Stories from the field: Passion and Commitment
While being exposed to creative business ideas day in and day out is a fun part of my job, probably the best part is getting to meet the entrepreneurs behind those ideas. In talking to one recently, it really reminded me of a couple of the core entrepreneurial qualities: Passion and Commitment.
The Story
This woman (let’s call her Jill) has a good job, as does her husband, and a couple kids. They would do quite well for themselves in their current jobs and be able to provide anything their children might need.
The problem is, Jill came up with a good idea. Then she got passionate about it. Then she committed to it.
Like many first time entrepreneurs, Jill had the idea but didn’t know how to get started. She was smart enough to do some research and had started a business plan, but needed help honing in on what was most important during this phase and what really needed to be in her plan. A friend of hers I had met with before referred her to me.
In the course of our conversation, Jill told me that her and her husband had decided to “downsize” their life by selling their house and buying something smaller, in order to free up a sizable chunk of equity for the venture.
Normally, when we hear something like that, we send up the red flags immediately to the entrepreneur. With a “fail early, fail cheap” point of view, we get very nervous when we hear entrepreneurs talk about spending their life savings or taking a second mortgage on their house to finance their ideas, especially when they don’t even know if they have something anyone wants to buy.
But in this case, Jill’s decision didn’t send up any red flags. She wasn’t planning on going into debt, merely freeing up some capital to get started. She and her husband obviously had the business experience to do this correctly and more important, Jill had the passion and commitment to take advantage of this short-term personal sacrifice.
I was glad to be able to help Jill get focused on next steps to get her closer to her goal, but I suspect I got more out of the meeting than she did.
The Leadership Lesson
Commitment is making a sacrifice to achieve our vision. Passion is feeling like it’s not a sacrifice.
More entrepreneurial qualities
I was skimming the bookshelf looking for some different methods to value early-stage companies (if anyone knows of some good online resources, please comment with them), and I came across another list of entrepeneurial qualities.
This list is out of The New Venture Handbook. Published in 1993 it is a little dated, but it’s not a bad little book. Targeted at aspiring entrepreneurs new to starting up their own business, it does a good job of walking them through the basics and telling them what to expect in their journey.
Here is the author’s list of entrepreneurial qualities:
- Industrious
- Rugged
- Stubborn
- Objective
- Independent
- Resilient
- Creative
- Responsible
We should recognize some old standbys from that list, but there are also some new takes. I especially like “objective” as it speaks to the ability to see things without emotion, from a business sense, enabling you to take hard stock of the situation without bringing personal biases into the equation. “Industrious” and “rugged” are good ones also to be considered.
DCO Weekend Reader - 8/15/08
The web is a vast repository of opinions, commentary and occasionally, wisdom. Here’s a selection of the best articles I read over the past week.
If you would like to recommend an article, blog or book, please leave a comment with your suggestion. Weekend Reader is a regular feature here at DCO, and you can read past Weekend Readers here.
Wow - LOTS of links this week. I’m not sure if I just enjoyed everything I read or if there really was that much good stuff this week. Either way, you should find plenty here to keep you busy over the weekend. The good news is, most of these links are short reads with a lot of value-add content. I promise I’ll try to be more selective next week.
Leadership
- The importance of conversation as part of your leadership practice.
- 5 tips for implementing innovation.
- A good quick read on 5 barriers to decisiveness and how to overcome them.
- A great list of beliefs that support leadership. I’ll be reconciling this one to my initial list of essential leadership qualities to see what I might have missed.
- Related to the bad habits post below, here are some examples of how too much ego can get in the way of effective leadership.
- Please, no complaining.
Thought-Provokers
- A Nice Guy Bill of Rights. Are you a nice guy? Is it hard for you to say “no” or to be firm with someone. Well you can be a no-nonsense leader and still be a nice guy. Here are some simple thoughts to get you started.
- This post was titled The Secret of the Web. I think it’s good everywhere.
- Do you have a bad habit or two that might be holding you back from that executive position you applied for recently? Check out this list and see. (Personally, I found myself guilty of the first two and will begin paying attention to these immediately).
- File this one under Dress for Domination. What color clothes do more winners wear? You may be surprised.
- The lengthened shadows of leaders.
For Fun
- Using online tool Dipity, you can create a visual, scaleable timeline that looks great. Check out this timeline of Internet fads, or this one on the conflict in Darfur. Signup is quick and painless. Adding “sources” like photo-sharing site, YouTube and blogs, you can add rich media to your timeline. Timelines can be embedded into websites, and tools are offered to link into various social sites. While I’m not sure I will use Dipity right away, I like the concept. It seems to be an easy way to relate history via rich media. What I don’t see is a way to create a timeline and package it up for stand-alone presentation. This is a new tool, so stay tuned for future features.
