senceworld.com Blog

The spirit of entrepreneurship

October 12th, 2011

As a business owner, your role is to provide strategic guidance, leadership and vision for your business and when you find yourself unable to provide any of these, its time for a break. I have come across quite a few people whom, either through mental laziness or ‘environmental fatigue’ have left the responsibility of finding a vision for their business to their employees.  How does that work? 

No one can dream your dream better than you and no one can articulate your dream better than you. When your employees have to start dreaming on your behalf then it is no longer your dream and soon it will no longer be your business too.

I understand that the business environment can drive one mad and invariably lead to severe tiredness and an overhwelming desire to throw in the towel, hence the word ‘environmental fatigue’ but we must not give up. People have been known to survive, not just the ‘barely scraping by’ kind of survival, but the seriously doing well kind of survival. Truth is, if they can so can you.

So what do you need to do to keep going?

1. Visioning!!!!!! You must create a vision, verbalise it, internalise it and live it.  This is the only thing that will keep you going when it appears everything else has conspired against you. You have to believe in it so much that you can almost taste it.  A wise man (Janos Arany) said “in dreams and in love there are no impossibilities” and for as long as you can believe in that vision who dare disbelieve?

2. Get buy-in – Find people who are even worse dreamers than you and sell your vision to them, so that, in your low moments they can take up the dream and continue to run with it. ” You need men who can dream of things that never were” (John F. Kennedy). Its like a wrestling tag team, when one person is failing the other takes over. In entreprenuership you cannot run the race alone you need the right people.

3. Dreamers are great but you also need dreamers who can implement. It is no good if you all while away time in a dream filled haze. A dream does not become reality until somebody makes it happen.

4. Be structured in the way you run your business. No one wants to work in madness. People do better when they know for a fact that certain things are constant. Imagine how chaotic it will be not knowing if the sun will rise tomorrow or not. When your people are not sure what they will find everyime they turn up for work, it can be unsettling and unproductive.

5. Keep your promises to your people, it makes you a reliable leader. It is said that “Hope deffered makes a man sick but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life”. Do not create an environment of distrust, but one of equity, fairness and openness.

 6. Communicate!!! when you don’t  they will make up stories and you will not like what you hear. Besides you are all in this together and since you cannot do this by yourself, its time you start communicating.

7. Do unto others – I think this is the best quote in the whole wide world. What can be better? We tend to forget that we are all human beings and that chances are, what you would not like the next person is likely not to like it too, no matter how lowly their station in life. They might tolerate it because they have no choice, but once they have a choice, Speedy Gonzales will have nothing on them.

Ok!  I know what you are thinking,  this is really hard! Yep it is!  But who said that running a business would be easy? Certainly not me! If anything I warned you! ( see the “Life of the Entrepreneur”).

To summarise, this is a factual statement from another wise man –  ”No matter how dark things seem to be or actually are, raise your sights and see the possibilities- always see them, for they’re always there.” (Norman Vincent Peale) I love wise men and women don’t you?

Look you already took the plunge and you have expended all this time and energy, there’s really no going back. So grit your teeth, pull up your socks and get on with it.

Enough of this dream transference nonsense and on with some serious visioning…… that’s the spirit of entrepreneurship.

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