Entrepreneurial Qualities Survey followup 1 of 4
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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Entrepreneurial Qualities survey results
Survey says???
First of all, let me give a hearty “Thank You” for everyone that took the time to participate in this survey. I got some great input, validated some thoughts while having others challenged, and had some fun in the process. What more could you ask for?
So I’ll quickly run through the nature of the responses and my thought process on making sense of them. Then we’ll talk about some obvious conclusions, some not so obvious conclusions and comments left by the respondents. Lastly, my personal comments and where to go from here.
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Entrepreneurial Qualities Survey
So after a little break (that included sleeping overnight on the floor of the Houston airport), I’m ready to start diving in to entrepreneurial qualities.
I have some clear opinions on the topic. However, instead of just starting off with what I think, I thought it would be fun to take the temperature of you folks out there and see what you think are the important qualities for being a successful entrepreneur.
So I’ve put together a short survey that I’d like your participation on. There are only three questions:
- I ask you to classify yourself as a Leader, an Entrepreneur, a “person of excellence”, or Other. You don’t have to be an entrepreneur to take this survey. Don’t get too caught up in these classifications, just pick the one highest on the list you feel most closely matches you. However, if you are an entrepreneur, please select that, even if you feel you match other categories.
- The heart of the survey is a list of qualities often associated with entrepreneurs. You shouldn’t find many surprises here, and the list is a combination of my thoughts along with several books and articles. For each quality I ask you to rate it as necessary, supporting, not an entrepreneurial quality, or no opinion. “Necessary” and “Supporting” are defined in the survey.
- Finally, I give you a feedback question where you can tell me what you think I missed, what should be combined, etc.
All in all, I wouldn’t expect this to take you more than a few minutes. Unless of course, you are the overly thoughtful type and spend a lot of time thinking through each quality. You can follow this link to go directly to the survey.
Now, I’m not one of those people who believe you need 100 responses or more to get consensus results. In fact, quite the opposite. My experience has been that trends generally develop with very little data. I’m going to keep the survey open until I get 30 responses or 10 responses from entrepreneurs, whichever comes first. I’ll then take a look at the results and see if we have some clear consensus around qualities. I’ll report out and we’ll figure out where to go from there.
So please take a minute to give me your thoughts on the topic. If you have some friends, be they leaders or entrepreneurs (or both), please forward the link to them and ask if they would participate. I’m going to be sending to several of the entrepreneurs I’m working with. I’m excited about seeing the results - I think they will be very interesting.
Technology bottom note
I’m trying out a new service with this survey - PollDaddy.com. PollDaddy is an online poll and survey creation provider. This puts it in direct competition with the ever popular SurveyMonkey. I’ve used SurveyMonkey for a couple years at work and it is a great service at a fair price. While PollDaddy doesn’t have some of the bells and whistles SurveyMonkey does, it has a “fresher” look and feel to it and you also get all functionality in the free package. Upgrading removes branding logos and reduces restrictions on number of questions and responses. For corporate use, I don’t know that I saw a reason to abandon SurveyMonkey, but for personal use, or uses where the flat look and feel of SurveyMonkey doesn’t play well, give PollDaddy a try. And just in case you’re considering an online survey provider and not sure what to look for, here’s a good article to start with.
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DCO Weekend Reader - 10/10/08
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.
A light week, without the density of value from last week. That doesn’t mean these aren’t good articles; but if you didn’t get a chance to read through last week’s crop, there were some exceptional ones.
I think the must-reads this week would be Marshall’s guidelines for influencing upper management and the thought provoker on what entrepreneurship is really about. But if you only have time to follow one link, please check out Kiva.org and consider getting involved in this world-changing initiative.
Personal Excellence & Leadership
- These are challenging times for businesses. Sure, you’re a great leader. But doesn’t something in the back of your head tell you to adjust your style to match the current environment? Here’s some fundamentals to keep in mind during these turbulent times.
