this positive resolution, what’s more, I hope to contribute by providing you with renewed ideas, given the infinity of attempts that we make during this period, year after year, to stop smoking, to go to the gym or to improve our language skills, among others.

  Endeavor and change

  I say “positive resolution”, because apart from the benefits that we undoubtedly will achieve on a individual level, enterprising initiative is also a way—if not the only way—to overcome this widespread recession (economic, political, cultural, etc.) in which we as a society find ourselves. I hope that you’ll agree with me that entrepreneurship is also a great way to enable the change involved in any situation of this nature, to face the future with renewed optimism and energy.

  In a wider sense, having enterprising initiative becomes a need both for society and companies as a whole and for our own life projects (personal, professional and business). Why?

  Firstly, because it enables us to renew old structures, models, beliefs, etc. something which is extremely necessary in order to undertake any change process with a clear vision of the future. We’d be very shortsighted if we thought that change comes from the institutions and those that own or sit on the board of directors of the company.

  We need everyone, regardless of the role or function they perform, to take responsibility for their part and take the initiative in diverse areas as part of the shared project (concept widely used by Koldo Saratxaga), be it from within the organizations, society as a whole or within our own personal environment.

  Secondly, the entrepreneurial process involves a path of constant learning for the person involved, which requires going through several phases:

  1. Generating ideas
  2. Analyzing them
  3. Putting them into action
  4. Consolidating them
  5. Growing with new creative and innovative challenges.

  Finally, in all these phases, we need to invest time to investigate, experiment, learn, train our skills, abilities and attitudes, etc.

  So it can be both a motivating and exciting path!

  Just like Snakes and Ladders , we each have our own dice to roll in the way we believe right. From one or more initiatives, we move around the board, searching for our mission and vision, bound by our own values.

  At first sight, the game appears to be easy, but we mustn’t forget that if we don’t spend enough time on each of their stages and activities, we may have to go back several squares or simply start again. Although, it could be worse: we could remain as prisoners in our “reality” that gives us our desired stability; in other words, we won’t developing our ability to take the initiative, find our independence, creativity and innovation, among other skills.

  I’ll finish up this post with two wishes:

  The first, that we see our passing through this world as a process of constant learning, becoming entrepreneurs who carry out all the initiatives that enable us to develop better and new skills.

  The second, to have the opportunity to participate in this space in order to develop some ideas that I’ve only hinted at here.

  Happy journey, enterpreneur!!!