The Entrepreneur's Mentor

Mentoring

The January 2008 Harvard Business review has a wonderful article on mentoring in professional service firms. The authors state that mentoring has been a casualty of hyper-competitiveness and rapid growth. They feel that those firms that fail to mentor all of their professionals will have a hard time surviving.

Professional firms rely heavily on the intellectual capital of their people. And if they fail to nurture it, they will lose it.

Do you have a formal mentoring program? Do you even know where to begin? Do you know what your people need to be mentored on?

I wrote an article in my newsletter a few months ago about the importance of mentoring. Without it, employees will not gain the knowledge of the organization, of the culture and of how to become a success.

You don't hire good people and then leave their success to chance. If you are willing to train them on software programs or proposal writing, doesn't it make sense to develop them in the areas of presentation, values, goals, ethics, work ethic, measures of success, etc.?

Mentoring pays off for both the mentor and the protege.

Opportunities: Some See Them, Some Don't

I was discussing the movie "Charlie Wilson's War" with a colleague this morning. She, like I, marveled at the opportunity the United States missed when we failed to spend any money re-building Afghanistan after we helped that country defeat the Soviets. Charlie Wilson saw the opportunity to build friendships and an ongoing relationship, but Congress, despite the minimal cost, failed to see it and thus failed to act.

Now look at what we have in Afghanistan.

Opportunity abounds. It floats free in the universe for all to see. Why don't we all see it?

Some wear blinders, focused only on the road ahead of them, looking neither to the left or the right, up or down.

Some are in too much of a hurry to get where they think they are going.

Some are too busy having fun.

And some may not have the confidence to think of themselves as someone who can take an opportunity and run with it.

Opportunity can be presented randomly or it can be the result of hard work and planning. Whichever, we must be on the lookout for it. We must be observant, ready and willing. And we must make sure that we have maximized our capabilities so we take advantage of an opportunity when we spot it.

Going back to Charlie Wilson, it is easy to see what he accomplished. He took advantage of his opportunity to do something great.

But it was not until he had a PURPOSE that he did it. If you have a purpose in life and you know what it is, opportunities will become visible that will help you achieve it. Once you have a purpose, you will be more alert looking for chances to achieve it.

Purpose + Opportunity can lead to Big Success.

Change: The Only Constant

Change has been a topic of this blog on a number of occasions. This political season drives the concept home quite emphatically.

From week to week, even day to day, the pundits are re-ordering their favorites to take home presidential nominations. Favorites on one side have included Thompson, McCain, Giuliani, Romney and Huckabee. Shuffle the deck and throw them out in a different order the next time. Oops, religion is the issue of the day, re-order them. Uh-oh, Bhutto is assassinated in Pakistan and foreign affairs experience is key- shuffle again and here comes McCain.

It is not so different with the Democrats. Is it Hillary or Obama or Edwards this week?

World events shift suddenly, and our world is affected. There goes our agenda- we must pick up a different one now.

Business is not so different. We are humming along, and then some external event occurs and  all of a sudden we are shifted off of  our priorities and on to some different ones.

A company that knows it has too many of its eggs in one basket but never makes the time to deal with it, is all of a sudden faced with the bankruptcy of its biggest customer, which also has a big  receivable  out there. Sudden shift required.

A company that has been so busy answering the phone and dealing with call in business that it has never marketed, suddenly finds that the phone isn't ringing nearly as much as it was. Now what?

"Loyal" employees  start leaving and going to other companies and then you discover that your pay scale and benefits and  workplace environment  are not equal to those of your competitors.

What does it all mean? It means that we have to expect change, we have to be prepared for it, and if possible, we have to be out there ahead of it. Big international companies are always looking at global scenarios to see how certain occurrences would affect their businesses. They look at their various possible responses to those happenings and plan their potential courses of action.

Small businesses don't usually do that. But, for instance:

1. What if we go into a recession -how does that affect you?
2. What if there is another terrorist incident?
3. What if there is a transit strike?
4. What if your landlord raises your rent significantly?

Someone needs to be planning ahead, thinking, strategizing. Someone needs to be working on the business, more than in the business (to take a line from Michael Gerber, author of The E-Myth.

It is easy to be caught by surprise  if you are not paying attention.

The End of the Year-What Does It Mean?

Because of a decision made hundreds of years ago, we all get a fresh start in another five days - a New Year. We can put our mistakes from 2007 behind us and begin with a clean slate. What a great deal.

But before we tuck away those mistakes, we probably ought to pull them out and take one more look at them, just to make sure we learn their lessons. Are there any patterns that emerge when looking at them? ANy situations repeated over and over?

Is there, for instance, a lack of emotional intelligence in dealing with employees or customers?

Is there a habit of making decisions too quickly, without considering available facts? Or of waiting for "all" of the facts to be in and being paralyzed at every decision?

Is there a glaring weakness in a given area like finance, operations, sales, marketing, or human resources that caused problems throughout the year?

Did you not delegate enough? Too much?

Did you work yourself until you burned out? Or not pay enough attention to your business?

Were you focused on the right things?

If we tuck those issues away, chances are they will pop back up in 2008.  Solution?

Deal with them and learn from them!

Our clean start is a chance to do things differently and better.  Take it.

Entrepreneurs and Dyslexia

There is a newly released study which concludes that dyslexia is far more prevalent in small business owners than anyone had previously imagined.

The study was done by Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at Cass Business School in London. Dyslexia appears in about 10% of the general population, but in the group of entrepreneurs studied it showed up in 33%.

The rationale is that the coping strategies dyslexics have learned since childhood, can be applied to running a business.

What do you think about that? I have heard that a high percentage of dyslexics are left handed. Does that mean that more entrepreneurs are left handed?

I find a lot of the entrepreneurs with whom I work have ADD. Anybody know of a connection between ADD and dyslexia? How about ADD and being left handed?

I also find that a higher percentage of entrepreneurs wear blue jeans than the general population.

What does it all mean?