Feeding The Members of The Business Eco-System

Business is about people, and meetings are about communication. It has been said that there are so many "meetings" in today's business world, because meetings are where people communicate with each other [], usually to report progress, make plans or solve problems. Decisions have to be made, and it is people who have to make them. Activities have to be undertaken, and it is people who have to undertake them. Though it is the business person in a specific role who has to make the decisions and take that actions, it is that person, as a person, who is in need support, sometimes of a very specific nature.

Because of this high "people" component in business, there is both a high need and high opportunity for those of us who stand at the periphery of such activities to give support, assistance and encouragement. But we are often at a loss to know just how best to support the people around us who are in business.

This section of my web site is designed to show people (specifically, Ministers) how they can support the people around them (or in their Congregations) who work in the business world. It deliberately focuses on the "tiny-little-mini-micro-business" rather than the larger ones, for several reasons:

1. It is where all businesses start out, or started out in the past;
2. It is where large numbers of people are currently being encouraged to invest their time, resources, and energy (especially if they cannot get work);
3. It is the graveyard of the highest percentage of businesses;
4. It is the level of business which usually has personnel high on hope and low on everything else;
5. It is the phase of business life with the smallest buffer time and shortest "life expectancy" (usually six weeks from disaster at any given time);
6. The embryonic forms of the components of larger businesses are to be found there, which maintain their strengths and weaknesses as they grow larger;
7. I believe that the type of assistance needed by outside people does not change radically as the companies get bigger;
8. I believe that dollar for dollar and minute for minute, support at this level of business size can have the greatest impact of any type of outside assistance, particularly in terms of minimizing the spiritual-psycho-social damage to participants by the business dynamics (which is generally pretty rough);
9. As in gardening, it is the level of business where I personally find the greatest fascination... in the startup dynamics of "plant propagation" - the interface between the seed (idea) and the soil (resources), and those first faltering steps.

The Target Group of Users

This site is aimed at ministers in churches in South-Western Manitoba. Others might find the site useful, but the target audience is definitely local to this geographic area, and specific to ministers in the Church. I'm sure that others can do their own "translating", and I feel that making the material specific often makes that task easier. Aspect of a 12-point Brandon Profile are cross-referenced when appropriate in order to bring specific dimensions of the local situation into the discussion of the support initiatives. People from other communities would no doubt have other local factors to address in supporting their local business people.

I have targeted this material specifically at ministers because:

• Although ministers may not be the person who actually spearheads a specific business-person support initiative, I believe that they are in a unique position to be a catalyst for such an initiative.
• My own personal background experience in the overlapping areas of ministry, business and community development initiatives.
• My view of the Christian life has a dual dimension to it, mirroring Christ's life, which was both spiritual (/divine) and human, and believe that Christ came to illustrate and effect both a transformation and a blend of these two dimensions.
• I believe that five types of ministers have a high level of contact with people in the business world, and therefore a large opportunity to bring support to business people in the course of their activities, if they are helped to know how that might be done.
• To keep it concrete.

The Structure Of The Site

Structurally, this section of the site is divided into two parts:

1. Very specific resources to assist new business people , as they start or develop their businesses. It is organized around business people who occupy those various roles in the business world, and the decisions each has to make. The job titles are the most common titles for people in the various roles, even though in many cases, the same person wears several (or all) of the hats.

2. Specific resources to assist support people who stand by, indicating how they might best to assist those who are new to the business world. The approach is to let you listen in on the process of helping someone in business, to give you some idea about where to start.

In addition, these two sections are inter-linked so that:

• new business people can get some ideas as to who might help them and how they might best help.
• support people can get some idea about what new business people are facing, and how they might best be of help.
• business people needing specific help or needing to explain a situation to a support person can direct that person to the URL describing the situation for detailed information.
• Support people can direct new business people to a URL giving specific leads to assistance that might help them get started solving their problems or making good decisions.

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