Books
- A list of 5 books covering the topic of the value of social media to the enterprise. Don’t discount this topic - social networking is here to stay and smart leaders will understand it and use it.
- I just read a great quote on books, attributed to Winston Churchill:
“If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or, as it were, fondle them–peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on their shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you will at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances.”
Your morning routine, interrupted
When you wake up in the morning do you have a smile on your face and a sense of happy anticipation for the day you are about to enter into? Or do you wake to “just another day”, or worse a sense of dread or depression?
If you fall into the second camp, ask yourself the following questions. You can ask them in your head on the way to work, so no one will hear you. I just ask one thing - just this once, be absolutely brutally honest with yourself.
Ready?
- Why am I not excited at the prospect of a new day?
- What would have to change for me to waken with a smile on my face?
- What’s the worst that could happen if I made that change?
- Now the Zinger: which is worse - how you feel each morning or making that tough change?
These don’t have to be huge life issues we’re talking about here. It could just be you’re bored at work, regret not apologizing to someone for some harsh words, or haven’t come to terms with getting a bit older. Whatever it is, confront it, figure out what it would take to move past it, then decide which is worse.
Either way, accept it and move on. Life’s too short.
Essential qualities of entrepreneurship - ver. 1
Okay, time for you all to speak up and tell me what you think. After taking my own notes as to the qualities I think are essential for entrepreneurship, I posted a question on the topic over at LinkedIn’s Q&A section and got some great additional feedback. So in this post, I will quickly outline three lists:
- The qualities I believe are essential for successful entrepreneurship
- Qualities “on the bubble” that I can’t decide are essential or not
- Some ideas on what might be missing from the first list
I’m looking for your feedback. As I’ve said numerous other places on this blog, I want to develop this topic through not only my own thoughts but a rich dialogue with everyone reading the blog. Please comment early and comment often.
The yardstick I am using for these essential qualities is one of “necessary and sufficient”. That is to say that each of these qualities not only has to be present for successful entrepreneurship (e.g. it is necessary), but possession of all these qualities is all you need(they are sufficient). Therefore in your feedback tell me not only what is missing, but what can left off. If “entrepreneurship” is not a familiar term to you, then evaluate these qualities from a leadership perspective.
The goal of this post is not so much to examine the qualities in detail, as to simply start the process of getting a list we all agree on.
What Leadership qualities are you looking for in our next President?
I just read a fantastic article over on the Harvard Business Publishing site. They pose the question I repeat as the title of this post. What leadership qualities are you looking for in our next President.
It has long been my contention that political elections are largely marketing events. At the local and maybe regional level one stands a chance of potentially knowing something of value about a candidate that could be useful in forming an actionable opinion. At the Federal level, I truly believe this is next to impossible. Therefore, political campaigns are less about qualifications and character, and more about message and image. Again - just my opinion, feel free to rebut.
LinkedIn question on entrepreneurship core qualities
I’ve had good success, and some fun, over the last couple of months asking and responding to questions on the LinkedIn Q&A section. If you are a LinkedIn user and haven’t checked it out, I highly recommend giving it a test drive. It may not be a fit for you, but you should definitely know it’s there and how to use it. It is a great resource, totally free, and very helpful in most situations.
As a validation of the core qualities of entrepreneurship I am currently writing up, and in an effort to uncover any other qualities I may have missed, I posted a question last night on LinkedIn. I asked the simple question of what core qualities are essential for entrepreneurship.
The question has struck a chord. Already overnight and this morning, I have close to 10 responses, which in my experience is good response. Lots of great comments, a controversial one in my mind (no I won’t tell you which one), and some real gems.
If you’d like to check out the current answers, and post your own thoughts, the question is here.
If there is any problems with the above link, please leave me a comment. LinkedIn can be a bit finicky sometimes when linking to content only available after sign-in. I think that link should work.
I look forward to your comments.
DCO Weekend Reader - 8/8/2008
The web is a vast repository of opinions, commentary and occasionally, wisdom. Here’s a selection of the best articles I read over the past week.
If you would like to recommend an article, blog or book, please leave a comment with your suggestion.
This week I’m pleased to have two great lists of book recommendations, and some other recommendations via post comments. When I first started this feature, the four sections of the Weekend Reader were written somewhat on the fly, and the section on Books I thought would be the hardest to consistently have good content for. On the contrary, with the popularity of the Leadership and Excellence topic, and the number of blogs dedicated to it, I’m pleased to so far be able to find good information on recommended books.
