Trainer’s Notes for SUCCESS from Siva (14): Finding the Entrepreneur in YOU

Hi,
Good morning. Hope you had a great week. I must tell you that I have a good library of books at my home. There have been several of them I haven’t read yet. But now that I have a promise to keep posting the Notes that I make while reading the books, I have started taking one after another of them, reading them, making the notes, and posting them on my blog. This week, I laid my hands on the book, Going For IT! - (How to succeed as an entrepreneur) authored by Victor Kiam. I am sure you will find reading this week’s notes truly rewarding.
If you think buying or starting your own company is the only way to be an entrepreneur, you are wrong. As Victor Kiam sees it, entrepreneurship is a way of life. One can be an entrepreneur in a huge corporation, in a home, while at school, in government, or in retirement. Entrepreneurship is not only a philosophy of financial success, it is also a philosophy of life. It is life with liberty lived in the pursuit of happiness which can be achieved by anyone with energy, persistence, courage and a little bit of luck. In his book, GOING FOR IT!, Victor Kiam tells not only how he did it, but also how anyone can do it.
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What is  an entrepreneur?
While dictionary says, “Someone who organizes or manages any enterprise, especially a business that involves considerable initiative or risk," Victor Kiam says that entrepreneurs are those who understand that there is little difference between obstacle and opportunity, and are able to turn both to their advantage. He says that they are the people who willingly assume responsibility for the success or failure of a venture and are answerable for all of its facets.

Where can they be found?
Entrepreneurs are not just only those running their own business. They can also exist within the corporate mainstream as employees, in the government organizations as staff, in schools and colleges as students, homes as home makers, etc., They can be found everywhere. Everyone can explore and exhibit entrepreneurial principles in what they do.

What is an entrepreneur’s profile?
To find the entrepreneur in YOU, Victor Kiam suggests that you ask yourself the following questions:

	Questions to ask oneself	Essence of it
1	Do I have confidence in myself?	You have to believe in yourself. An entrepreneur must be able to motivate people, inspiring them to share in his commitment. In a corporation, you want the people working under you to follow your lead, and your superiors to respect your judgement. If you’re running your own business, you may want investors to place their money and trust behind you. You want your client to catch your enthusiasm and to believe in your product or service. How can you inspire them if you don’t believe in yourself.
2	Do I have confidence in my venture?	Anything you become involved with must be worth your total commitment. Do you believe it has a chance to make it. Go for it. If not, it is not likely that you will give the project the support it requires, and it may fail. Though you must always give your maximum effort, it is harder to do when you believe you’re backing a lost cause. Your confidence in the product or venture must be strong. You can’t sell anything that you wouldn’t buy yourself?
3	Am I willing to make sacrifices?	If you are an employee, forget watching the clock. Nine-to-five doesn’t exist for you as an entrepreneur.To find an edge over others, you must be willing to make some sacrifices. And once committed, you must be prepared for the effects that will have on your life-style. Your work should become your play. If you are an entrepreneur running your own business, the financial sacrifices would be even greater. You lose the security of your weekly or monthly salary till them time you have established your company and it started generating revenues for you. “No pain, no gain.” That should be the credo of every entrepreneur.
4	Am I a decision maker?	As an entrepreneur you’re pretty much on your own. You’re responsible for your business or division. If you are in a corporation, try to think as the President of the company would. Make it a habit to figure out what course of action you would recommend if the ultimate decision were yours. Being able to think that way and assuming responsibility will help you score points with your superiors.
5	Do I recognize opportunity?	This is the key. Approach, each idea thinking, “How can I make this work for me?”
6	Can I keep my cool?	The entrepreneur is generally like a captain of his ship..his company, his division, or his team of people. Everybody working for and with you will take their cue from you. If you’re down,  your company is down; your team is down. You must maintain a cool balance, especially in tougher times. As an entrepreneur, you command attention. Your swings in behaviour will affect others. “If one’s company is to remain calm, then the chap at the top must give the appearance of being calm.”
7	Do I have high levels of energy and stamina?	For an entrepreneur, sixteen-hour workdays are not unusual. You will need stamina. You need energy to grab the opportunities and hold onto them without allowing them to slip away from your hands. Commit yourself to life and you will find a reward you wouldn’t have bargained for: the fountain of youth.
8	Am I willing to lead by example?	It’s common sense, really. You can never ask an employee to do something that you yourself are not willing to do. You have a responsibility to work even harder than they do. You have to motivate the people around you, Leading by example is as good a way as any.

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This is the essence of the first chapter of the book, GOING FOR IT by Victor Kiam. By asking the questions listed above, one will get a fair amount of an idea what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur, be it as an employee working for any organization or as a business owner running a company. By becoming one, you are going to get many rewards…satisfaction of creating something out of nothing; a positive sense of self; respect of your peers and superiors, and of course the financial rewards.

