The Age of Start-Ups

With such an overabundance of talent among black youth, I am often left without words when having to pass comment on the despondency within which we find ourselves.

A plethora of business ventures, especially in the arts and culture sector, have become a cluster now commonly dubbed ‘the golden economy’ of our country.

But often than not, we observe more and more black business ventures failing dismally in the face of structural inadequacies and poor corporate management strategies.

Yet that cannot be the sole reason for such a phenomenally contrived state of affairs for black owned start-up businesses.

The question still begs for an answer though, what is the greatest characteristic shared by these failed business ventures?

Maybe the answer is manifold, but first I would like propose that LAZINESS is the ultimate enemy of these entrepreneurial escapades.

The ‘LAZINESS’ I am referring to is the type that is characterised by a suicidally romantic individualism, which most art practitioners seem possess in great abundance.

The complex of ‘it’s my idea so I must become a central figure of authority’ has seen financial mismanagements occurring because of individualists who wanted to oversee business finances without possessing the required knowledge and business acumen.

Coupled with that narcissist way of viewing business and its intricacy, the narrow mindedness eventually overwhelms what could have been a crucially successful venture. I consider this self-centred ideology of such toxic individualism ‘lazy’ because it is one type of ‘LAZINESS to learn’, meaning being lazy to admit a lack of knowledge.

This type of ‘lazy’ then camouflages itself in exorbitant verbatim, often finding those least knowledgeable being the most outspoken and defensive to criticism.

Soon, the bully culture develops among those who would be better equipped to be successful colleagues, mistrusts mushroom in the corridors and people start to quit. The second level of LAZINESS then ensues experienced by those select few who feel they were exploited, avoiding any further interaction with the same industry which is supposed to feed them.

Now seeds of LAZINESS find root in this environment of MISTRUST, when colleagues stop sharing ideas which could benefit the business, let alone interact with fellow colleagues.

Others realise ‘how much they were not aware of’, and begin claiming ignorance; yet another symptom of LAZINESS, which is in fact ‘an act of ignoring’.

Others begin plundering and utilizing company infrastructure for their personal projects while the passionate seem stuck in limbo with the constant inertia causing them to gravitate towards one faction or the other.

Then financial audits reveal putrid slime trampled under carpets of boardrooms turned storage rooms; reception areas shut down and a handful of colleagues cut their own keys to access the facilities.

Months pass unnoticed, and those who ‘worked’ at such and such a company don’t want to even mention the name of the said business venture, slandering partners and bad-mouthing colleagues about failures which could have been averted.

Undeniably, there still are devastating effects of the continued ownership of our country’s cultural resources by a minority of white dominated organizations and companies.

But that in itself doesn’t provide a satisfactory reason why black business solidarity cannot be realised at this juncture of our democratic dispensation.

And therefore, I am left to propose another possible nemesis assailing black business enterprises specifically within the arts and culture sector.

Lack of COLLABORATION or misunderstanding of the concept of COLLABORATION provides an enigmatic conflict inciting element within any organization.

The idea of ‘where is my credit?’ has become a catch phrase that has seen many ideas collapse because they could not be actively brought to life by an effective team working in a collaborative manner.

Let us consider also that this egoistical manner of inter-organizational communication and project management stems from the challenge of entities ‘who lack knowledge, but don’t want to accept their shortcomings’, who then opt to still oversee activities which they are ill-equipped to handle.

How does our ‘lazy jack of all trades’, ignoring the fact of their lack of knowledge is detrimental to business progress end up subjugating an entire team of reasonably intelligent persons?

One plausible answer might be that ‘he or she’ probably is that money magnet (my uncle knows this politician type of person), who has won the company a couple of BBE projects and high profile client. They are often found boasting claims of credibility within political circles which work hand in glove with corporate sector donors.

Their character is often constructed from a highly sophisticated condemnation of ideas especially when not theirs and they possessing an acute propensity for assimilating other people’s ideas and reconditioning them as their own.

Suffice to say, lazy people cannot collaborate, especially when considering the amount of work collaboration entails.

Constant and consistent communication, transparency, evaluation and re-evaluation of concepts, multiple drafts of policies and revisions that occur at all levels of operation.

These and other painstaking tasks are not designed for lazy people.

Lazy people are often most secretive, and they tend to be selfish to impeccable extremes.

So perhaps our business ventures require a technological invention that detects possible non-collaborators, lazy saboteurs, who have the suicide and selfish gene tangled around their entire DNA strands.

While we wait for this fictitious gadget to grace our consumerist shelves, might it be not best to investigate existing alternatives, speak to those enterprises which are scouring treacherous terrain for niche markets, and actually hording these by being constant trend-setters and grassroots brand activators?

I think there is a rapidly diminishing number of such business ventures which are worthy of note, but intending to converse with strategically attuned leaders of those companies that are thriving, I hope to unearth a compendium of pointers which I hope would be useful to any enterprising organization and company.