Are you an Entrepreneur from within?

Entrepreneurship is the in-thing in India today. It is cool to be an Entrepreneur. It no longer has the social taboo of “Oh, you don’t have a regular job!”

The last decade has given immeasurable social acceptance for entrepreneurship and no doubt it has been driven by crazy amount of funding people have received and even crazier valuations made. So, many perceive it as a “short cut to be a millionaire”.

Like any other profession there are a set of competencies & skills one needs to develop to be an Entrepreneur. There are tons of courses, tutorials, websites and blogs which teach you, what it takes to be an Entrepreneur; what kind of skills you need; what to be vary of; what precautions to take etc. etc. And many people are enrolling to such courses (both on-line and in-person sessions) in hope and aspiration to be the new age cool entrepreneur.

There, however, are two distinct and complementary skill sets needed for Entrepreneurship building. First is the obvious one and most focused by everyone – developing the business skills viz. strategy, business intelligence, marketing, finance, managing funding, branding etc. – what I call the Hard Aspect of Entrepreneurship.

Second, though oft ignored but an important aspect, the Mindset of being an Entrepreneur – what it takes to be an entrepreneur from within. This includes developing achievement orientation, having a risk-taking appetite, ability to deal with failure and coping with it, ability to deal with Ambiguity, etc.

Being an Entrepreneur entails that you not only know the nuances of doing business but also be aware of the person you must be from within.

Let us look at some of internal dynamics of being an Entrepreneur.

Fear of Failure

As a part of growing up, we develop some deep-rooted beliefs about risk and failure. This is because socially success is something which has always been celebrated and failures are deplored. Failures traditionally have not been valued or seen as an important step of creating something new, but as a judgement of the person and consequently his/her social acceptance. Risk is something that is seen as unwanted, something that should be as much as possible avoided. Due to this many of us have developed risk aversion and suffer from what is called as fear of failure.

This fear is very subtle and governs how we even take day to day decisions, how we set our goals etc. And more often than not, this fear of failure limits the entrepreneur to set very high goals; pulls them down; and does not let one reach ones full potential.

Allergy to Ambiguity

Most of us, having grown in a very structured society and gone through the mainstream education system, where the curriculum is very boxed, focus is on the right answer, experimentation and curiosity is not rewarded. One of the very first questions asked to kids is “What will you become when you grow-up?”. This builds in most of us, a high need of predictability, clarity and visibility, This in turn develops in us a very strong need for order and what is called as “allergy to ambiguity”.

This need to order (or allergy to ambiguity) plays a big role when we grow up. It limits our ability to deal with uncertainty and the unknown and develops an inner need to conform. It is this aspect, that does not permit people to leave a “stable job” and becoming and entrepreneur is seen as a crazy jump into the unknown, hence avoidable.

Even when one jumps to become an entrepreneur – where nothing is certain, it gives lot of anxiety to the new entrepreneurs, impact their ability to make rational decisions and usually, in order to build in some stability and clarity, they end up making wrong decisions, esp. with respect to product strategy or funding strategy. Mistakes which many entrepreneurs would confess to have committed in the beginning of their journey.

Achievement Orientation

Over the years, Behavioral Scientists have observed that some people have an intense need to achieve; others perhaps the majority, do not seem to be as concerned about achievement. This is because people have different deeper inner motivations, developed as a part of conditioning and growing up. This need to achieve is called achievement motive (how badly one wants to achieve one’s goals), as opposed to affiliation motive (the need to relate to people; the need to belong) and power motive (the need to control people and things).

This need for achievement, (a drive to achieve, to accomplish) therefore, plays a critical role in making an entrepreneur successful. It is an inner spirit that activates an entrepreneur to strive for success. David McClelland in his research spread over more than a decade (incidentally much of which was done in India), concluded that this deeper motive to Achieve, though dormant in most people can be aroused and harnessed.

Clubbing this deeper motive to achieve along with understanding and developing risk taking attitude; tolerance for ambiguity; desire for creativity & problem solving; hope for success; ability to cope with failures etc. together forms a complete Entrepreneurial development program, which helps to develop the internal dimensions of being an Entrepreneur.

Hence developing awareness of your internal processes, nurturing and developing them is an essential element of being an Entrepreneur – and makes one an Entrepreneur from within.

Where are you in your journey?