Wishing you THE BEST always,
With love and regards
Siva
value4value@gmail.com

Trainer's Notes for SUCCESS from Siva (13): Humanizing People Management for Organizational SUCCESS

Hi,
Running a business? Or managing a team? Robert Townsend in his book, “UP THE ORGANIZATION – How to stop the company stifling people and strangling profits” tells how to humanize it – for having fun while making it all work better than it ever worked before, and better than anyone else is making it work. In this ground-breaking book, he reminds us not to get mired in all those sacred organizational routines that stifle people and strangle both profits and profitability. He deals with every single aspect (A-Z) involved in running an organization covering more than 100 different aspects of day-to-day work. I would like to share with you the essence of ONLY a few of the many given in the book in this week’s TNSS:

	Managerial aspect	What it is?	How to deal with it?
1	Conflict within the organization	A sign of a healthy organization – up to a point If you are a boss and your people fight you openly when they think you are wrong – that’s healthy. If your men fight each other openly in your presence for what they believe in – that’s healthy	A good manager doesn’t try to eliminate conflict; he manages it in such way that it only enriches the productivity of his team, and not wastes the energies of his people
2	Conviction vs Ego	Things get done because of a man or woman with conviction But institutions built with ego will have lots of money going into building them, lots of people working there, but with NO results.	Before you commit yourself to a new effort, it’s worth asking a couple of questions: 1) Are we really trying to do something worthwhile here? 2) Or are we just building another monument to some diseased ego?
3	Disobedience	A manager cannot take as an excuse for his mistakes in business as order given by his boss or boss’s boss. Any manager who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forward his reasons, insist on the plan being changed, instead of being the instrument of his organization’s downfall.	Disobedience is necessary, when it is otherwise causing harm to the organization. Appreciate your subordinate, who may be appearing to be disobedient to you, but in reality helping you correct yourself for organization’s good.
4	Leadership	True leadership must be for the benefit of the followers, not the enrichment of the leaders. In combat, officers eat last. Most people in big companies today are administered, not led. They are treated as personnel, not people.	To lead people, walk behind them. -Lai-Tzu When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, “We did it ourselves.”
5	Mistakes	Everyone commits mistakes. No one is immune to them. Be it the bosses or their subordinates, it is common to err. But the question is about, whether the mistakes are admitted in an organization? Or the organization is providing for such an environment?	Admit your mistakes openly, maybe even joyfully. Encourage your associates to do likewise by commiserating them. Never punish them. Babies learn to walk by falling down. If you beat a baby every time he falls down, he will never care much for walking. Beware of the boss who walks on water and never makes a mistake.
6	Promises	The world is divided into two classes of people: A) the few people who make good on their promises, and B) the many who don’t. Those who fall in Column A and stay there will be very valuable wherever they are.	Keep your promises. If asked when you can deliver something, ask for time to think. Build in a margin of safety. Name a date. Then deliver it earlier than you promised.

After all, people are the biggest asset for any organization. Organizations keep their people in the hands of the leaders who are supposed to lead them in order to build the organization in such way that the organization will last long serving its cause and making profits. Let’s keep the ‘human’ element in mind in managing people.
To learn more about humanizing the business and many other managerial aspects that Robert Townsend talks about in a crisp, precise, and practical manner, pls get hold of the book.
Your comments on this blog post are welcome.
To your success,
With love and regards,
Siva
value4value@gmail.com

Trainer's Notes for SUCCESS from Siva (12): Only The Paranoid Survive

Hi,
This week, I would be sharing with you the gist of the book, “Only The Paranoid Survive’ written by Andrew Grove, the former Chief of Intel Inc. This is one book I have read repeatedly, recommended repeatedly for people to read, and also shared the contents of it in my training programmes more frequently than those from any other books I read. Andrew presents in this book ideas from 2 sets of his experiences; one based on his years of experience leading Intel Inc into a major force and the other based on his interactions with the students of Stanford University where he cotaught a course on ‘strategic management’. Andrew writes about what it is like to lead a company out of the wilderness of change and into safer, more secure markets. He also introduces useful tools and ideas that will help the next generation of corporate scions stay ahead in times of rapid change. I would like to share the essence of one of the many powerful thoughts that Andrew prescribes through his book i.e., “Sooner or later something fundamental in your business/career will change.” You ought to be watchful. How prepared are you for taking advantage of that?
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Andrew believes that success contains the seeds of its own destruction. He says, “The more successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your business and then another chunk, and then another until there is nothing left. I believe that the primary responsibility of a manger is to guard constantly against other people’s interest and to inculcate this guardian attitude in the people under his or her management.”
He pronounces a new concept called “SIP” (Strategic Infection Point) in this book. He says that an SIP is a time in the life of a business or in a career when the fundamentals are about to change, which could bring about a profound change in one’s life. These are opportunities that one should sense, identify, and work on so as to be able to convert them to one’s advantage. He calls it a 10X force. These SIPs keep happening in every person or organization’s life. But they don’t happen in a loud and clear manner. They are very subtle, and one ought to have an eye to see them and a knack to smell them. More importantly, one ought to have the ability to manage them to turn them into 10X positive growth points. At times, lack of ability to manage SIP transitions could mean a 10X negative decline.
Ultimately, it boils down to an individual or organization’s ability to identify and manage the SIP transitions that will make dramatic growth in the life of a person or the business of an organization possible.
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Watch for the SIPs happening in your life. That could be your decision to buy a new piece of land, study a new course, or make a new business deal, join a new job, accepting to provide a service to your new customer, or the new technology that you have an opportunity to license, or a new product that you would like to add to your product portfolio, or something else. The SIPs happen on a daily basis, but won’t be noticed by those who are not willing to see them that way. If it is not you, someone out there is trying to find them, convert them into his or her advantage to outsmart you, outperform you, and knock you out of the competition. Be watchful! Andrew says, “Only the paranoid survive.”
To your SUCCESS,
With love and regards,
Siva
value4value@gmail.com