PI Training

Personal Initiative (PI) Training is a psychological training program based on action regulation theory. The key insight of this theory is that actions are affected by goals, information seeking, plans, and obtaining feedback. Building on this insight, the PI Training fosters entrepreneurs’ proactive mindset, enabling them to exploit future opportunities. The training follows an interactive, action-oriented methodology that allows participants to learn by doing and to immediately apply the content to their own business. We primarily implemented the PI Training in developing and emerging economies to contribute to the economic development and poverty alleviation. The PI Training is not only very cost-effective, yielding a profit within approximately one year, but also easily transferable. That is, the training uses a train-the-trainer (TTT) approach that facilitates knowledge transfer and empowers local trainers to conduct PI Training in a sustainable manner.

Theoretical Foundation of the PI Training

PI Training is based on action regulation theory (Frese & Zapf, 1994) which posits that actions are affected by goals, information seeking, plans, and obtaining feedback. The training follows an interactive, action-oriented methodology that allows participants to learn by doing and to immediately apply the content to their own business. The PI Training is based on scientific evidence. This means that consolidated findings from psychology and entrepreneurship research are translated into so-called action principles. Action principles are rules of thumb that guide entrepreneurs how to show personal initiative in terms of self-starting, future-oriented, and persistent behavior.

Within PI Training, goal-setting, searching for information, planning, and feedback are linked to each of the three components of personal initiative. For example, goals should have a unique component (self-starting) and should be long-term (future-thinking). Back-up plans ensure that entrepreneurs can keep on working toward their goals in spite of obstacles. PI Training combines a top-down (teaching action principles) with a bottom-up approach (learning through action and by making errors). Case studies as well as individual and group activities enable entrepreneurs to apply a proactive mindset to their own businesses during the training program. We also emphasize the important role of negative feedback because it provides valuable information on how entrepreneurs can improve their businesses. PI Training therefore encourages participants to provide both positive and negative feedback to each other’s ideas, goals, and plans.

A good example of how PI Training differs from other entrepreneurship and management trainings is its perspective on sourcing finances for a business project. In the “traditional” training program, participants learn how to keep financial records, they get to know lending products offered by banks, and they learn what is needed to apply for loans. In PI Training, entrepreneurs are taught how to identify and make use of unusual sources of money (self-starting) and how to bootstrap so that they do not rely on external funding in the long run (future-thinking). They also learn to develop a plan B or even plan C in order to be prepared if financial problems occur (overcoming barriers).

Overview of the Content and the Method of Conducting the PI Training

Our Personal Initiative Training aims at fostering self-starting, future-oriented and persistent behavior. The training shapes participants’ mindset and thus offers an alternative to more traditional business trainings focusing, for example, on marketing and financial skills. In order to achieve this goal, the training combines theoretical background knowledge with a practical dimension. Consequently, the participants first learn action principles in theory and are then encouraged to apply them in practice. This way, an active mindset can be developed before it is further internalized and enhanced.
In detail, the training contains four overarching subjects, which can be found in both its theoretical and practical elements. These subjects cover goal setting, information collection and prognosis, planning and executing, and monitoring and feedback.
Once the action principles on these topics are conveyed and illustrated with the help of case studies, they are transferred to each participants’ business. Here, the participants apply the principles to their work, giving them the chance to connect what they have learned with their internal action schemas. This is followed by the practical action training, giving the participants room to make errors, get feedback, and improve. This way, participants can practice, internalize and refine the action principles to increase the fit to their circumstances and learn to deal with the frustration that comes with the inevitable mistakes on their journeys. Over time, participants make a habit of these behavior patterns and go through the processes independently, learning from self-correction and self-feedback. Finally, they can flexibly apply the acquired skills to their work life and show personal initiative more frequently.

Key Evaluation Results

The positive impact of Personal Initiative (PI) Training is manifold. First, it changes the mind-set of entrepreneurs, enabling them to identify new opportunities, act on them quickly, develop better ideas on how to influence their environment, get more feedback, and persist in the pursuit of their new ideas. Second, by implementing an effective entrepreneurship training in developing and emerging countries, we support the growth of local businesses, and thereby contribute to poverty reduction. Third, we help policymakers and practitioners to develop better educational programs for entrepreneurs. Our trainings are based on scientific evidence, and our research meets the highest scientific quality standards by using randomized control trials (RCT). RCT is the only approach that allows to draw causal conclusions and to better understand the conditions and mechanisms by which entrepreneurship trainings affect business success.

PI Training has been implemented in the context of several internationally funded research projects in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. PI Training is evaluated using multiple measurements over time. In Togo, for example, its impact was assessed over a period of more than two years. The research in Togo demonstrated an increase in profits by 30% within two years after PI Training. Additionally, the profit growth was 2.7 times higher than after attending a traditional business training. Also, Uganda revealed promising result. Here, entrepreneurs who attended PI Training increased their level of sales by 27% within one year and increased their number of employees by 35% within one year after PI Training
(see Glaub et al., 2014; Campos et al., 2017).