THE FIVE DEADLY MISTAKES - #2

#2 Failing to Assess Your Leadership Skills

Aaaaah...entrepreneurs...the embodiment of passion, creativity, bravery, insanity, and leadership. Wait...leadership? Yes, that's right...leadership. This is an area that is often overlooked and will cause all kinds of problems if not considered. Many entrepreneurs have management and leadership background, and some the extent of their management experience is parenting. However, your new start-up venture will almost certainly require a different kind of leadership approach and new set of skills than your corporate management position. Here's why:

There are several ways to classify the natural life cycles of a business or industry. They go as follows:

• Start-Up (chaos/organized chaos. Figuring out everything)



• Early Development Stage (We have proof-of-concept and are now moving fast with a focus on top-line growth and maybe market share, and definitely CASH-FLOW)



• Harvest (We are focused on EBITA or some variation of Net Profit, which means our operations are focused on optimization of processes)



• Rebirth (Something has changed our industry and customer behavior. We have to focus on change managment and reinventing ourselves)



• Start-Up (Again)
  

Each of these natural cycles requires a different leadership approach, as you can probably imagine. For example, based on your past experience you may have developed a natural leadership style that is perfect for a HARVEST company. This type of leader is probably required to rally their troops around making small tweaks to a system that is known to work. HARVEST leaders generally don't work in environments that are fast-paced (although, they would argue that point, but then again most of them haven't worked in a start-up where they've had to change their business model 5 minutes prior to an investor presentation. Not to mention, living off of mac & cheese and drinking, heaven forbid, tap water, but I digress...) However, a START-UP leader is generally required to rally the troops around a vision of what we think/hope will work. This requires different communication, decision-making, coping, selling, and general management skills than the other cycles.

Here's and exercise that you should do:

Get out a blank sheet of paper, a pen, and a cup-0-coffee. Make a list of all of your personal leadership skills and characteristics. For example: charismatic, able to see the big picture, people-oriented, etc. Now, make a list of all the different skills and characteristics that a leader needs to run your new business. This list may be quite different than the first list, but do not be afraid because now you are SELF-AWARE. Next, flip that piece of paper over and create an action plan of how you can begin to adapt to the leadership needs of your new business. This exercise won't take very long and is worth every second that you put into it. (you can also take a Visionary Leadership Assessment by emailing strategy@startupsmart.net)

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