- Yes, yes, all of us know by now there is a difference in leading versus managing. Here’s a nice article breaking down the difference along four attributes: Competencies, Knowledge, Experience, and Personal Attributes.
“The great majority of people tend to focus downward. They are occupied with efforts rather than results. They worry over what the organization and their superiors ‘owe’ them and should do for them. And they are conscious above all of the authority they ‘should have’. As a result they render themselves ineffectual.” - Peter Drucker
- With that quote, our old friend Marshall Goldsmith kicks off a list of ten guidelines to do a better job of influencing your upper management. Personally, I find #1 and #4 are the ones I see others forgetting most often, while as an old technician I have to constantly monitor myself on #3.
Thought-Provokers
- How to deny distractions and be more productive. Enough said? Good pointers and a quick read.
- The role of persistence in achieving your goals. Again a quick read on a point we always need reminding.
- A sad reason to write a post, but thought provoking ideas nonetheless, on what we worship (and how it affects us).
- A thoughtful article on what entrepreneurship is really about. Like I’m fond of saying, the lessons in this post can easily extend well beyond entrepreneurship.
For Fun
For fun this week, I’m not posting a game. You’re probably too busy for that anyway. Instead I’m going to send you to a site that can be fun and rewarding at the same time, is a great example of socially-responsible entrepreneurship, and gives you the opportunity to change the world. Well, at least a little part of it. Kiva.org’s tagline is “loans that change lives”. If you have never heard of Kiva then you really need to take the time to read what they are all about. Basically, their model is to allow you to make micro-loans to entrepreneurs, usually socially disadvantaged, around the world. The average loan size is around $450 and the repayment rate is over 98%. I have not personally loaned on the site yet, but I plan to soon.
Enough of me talking. If, like me, you consider yourself fortunate to be where you are financially and professionally and are looking for a way to give back, check out Kiva. Once I do, I’ll give you a writeup on the experience. If you get there before me, please send me an E-mail with your thoughts and with your permission I’ll post them here.
Tips, Tricks & Resources
- Okay, we all intuitively know (or assume) that personal networking is the best way to get that new job. However, we’ve all probably run into an HR gatekeeper or gotten disqualified because our resume scan didn’t pop the proper keywords. Take heart, and read this article breaking down “the numbers” on personal networking with respect to career management. I especially like the stat that says “86 percent of human resource departments and 61 percent of search firms DO NOT post jobs with salaries over $200,000; they rely on referrals and networking”.
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DCO Weekend Reader - 8/29/08
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.
For you E-mail readers of DCO, I changed the timing of when updates get sent out. You may have noticed you only get one E-Mail and it gets sent early afternoon-ish (EST). I changed this to be earlier in the day, so you should receive it late morning now. This was mainly to get the “weekend” reader into your hands early enough so you could actually have it for the weekend.
It’s hard to believe Labor Day is upon us already, but Monday is the holiday. Summer sure went quick this year. Is it getting older that makes the years go by so quickly, or do we just get busier as adults and let things pass us by easier?
Regardless, have a great holiday weekend. Do a favor for me and let someone special know how much they mean to you.
Personal Excellence & Leadership
- Is creating your own personal mission statement on your agenda? Not sure how to get started. Following the link to a summary of three separate articles addressing the topic.
- Creating a sense of urgency is an important skill for many of us. However, that doesn’t mean you want your organization running around frantically in unorchestrated chaos. Here’s a good introduction to something called “urgent patience”.
- In my opinion the best leadership blog I’ve come across yet, George Ambler’s The Practice of Leadership never disappoints. It seems like every post is a candidate for the Weekend Reader. His most recent is no exception, writing about the 4 key components of a personal leadership vision.
Thought-Provokers
- Looking for a universal metric by which to measure yourself, your life or your work?
For Fun
- If you’re like me, you spend a lot of time online, both for work and for play. This quick post outlines 14 simple ways to boost your online productivity. All the tips are very simple, but make a lot of sense. There should be something for just about everyone in there.
