Entrepreneurial Management in business
of any size

- Mouli Cohen, February 2004

Entrepreneurs should not only constantly look at trends or specific market dynamics for new ideas, we also look for successful management strategies that can be employed against new ideas. Business management is a temporal art, just as business opportunities are temporal. A strategy that works today, will likely not work tomorrow.

As we emerge into the new millennium, we find ourselves in a new economic climate of optimism fostered by the successes of '98-00, yet marked with a stringent dose of realism. How do entrepreneurs infuse their companies with "undisciplined" entrepreneurial problem solving, balanced with the discipline of good business management? By adopting and combining solid business strategies with the zeal and calculated risk taking of entrepreneurial ventures.

In pursuing new business opportunities today, entrepreneurs can build energetic and disciplined companies by following a few contemporary tenets:

1. A company in any phase of growth benefits from frank and honest communications. No one gets ahead by hiding the facts or true nature of the problems faced by any business. The quickest path to success is to maintain a pragmatic perspective on what's working and what's not. Too many larger businesses fail or find themselves on the rocks by forgetting that fastest growth comes not from ignoring failures, but from turning failures and weakness into learned advantage. This frankness needs to extend throughout the enterprise and include rewards for brutal honesty.


2. Honest mistakes are only made once. There's too much competition to take a casual approach to improvement. It's management's job to notice problem areas, correct them and move on. The worst mistake is in not improving when you know there's room to improve. In "old-minded" organizations, managers are rewarded for keeping the machine humming along. Contemporary organizations embrace the entrepreneurial zeal of constant improvement. The only way to assure your organization acts this way is to hold management accountable for constant improvement. In today's climate, management that does not improve the business, should get out of the business.


3. For winners, Victory is the status quo. Acknowledge the win and then move on. You won't find Donald Trump, or his seasoned apprentice dwelling on the latest victory. To do so would be like celebrating every breath throughout the day. Winners win. Seek the wins, own them as if they are your natural born right and a natural product of running business as usual. This is a trait of large, successful companies that smaller entrepreneurial ventures can use to their advantage. Adopting an attitude and culture that winning is common, breeds success.


4. It takes teams. To move faster in today's business world, you have to team up to stay at speed. Even though business today is automated, people are not. Management teams of two with discreet and shared responsibility is a simple, proactive tactic for keeping business steadily growing. Teams with good chemistry balance each other, compliment weaknesses with strengths and provide a far more consistent energy and focus.


5. To keep up you must build growth and profits. The entrepreneurial zeal of growth combined with the big business zeal of profits is a potent mix. To succeed today, executives must be required to achieve on both fronts. Failure to do both, even while performing well is a harbinger of slow obsolescence for any company. Technology, business climates and global economic forces all have added a Darwinian influence to corporate performance today. If you want to win, you have to manage your company as if there is a competitor somewhere in the world who is growing and increasing profits faster than you...because there probably is.


6. A bad idea costs money. As soon as you've determined that an idea is not going to work, stop spending on it. While this is common sense for entrepreneurs, it's a tenet that management often ignores in an effort to save face or avoid admission of failure, often costing weeks or months of time and money. Admitting the weakness or failure of a project is also the clearest and fastest way to move it or a variation onto the fast track of success.

Whether you are a student of Jack Welch, Michael Dell, Bill Gates or Barry Diller, one thing you have to certainly consider in modeling your management style today: Complacency kills. Most of what these guys focus on is challenging the status quo, which even for the biggest of the big businesses, means fostering an entrepreneurial zeal throughout your company.