For many of us, the “American Dream” has been translated to mean owning your own business, calling the shots yourself, answering to no one. Many people have the desire to become an entrepreneur, but what sets the “wanna-be’s” apart from the “movers and shakers” of the business world, is the willingness to make mistakes. Some mistakes are obvious: underestimating financial needs; overspending; sacrificing quality for revenue growth… but there are other mistakes – more impactful mistakes – that will subliminally corrupt the very foundation of your business without you even realizing that they’ve occurred. The trick is to understand where the truly costly mistakes are and to put a strategy in place that will allow you to avoid them.
Not understanding the changing role of the founder(s)
The founder’s role needs to change as the organization grows, and this is a difficult transition for many. They don’t know when to make the transition, what that transition means to them (what will they do now?), and how to get comfortable with the fact that they will not be involved with many (or most) decisions. Their role is no longer to run the business, but to set strategy, to build relationships, to create vision, and be the external face of the company.
Worrying about making mistakes
Entrepreneurs start their businesses because they are risk takers who are willing to do things that others are not. Each entrepreneur has made some mistakes along the way, and has recognized them as learning opportunities. Yet often, as they grow the exact skill that made it possible to get to where they are today, they worry about taking risks and making mistakes. The consequences seem bigger now. At this point, there are more people around you who will notice. You believe you ‘should be smarter now’. Yet without taking risks growth will stagnate, learning will decline and you (along with your organization) will idle. In the law of physics, an object in motion stays in motion, and an object at rest stays at rest. So go make some mistakes, at least you’ll be moving.
Not unplugging
Entrepreneurs are known for not unplugging. They take their cell phones, ipads or tablets and computers on holidays. They call into the office when on vacation. They don’t take enough vacations. They don’t have enough balance in their lives. They end up burned out and don’t even know it, because they don’t unplug from the office – in both the true physical sense (no phones, emails etc.) and the mental sense. Ask 100 entrepreneurs what they do for diversion or leisure and most won’t be able to tell you. Those who can actually list leisure activities will admit they haven’t done them in a long, long time. (Excepting golf, of course; the corporate sport which can be mixed with work in order to network and secure clients.)
Undervaluing the importance of the right team
What’s the single most valuable asset in any business? Why, having the right people, of course. It’s next to impossible to find a factor in business today that has more impact on the success of a company than hiring the right people. If you don’t have the right people, no amount of revenue can build a successful company. And hiring is just the first step. This point includes spending too little time in developing the team, not having the right management team in place (or no management team), ignoring personnel issues that need to be addressed (or delaying so long that they cause other problems), and generally not seeing the organization as a team, or series of teams rather than a bunch of individual contributors.
Having no succession plan or business continuation plan in place
Entrepreneurs start a business because they have an idea, something that stirs their passion, something they want to accomplish. Along the way the business grows. Revenues increase, client numbers increase, staff size increases, expenses increase…everything increases. And they are so busy running the business, watching for opportunities and keying into economic changes, they forget that one day they won’t want to run the business any more, or won’t be able to. It’s not that they don’t think about succession planning or business continuation; they just don’t put any time into creating and implementing a plan that will ensure this.
In the next post, we will discuss five more subliminal mistakes entrepreneurs must avoid. The next five, “Failure to develop key leaders”, “Failing to communicate with important constituencies”, “Not planning, not planning well enough or not planning for the ‘what if’s’”, “Assuming that what got you here will get you there”, “Not seeing everything through the lens of “what can we learn from this”, will complete the list of ten subliminal messages.
Stay Tuned