Leadership
- Kevin offers 5 ways to incorporate learning into your work and your life. He offers up 5 questions to ask ourselves to positively navigate learning opportunities.
- I recently found Steve Pavlina’s blog on Personal Development. I haven’t read it enough to recommend it yet, but if the following list of interesting posts I found upon signing up are any indication, this will be one blog whose posts I will look forward to: Making sense of having lots of different interests (this is me and I love the positive spin on this), Steve’s brief overview of The purpose of Life, and equating habit change to chess.
- Since it’s such an important quality of being a leader, you will want to read this article on Soul Shelter with numerous tips on how to stay stressed. (Yes, that is sarcasm…)
Thought-Provokers
- Are you a PITA? No, not an animal lover, a Pain in the Arse! Following the philosophy that all of us are someone’s problem, take this test to find out exactly what kind of PITA you are.
- The Leading Blog asks: Can you Lead with Kindness? In answer to that question, they recommend a new book called Leading with Kindness. Based on the excepts they provide, I’m adding this book to my reading list (I really need to get to the bookstore). And before you starting thinking I’m going all warm and fuzzy, leading with kindness may not be exactly what you think. As pointed out in the post, you can be hard-nosed and kind.
For Fun
Nothing popped up on the radar screen this week, so I’m reaching into my bag of tricks for something fun. Ask 500 People bills itself as “public opinion polls for the world”. Basically, anyone can submit a question (with answers) to the site. Site visitors vote on the questions they like, and the current active question is closed once 500 people cast their votes. Questions can range from the absurd (”How famous you are?”) to the sublime (”Have you ever written to spammers asking them if spamming is a good way to make a living?”).
Questions can be yes/no, multiple choice (including pictures), and 1 to 5 scale. If you register with the site, you can create and ask your own questions. This would all just be an interesting social web experiment until you find the section that gives you the ability to embed the questions you create on your own website. Digging a little further, you find the section on using Ask 500 People as low-cost market research. Paid questions are asked on a private network. If you are looking for a low cost way to get wide demographic opinions on any business question involving “people who use the Internet”, you may want to consider this service.
Check out this site at your own risk. It can be a serious time-waster. You have been warned.
Books
- An overview of the best Leadership books to be published in August.
- Going one better, a list of the best Leadership books ever!
- In commenting on a recent post, Carol had some great recommendations.
Stop being so hard on yourself
If you are interested in the pursuit of excellence, it is often too easy to focus on what you perceive as your flaws. A little critical self-evaluation is a good thing, too much focus can be destructive. This is one of my growth areas, as I tend to dwell on what I need to change in myself, rather than living positively.
I’ve been thinking on this the last couple days and came up with the following random thoughts:
- You find what you look for. If you go looking for what’s wrong with yourself, then that’s what you will find. Try looking for positive leadership qualities, you may surprise yourself.
- You are who you see yourself as. I heard a very wise man utter this phrase and it has stuck with me since. If you see yourself as a manager, you will act as a manager. If you see yourself as a leader, then you will act as a leader. If you see a flawed individual, full of weaknesses, then you will act accordingly. It is very powerful to think we can change how we act simply by seeing ourselves in a new light.
- Conversely, you are not who/what others see you as. Relationships and personal interactions are tangled webs of perception, emotion, bias, expectations and assumption. It has been my experience that whenever someone tells you their evaluation of “who you are”, it is much more likely they are speaking to how they perceived you in relation to their expectations of a particular interaction. Listen to the comments of others and don’t discount criticism, but also don’t assume others know you better than yourself.
- Your energy flows where your thoughts go. This was a favorite saying of my martial arts instructor, but I like what it has to say in this context also. If there is an aspect of yourself that you believe could be improved, then decide to change it. Write down what it will mean to change it, practice that new behaviour every day, think positively about the change every day, rinse and repeat for a month or two. You can change yourself, it simply takes focus and commitment.
That’s what has come to me over the last couple days noodling on this topic. I’d love to hear how you all handle not becoming too focused on your “areas of improvement”.
The basis for our conversations
With this post, I plan on writing a three post series providing the basic foundation for our conversations here:
- DCO Basics
- Core qualities of entreprenreuship
- Supporting qualities of entrepreneurship
These three introductory posts have been rumbling around in my head ever since I made the decision to start this blog; many of the concepts and biases I had formed even earlier. I had planned on building the subscriber base for the blog a bit more before writing these posts, but for those who know me, you know I can be somewhat impatient. As I say throughout this site, I am very interested in a two-way dialogue on this topic, and with more subscribers comes more comments. That said, just like great conversation makes for great parties, my hope is that subscribers to this site will follow from getting to the point.
So, without further ado, let’s get started.