What Is Capacity Building And How Does It Make Successful Entrepreneurs?

Author: Godswill Iboi No Comments

What is capacity building? How does it make successful entrepreneurs? What are the consequences attributed to lack of capacity? Why should you build capacity? Okay let’s talk about it right away.

Firstly, every successful accomplishment is a product of capacity.

A simple dictionary meaning tells that capacity is the actual or potential ability to perform, yield or withstand something.

Secondly, in business, capacity could be seen as the ability to manage, control and operate a business successfully.

Hence, most causes of business failures can be attributed to lack of capacity.

When you lack capacity, changes and growth can scare, intimidate, overwhelm, stress and weigh you down.

Table of Contents

A Brief Story On Capacity Building:

My great mentor in leadership Pastor Sam Adeyemi once gave a brief story on capacity building as described below.

There was one funny story of a local fisher man who goes to fishing with a fishing hook, a stick and a bucket.

Anytime he catches a fish, he uses his stick to measure the length of the fish to know if the fish was shorter or longer than his stick.

If the fish was less than or equal to the size of his stick, he throws it into his bucket so as to take it home.

However, if the fish was longer than his measuring stick, he throws the fish back into the river.

He continued this act until a friend who has been watching him for a while ask him; what is the philosophy behind the measuring stick and the fishes?

This young man was interested in knowing because there must be a reason he throws the big fishes back into the river and takes the smaller fishes measured less than or equal to the size of his stick.

The Fisherman’s Response And The Solution He Got:

The fisher man replied and said, “I’ve a frying pan at home and the size of this stick is the size the frying pan can take”.

He continued, “anytime I catch a bigger fish which is longer than the size of this stick with me, I know my frying pan at home cannot carry it, so I throw the bigger fish back into the river”.

He believes he doesn’t have a larger frying pan that can accommodate such size of fish and that’s why he throws them back into the river.

When the man who asked him heard this, he was puzzled and shocked at his response.

Oh lala, that is really funny isn’t it.

Similarly, that is exactly how people live in reality because they lack capacity.

Hence, they throw big dream away because they think it’s not possible.

In addition, to help him out, he taught the fisherman how to process the bigger fishes into smaller sizes his frying pan can carry instead of throwing them away.

Okay, let’s move on.

3 Factors That Hinders Capacity Building In People:

Similarly, most people are unable to establish the strongholds in their mind through their upbringing and experiences.

1. Experience:

Most people grew up with terrible experiences.

Their upbringing took a tool on their mental health thereby placing barriers on their thoughts.

The only way out for them is by educating them to see possibilities.

As an extra hint, reading books from successful entrepreneurs will be a long way to help out.

Also Read: 12 Reasons You Should Never Borrow Money From Families And Friends.

2. Environment:

The problem with most people today is that they are used to what they know.

The failures in their environment have conditioned them to believe that success is almost impossible.

This explains why people who grow up in lack and poverty find it difficult to adjust their thinking.

Hence, you might wonder why many people’s life don’t change in a radical way.

This is because changing their thinking is not easy.

In addition, such people have been used to environments that makes small things look big to them.

Therefore, the best way to help them is to press reset in their systems.

Get them out of their default modes, erase their old programming and install new ones.

3. Undeserved Mindset:

Many people today don’t think they deserve to be successful.

Their minds lack flexibility.

To them, it’s not possible until they see it with their eyes and touch it with their hands.

Thereby limiting their capacity to grow and explore success.

What Is Capacity Building And How Does It Make Successful Entrepreneurs? Click to Tweet

4 Importance Of Capacity Building In Entrepreneurship:

1. You Must Build Capacity To Dream Big:

It takes capacity to build dreams, to build great businesses like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Tesla, Facebook, Alibaba and other world class global businesses.

You need capacity for new visions, new ideas.

Ideas that yield a million or billion dollars requires capacity.

To an entrepreneur, one ideas is worth a billion dollars.

You need capacity for inventive imaginations:

Therefore, capacity is required to produce, invent new apps and technologies, business models and effective management systems.