Winners Have a Personalized Entrepreneurship Philosophy
Entrepreneurs get bombarded with generic advice all the time: Embrace failure, follow your passion, know when and how to say no, balance work and life, build an effective team, be curious and, my personal favorite, think big.
Generic one-liners may sound inspiring but are often not practical. Following your passion does not necessarily guarantee your success, being constantly curious without purpose can lead you down the wrong path, failure is not inherently a good thing when you don’t have millions of VC money in the bank, and thinking too big too early can lead to your demise. Advice is both valuable and actionable only when it resonates with an entrepreneur and his / her personalized entrepreneurship philosophy.
Entrepreneur or not, we all have certain core beliefs. Based on those beliefs, we develop our unique and personalized philosophies. Those operating philosophies then fuel our personal operating system. Every entrepreneur plans and executes using his or her unique operating system.
John D. Rockefeller held the belief that “the growth of large business is merely a survival of the fittest.” His philosophy favors industry monopolization. In contrast, Andrew Carnegie, a primary rival to Rockefeller, believed that business success is ingrained in cooperation and learning how to combine diversified resources. His philosophy is rooted in his belief that guided collaboration allows common people to attain uncommon results.
A successful businessperson’s philosophy drives how their products are built and sold, how they make deals, how they negotiate, compete, and lead. It is their personalization that makes them, their companies and their journey unique.
J.R.D. Tata, the father of India’s civil aviation industry, was gifted with a free spirit, deep consciousness, and concrete identity. At the core of his business philosophy lies his passion for excellence, fondness for humans and drive to nurture future leaders. Tata’s philosophy is centered around one core element: people.
Warren Buffett believes in having discipline and provides simple rules: “Rule №1: Never lose money. Rule №2: Never forget rule №1.” The legendary investor’s philosophy seems to almost always emphasize knowledge, integrity, intelligent risk mitigation, and focusing on creating and seeking value. He claims “to win, what you need is emotional stability coupled with independent thinking and doing. Follow the facts and your reasoning.”
In contrast, Steve Jobs believed “there is no reason not to follow your heart.” He valued intuition and experiential wisdom more than intelligence, research or learned knowledge. Jobs was known to value creativity and risk. Jobs was credited to claim “I want to put a ding in the universe” and believing “it’s not the customer’s job to know what they want.”
Bill Gates defines himself as an optimist. But, an impatient optimist! Gates, like Warren Buffett, is an avid reader and a life student. In apparent contrast to Jobs, however, he believes “your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. You’ve got to want to be in this incredible feedback loop where you get the world-class people to tell you what you’re doing wrong.”
Gianni Agnelli, the Italian industrialist and an icon in the automotive industry, is described as “the master in deconstructing perfection to create uniqueness.” His philosophy around creativity is closer to Jobs. He is known for enjoying the art of making the difficult appear effortless and carefree; what Italians call “sprezzatura.” Gianni claimed, “My whole life has consisted of betting on the future.” He defined himself and his pleasures by stating: “Do you know what real pleasure is? A creative act. A pleasure without creativity is dead boring.” Gianni’s core entrepreneurship philosophy appears to be creativity and making things simple.
Entrepreneurial philosophies are shaped by each individual’s morality, priorities, view on creativity, and risk tolerance, as well as previous success patterns, upbringing, societal impacts, and his / her character strengths and flaws.
You have to personalize your entrepreneurship philosophy if you want to win. Your strategies, actions, reactions, decisions and priorities are then much more cohesive, coordinated and effective. Having a well-shaped entrepreneurial philosophy helps in turning the probability of success to your favor. Here are a few areas your perspective will directly influence your level of success:
1. Your philosophy will provide you with the guardrails of execution, the limits of your risk tolerance, your approach to creativity and innovation, and your reactions to crises.
2. Your beliefs will drive the culture of your organization, the role of politics at your shop and the effectiveness of your leadership.
3. Like personalized medicine can do for humans, your personalized approach will guide your constant diagnosis and understanding of the health of your organization.
4. Your philosophy will define your real value proposition to your customers, employees, partners, investors, and society. It will define you and your brand at the classical moments of truth, the customer interaction points, where the true character of your company is exposed to the world.
Shape your unique philosophy, trust it, make it the foundation of your operating system, strategies and decisions and realize your own version of greatness, your evolved improved version, always.
Note
We are conducting research on what the key elements of personalized entrepreneurship philosophies are. Your perspective is extremely appreciated. Comments are welcome and encouraged.
