I started working with a first-time entrepreneur who felt she was drowning. I told her she need some structure and process to run the business. I told her she could benefit from regular meetings, set schedules and standard operating procedures that didn’t require scrambling every time the company had an issue or met with investors, customers, vendors and other resources. Basic stuff. The stuff that mature businesses use as the foundation for running their business. Her reaction? She looked at me like I was crazy. She believed that her latest issue was simply a “personnel issue” that had to be handled and not indicative of a lack of process. The next day it was the product. The next it was investors. The next it was the marketing plan.
“Process is the fuel that energizes progress.”ย
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While each day can be different, the fundamental elements of any business are the same- sales, marketing, operations, finance, people, etc. Establishing processes to deal with the common issues of a business, seems like a waste of time to most entrepreneurs. Process is the fuel that energizes progress, yet many entrepreneurs view process as a dirty word reserved for General Electric and Six Sigma classes. This visceral reaction is based on the faulty perspective that the entrepreneur’s job is to innovate, upset the rules, invent new markets and simply do things differently. In other words, the entrepreneur’s prerogative is precisely to not operate like big companies with set procedures for everything that move at the pace of battleships. The entrepreneur has to move, and move faster- not slower.
The feeling is understandable. As entrepreneurs, we pride ourselves on our independence, creativity, risk taking and willingness to chart the unknown. Scheduling meetings, defining accountability and discussing process may feel like a step backwards or a step in the wrong direction; after all, many entrepreneurs feel they left the status quo behind on purpose- along with org charts, mandatory meetings, and “corporate speak”- when they fled their cubicle to join the “dark side.” While this gut feeling makes sense, it is a perspective that can harm entrepreneurs’ endeavors from day one and fundamentally disable their progress. The entrepreneur’s perspective that process is meant for larger companies, and the wave of activity is just the nature of the entrepreneurial beast, can hamper your organization for years.
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