Part 3: The Entrepreneurial Perspective

We at Launch Leadership Development are continuing our exploration of Michael Gerber’s book The E Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It.

Last week in Part 2 we covered the natural life cycle of a business. We saw that our Technician-minded business owner was at a crossroads with his business, and changes had to be made for the business to succeed. One major change includes changing his perspective about running a business.

Today we will explore the Entrepreneurial Perspective.

The Entrepreneurial Perspective The Technician-minded business owner will need to grow his entrepreneurial mindset and look at his business in a new way. The way an entrepreneur sees the business.

• sees the business as a system producing outside results for the customer, which then results in profits, whereas the Technician’s Perspective sees the business as a place where people work to provide inside results (for the technician) resulting in profits.
• starts with a clear vision of what the company looks like at its mature best and works backward to figure out how to get there. The Technician Perspective starts with the present, and an unknown future, with the hope of keeping it much like the present. 
• starts with what kind of customer the business is to be created for. The Technician only looks inwardly to define his skills, then asks, “How can I sell this?”

Gerber says the best businesses like McDonald’s and Fed Ex didn’t “end up” mature, they started as mature. They still went through infancy and adolescence stages, but in a different way. They had the Entrepreneurial perspective.  The Entrepreneurial Perspective asks, “How must the business work?” The Technician’s Perspective asks, “What work needs to be done?”

Focusing on how the business will work, function, and look like a successful mature business takes forward thinking and developing systems.  Our technician-minded friend is beginning to realize there is hope for his business working without him.

In Part 4: The Turn Key Revolution, we will see exactly how Gerber says this hope can be a reality.

-Jan Jones