In my years of working with entrepreneurs, I have heard many times the promise that their new idea will create the next Amazon or Apple, but I rarely hear the more important promise that the founder will practice all the good habits of winning entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. You see—I’m convinced that the entrepreneur makes the company, not the other way around.
This seemingly radical concept of people making all the difference in business has been around for a long time, perhaps most visibly in the classic book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” first published by Stephen R. Covey over 25 years ago. Yet, I still see most of the focus in the startup community on creating the best technology and process, rather than practicing the most effective habits.
In that context, I’d like to restate and amplify in business terms the top attributes that I believe every entrepreneur should aspire and commit to, consistent with the 7 most effective habits detailed by Covey many years ago:
- Be proactive and take the initiative. Being proactive in a new business means starting with a vision of how to do things better, rather than following someone else’s success model. We have enough social network startups. Enlarge your circle of influence, and manage risk as an opportunity, not a negative. Keep commitments, with no excuses.
- Make personal life goals drive the business. Begin with the end in mind—your definition of success based on your principles. You won’t be effective centering your life on someone else’s view of success, satisfaction, and happiness. Make sure you have a personal mission statement before you try to define one for your new business.
- Willing to work on the business as well as in the business. Many entrepreneurs, especially technologists, relish building the product, and assume the business will build itself. Effective entrepreneurs always put first things first, expect needs to change, and manage with discipline. That means knowing when to delegate, enlist help, and say no.
- Strive for win-win relationships and agreements. Successful startups are more about stakeholder win-win relationships than win-lose with competitors and vendors. In the same way, win-win performance agreements make for effective team members, partners, and investors. Win-win puts the responsibility on the entrepreneur to deliver results.
- Seek first to understand, then be understood. Communication is one of the most important skills in business. With today’s interactive social media, there is no reason to assume that you know what customers want, or they know what you have. Collect their view and communicate. Don’t be an entrepreneur with a solution looking for a problem.
- Build synergistic business relationships. Valuing the differences is the essence of synergy—the physical, mental, and emotional differences that might be used as steppingstones to new business and win-win opportunities. Different points of view, even healthy conflict, are the key to innovative solutions and timely required change.
- Practice continuous learning and self-renewal. Renewal is the principle and the process that empowers entrepreneurs to move through an upward spiral of growth, change, and continuous improvement. This is often called sharpening the saw. It facilitates learning, committing, and doing business on an increasingly higher plane.
For many entrepreneurs adopting these habits is a paradigm shift, as challenging as the one from technologist to business professional, but it can be done and has been done by every successful entrepreneur. In addition, the power of a paradigm shift is that it opens up a new level of thinking, and a new level of power. It’s a great new asset, often more important than new funding.
Remember that investors continue to see thousands of e-commerce and computer startups, but only a few new entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs. If you already have the effective habits I have outlined here, make those part of the story you lead with. If you don’t have them yet, now is the time to start.
Image credit: CC by Michigan Municipal League
