Entrepreneurial Qualities Survey followup 1 of 3
As promised, I’ve given some thought to the results generated by the Entrepreneurial Qualities survey I recently ran. I’m going to break my thoughts into four separate posts:
- Thoughts on the qualities voted “necessary”
- Thoughts on the qualities voted “supporting”
- Comments recap
- Where to from here on the topic
The first post is the easy one – a recap on the qualities voted as necessary and my thoughts. If you remember, I defined a quality voted as necessary as one capturing a solid 80% of the total vote. This resulted in the following 11 qualities:
- Commitment
- Communication
- Competence
- Courage
- Focus
- Hard working
- Initiative
- Passion
- Positive attitude
- Responsibility
- Vision
Small surprises
Out of this list, nothing really took me as “out of left field”, although there were a couple that I must admit I was mildly surprised to see voted as necessary; in particular, Communication and Positive Attitude.
On Communication, I’m not surprised to see it identified as a necessary quality, it absolutely is. I guess I was more surprised to see it voted as one. Given the somewhat obvious nature of some of the other qualities it was nice to see this one identified as well. Plus, entrepreneurs don’t always recognize the value of good communications skills.
Positive Attitude was a bit more of a surprise, and another pleasant one. Given all the challenges, demands and setbacks you endure as an entrepreneur, a positive attitude is an important attribute of success. To see it voted as a necessary quality was a bit surprising and an interesting result. Personally, I’m torn as to whether it’s absolutely a necessary quality, but if I look back at how I described necessary qualities (that possessing a preponderance of them could be viewed as greatly increasing your chance of success), then I’m inclined to agree with the survey. Plus, a positive attitude just creates so much good business karma that it truly is indispensable.
Anything missing?
There were a couple of qualities that got voted as supporting that I tend to think of as necessary. Primary among them is Coachability. This is the quality that entrepeneurial support folks like me (and investors by the way) look for to guage how positively the entrepreneur responds to constructive criticism and alternate business models. We’re not looking to see if the entrepreneur will automatically change just because someone challenges them, but rather how positively they respond.
Also, I thought Faith would end up as a necessary quality, kind of like Positive Attitude. I wonder if people thought I meant Faith as in religious faith? What I really meant is just that unshakeable attitude that most serious entrepreneurs I meet have that whatever happens they just know things will work out okay.
The supporting quality that came the closest to being voted as necessary, without getting there, was Discipline. This one makes more sense to me. We see all kinds of undisciplined entrepreneurs, but as long as they have a balance to that nature, be it through Focus, a disciplined partner, or maybe actually being disciplined but just hiding it well by being disorganized, there are many ways to overcome a lack of discipline.
So all in all, I don’t think there were any huge errors of omission for necessary qualities. The only one I may override is Coachability.
Next up – a review of the qualities voted as “supporting”.
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Fantastic thought process!
One “quality” I think is missing is “Personal Accountability”.
Without Personal Accountability, a lot of time, energy, and resources can be lost.