As part of their 30th-anniversary issue, Inc. interviewed Jim Collins, author of Good to Great and Built to Last, discussing entrepreneurship in the article “Jim Collins: How to Thrive in 2009” by Bo Burlingham. I found the article contains some great ideas about entrepreneurship and leadership, the ones that caught my attention are:
Jim Collins describes entrepreneurship as a life concept… just like leadership is a life concept…
“How do you define entrepreneurship?
I take a broad view of it. The traditional definition — founding an entity designed to make money — is too narrow for me. I see entrepreneurship as more of a life concept. We all make choices about how we live our lives. You can take a paint-by-numbers approach, or you can start with a blank canvas. When you paint by numbers, the end result is guaranteed. You know what it’s going to be, and it might be good, but it will never be a masterpiece. Starting with a blank canvas is the only way to get a masterpiece, but you could also blow up. So, are you going to pick the paint-by-numbers kit or the blank canvas? That’s a life question, not a business question
It has to do with your ability to handle risk, no?
Not risk. Ambiguity. People confuse the two. My students used to come to me at Stanford and say, "I’d really like to do something on my own, but I’m just not ready to take that much risk. So I took the job with IBM." And I would say, "You’re not ready for risk? What’s the first thing you learn about investing? Never put all your eggs in one basket. You’ve just put all your eggs in one basket that is held by somebody else." As an entrepreneur, you know what the risks are. You see them. You understand them. You manage them. If you join someone else’s company, you may not know those risks, and not because they don’t exist. You just can’t see them, and so you can’t manage them. That’s a much more exposed position than the entrepreneur faces. But there’s lower ambiguity on the paint-by-numbers path: very clear but more risky. The entrepreneurial path: very ambiguous but less risk. Of course, the truth is that it’s all ambiguous, anyway. If you think you can predict the future, you’re crazy.”
It’s about Having a Larger Purpose in Mind…
“… think about the leading entrepreneurs of the past three decades: Steve Jobs, Ken Iverson, Herb Kelleher, Anita Roddick, Yvon Chouinard, Howard Schultz, Jeff Bezos. What jumps out at you as being consistent across all those people?
The larger purpose of what they were doing.
Right. They defined success on a very big scale. For Steve Jobs, it was about much more than selling computers. For Yvon Chouinard, more than clothing. For Anita Roddick, more than cosmetics. For Howard Schultz, more than coffee. For Jeff Bezos, more than online retailing. Wendy Kopp fits right in. We’re talking big — millions of kids, transforming society. The ambitions are huge.”
More and more having the right people, the right talent in the right place is what really matters…
“Steve Jobs was in the very first issue of Inc., back in April 1979. How have the basic skills required to build a great company changed from then to now?
I would say that the basic principles have largely not changed, but the skills are always changing. For example, nothing would suggest that the importance of the who has changed. If anything, our turbulence research reinforces the idea that the most important decisions are always who decisions. Whether you’re running a business in 1812, 1886, 1925, 1950, 1975, 2000, 2050, I see nothing to contradict the principle that who comes first and what comes second, for a very simple reason: If you cannot predict the what, you have to be able to do a good job with the who, because the what is going to be constantly shifting.
What exactly do you mean by doing a good job with the who?
Do you have a culture of people who A. share a set of values, B. have very clear responsibilities, and C. perform? Those who build a culture around those ideas are building upon something that is largely unchangeable.”
Ensure that you are continually learning… that you are managing your time and not your work…
“But what has changed if you’re building a business now, as opposed to 10, 20, or 30 years ago?
The skills. You need to be continually learning. For example, if you accept the idea that work is infinite and time is finite, you realize you have to manage your time and not your work. You need a laserlike focus on doing first things first. And that means having a ferocious understanding of what you are not going to do. The question used to be which phone call you wouldn’t take. Now, it’s the discipline not to have your e-mail on. The skill is knowing how to sift through the blizzard of information that hits you all the time. That’s a different skill from what you needed 50 years ago, but the fundamental principles don’t change.”
Technorati Tags: Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Business, Management, Interview, Purpose, Jim Collins
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