The best results are always achieved together

Which is your strategy? Who are your stakeholders? What do you want to achieve? How to finance? Probably these and similar issues are the questions most of us ask when starting a (social) business.
So far, so good. But what has been done when having the answers to these questions is somehow a selfish approach. It is about you, your business, your plans. There is nothing wrong with it, but it is just a part of the whole and maybe not the most important…
Right at the beginning the decision whether you put yourself or others in the center of attention and how you define your business focus might make the difference.

What about community thinking?
Let me explain in a simple way: Normally, we do not start in the desert to set up a business. There are already people working at similar issues, systems (official or unofficial) have grown, cultures are huge influencers….

So, what is the community thinking? Understand and listen, where they are and what they think, and finally, where to find people to partner with you – on site? Maybe this is one of the most important questions to ask because finding partners might be essential for implementing what you are looking for. Partnering can mean many things which might have enormous influence on how you will plan, act and define your own position and goals: it can mean
– just being accepted
– being considered/ rated positively (from pure passive partnering to an active support) and/or people start mention you/your business
– offering and getting support where needed
– others/members of the community become business partners themselves
-you becoming a supporter of their business …

However, there is a partner community outside you should not under-estimate and not ignore. Your business success mainly depends on how you network and collaborate and if you understand the real needs and you are understood by others.
What about the local topics of interest and areas of experience? What does the community think?
Once we know more on that it should be possible to connect and to interlink. Strengthen coordination, using existing structure and becoming partners ourselves as a part of the community might be a decisive factor of success. Whether it is with ‘big’ institutions/bodies or people who just share your ideas and can contribute small portions only.

What do you think?