- SlideShare is an online site that allows you to upload presentations and share them via a blog, website, or allow them to be downloaded. I tested this out with a recent post embedding a presentation on Positive Attitude. If you’re looking for a simple way to share and/or embed presentations in your site, check out this SlideShare demo.
Books
- The book Leading with Kindness covers the topic of respect and it’s relationship to honesty. With an overview that links dishonesty to disrespect and ultimately to hatred of self, what would appear at first as a rather pollyanna topic, ends up with the potential to greatly impact your organization, and yourself.
Tips & Tricks
- Why is an online presence important to your career? Here’s a short article with some answers to that question and some suggestions for getting started if you haven’t already.
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5 steps to sustained personal change
I’ve been using this concept of a “crucible” or intense life event as a backdrop lately for some of my posts. Today, I’d like to talk a little about something that has been an element of my current crucible, and what I have learned from it.
The topic is change, specifically personal change. Even more specifically, addressing the question of not simply how to change, but whether we can change, especially aspects of ourselves that are part of “who we are” and we would consider central to our personality makeup.
I’m not sure I can answer any of those questions yet. Change is a complex, complicated process and my experiences over the last year have shown me that while fundamental personal change is possible, it’s making the change permanent that is the real challenge.
In this post I’ll talk about the 5 steps I identified as essential to any attempt at sustained personal change. I’ll end the post with a few quick thoughts I’ve taken away recently from my “crucible”.
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DCO Weekend Reader - 8/22/08
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.
Last week I promised to try to limit the number of links this week, and sadly I just wasn’t able to live up to that promise. Whereas I initially thought this feature might not even be weekly, it now appears not only will it stay weekly, but it will be chock-full of great posts and links. To help you decide which links are most appropriate for you, I’ll expand my descriptions of posts that might not be self-explanatory, to help guide your weekend reading.
This week I’m also adding a new section to the Weekend Reader: Tips & Tricks. I read a post that simply had to be mentioned and it really didn’t fit any of the four categories, so I just created a new one.
I don’t know what it’s like where you are, but the weather here couldn’t be more pleasant. Late Summer / Early Fall weather gives us sunny days in the low 80’s and cool clear nights perfect for opening the windows. Have a great weekend - take a hike!
Personal Excellence & Leadership
- Courage has been discussed on this blog as a possible “essential” quality of entrepreneurship. This post examines what happens when you have to little or too much of it.
- Are your corporate (or for that matter personal) metrics not in line with your goals? If you hit your metrics can you still miss your goals?
- Some insightful comments on why leadership development might be such a popular topic these days in business.
- Positive Leadership (also a book).
- On staying committed… Warning #1 - some “salty” language. Warning #2 - may be extremely motivating.
- Are you the leader of an organization that needs a better sense of urgency? Could you use more urgency around your personal goals. Here is a good article outlining the difference between true urgency and false urgency, along with four tactics to create a true sense of urgency.
Thought-Provokers
- What beliefs support your Leadership philosophy? I’d love to see some thoughts from all of you in comments.
- Sitck with this one. It ends better than it starts.
For Fun
- This is fun and might even be useful! Screen2 lets you share your web browser with a friend or colleague. Nothing to install, safe and secure.
Books
- How to be useful: A beginner’s guid to not hating work. I’m glad to see themes like being nice and using common sense so prevalent in today’s leadership commentaries. This new book shows “how to restore courtesy in your work and your organization, and move up in the world while doing so.” It may sound a bit trite, but based on the extended overview of the book, this one may get added to my reading list.
Tips & Tricks
- The concept of one’s “personal brand” is one that I’m seeing more and more articles about. If this is an issue that is important to you, then you may be interested in this article on tracking your online brand. It’s not just as simple as “googling” your name once a month, and the author offers some tips on monitoring not only news, but blogs, forums, discussion boards and twitter.
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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.
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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.
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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.