Entrepreneurship vs Leadership: for good outcomes you need both Entrepreneurship AND Leadership
/By Duncan Anderson. To see all blogs click here.
Summary
1. Outcome = 2. Entrepreneurship * 3. Leadership
Entrepreneurship = the right strategy
Leadership =
Know were strategy is vs Overton Window
Can shift the Overton Window
If strategy is quality and inside of Overton Window can inspire people to be onboard with the strategy
Jingle 1: Managers tell people what to do. Leaders inspire people to do.
Actively tries to ‘not get high on their own supply’ through thinking like a scientist and having Loyal Opposition = tell you if strategy is bad, tell you where Overton Window is vs where you think it is.
Jingle 2: Managers teach a healthy respect for authority. Leaders teach a healthy disrespect for authority.
IMO well functioning companies and countries have both a healthy respect and disrespect for authority :).
IMO to have a great outcome for a company, country, sports team, etc you need BOTH great Entrepreneurship AND great Leadership.
Examples (DA’s 10,000 foot 2c)
Elon Musk - epic entrepreneur, limited leader.
IMO Elon is the best entrepreneur ever. But he ain’t the best leader ever IMO.
If he didn’t have such epic missions for SpaceX and Tesla and wasn’t such an epic engineer then people wouldn’t be around (ie wasn’t IMO epic at ‘entrepreneurship’). IMO they are around in spite of his ‘leadership’, not because of it.
Steve Jobs - epic entrepreneur, limited leader.
Again epic on product… but not always the nicest person to be around.
In some respects the better one is at ‘strategy’ the more one can get away with average leadership? Jobs was known for yelling at and berating people. People often refer to him as ‘inspiring’ but that many people didn’t last long. Having said this there were people who stuck around for decades.
Sundar Pichai (current CEO of Google) - great entrepreneur, great leader
Building Chrome from scratch is pretty friggin amazing.
Really nice guy and able to get large teams working well together. This opposes vs someone like Andy Rubin who was by all accounts very abrasive (inventor of Android)
Steve Ballmer (former Microsoft CEO) - average entrepreneur, average leader
Average at product. Zune, Nokia purchase, etc.
Average leader… I do just love this click too much.
Satya Nadella (current Microsoft CEO) - solid entrepreneur, great leader
Really solid entrepreneur building eg Microsoft Azure.
Epic leader. The renaissance of Microsoft from strategy and culture under him is IMO epic. And just listen to him speak.
Lee Kuan Yew (first Prime Minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990) - epic entrepreneur, epic leader
Built Singapore from 3rd world country to now having the ~equal highest income per capita in ~2 generations.
Entrepreneurship - IMO he’s my prototype of a ‘pragmatist’ (vs ideologue). Do what works.
Leadership - honestly it’s not often you catch me watching political speeches about south east asia from the 70s… but watching Lee Kuan Yew is Lee-dership Kuan-owledge Ac-Yew-sition :).
*aside: read everything LKY has written! This book is a great place to start.
Angela Merkl (I’ve been trying to stay away from modern politics as it’s just a hot button topic).
Entrepreneurship - time will tell if some of the ideas work… but I like most of them!
Leadership - but IMO she is an epic leader. She has been able to get the German public (not all) on board with more immigation, bailing out other EU countries and more. Max respect Merks!
Overall model for ‘outcomes’ - “1. Outcome = 2. Entrepreneurship * 3. Leadership”
Entrepreneurship
A. Can make good strategy
Leadership
B. Know where strategy is vs Overton Window (ie acceptability)
C. If strategy is good but is outside of Overton Window then can shift Overton Window
D. If strategy is good and is inside the Overton Window then can inspire people to be behind the strategy (ie to want to do a good job). This is making a good story for the strategy (see ‘Story = Reality Distortion Field’. You need long term and short term)
E. Actively tries to ‘not get high on their own supply’ through thinking like a scientist and having Loyal Opposition
This is to 1. Tell you if your idea is wrong, 2. Stress test and improve the idea and 3. If you don’t have this, people don’t get behind something (ie will disagree and commit, they need the opportunity to disagree).
We all need external input, we will all be wrong from time to time. IMO unless we fight not to, we will eventually ‘get high on our own supply’.
People will and should disagree with what you think from time to time. If they don’t tell you they do you and them a disservice.
Your co-workers owe you their view, they betray you if they sacrifice this to your opinion.
If people don’t tell you if they have a different point of view then something is wrong. It’s you or them!
If you never hear any dissenting points of view then something is definitely wrong… and it is you!
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Details
What is the Overton Window?
Politics example from Wait But Why
Smoking example
iPhone example
Before the iphone launch in 2007 the biggest rising phone was the blackberry with a full keyboard. The ‘Overton Window’ was that a phone needed a keyboard. That a phone could have only a touch screen was seen as ‘controversial’ / ‘fringe’.
Steve Ballmer the Microsoft CEO at the time of the iPhone’s launch ““There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item.”
iPhones were wildly more expensive than the Nokia’s people bought, had crap battery life etc, but people bought them!
Textbooks example - Edrolo should consider making them with 100% in house resourcing vs external authors as was the existing way
Doing in house resourcing was initially heretical. And frankly it only really came about after we found it very difficult to work with external authors in a collaborative way (ie hard to collaborate when they are working on authoring in the night times after their full time teaching job).
Collaboration done well = … good.
Collaboration much easier if all work the same hours in the same place!
DA thoughts about Overton Window and product (perhaps this should be it’s own blog)?
Internal view - eg inside your company
It doesn’t matter how good your strategy is if it’s not ‘acceptable’ for your team / company / country. If your strategy falls outside the current Overton Window then people will not be on board.
You must be able to move the ‘Overton Window’ internally through ‘Leadership’.
How do I think you move the Overton Window? Communicate, communicate, communicate.
IMO you need to constantly present at company all hands, you need to send company wide blogs, you need to send team only blogs, you need to have discussions one on one and in small teams.
IMO the biggest component of Leadership is constant communication.
External view - eg for your customers
“Being too far ahead of your time is indistinguishable from being wrong.”
Individual purchase (iPhone) vs team purchase (textbook) AKA ‘building utopian vision’ vs ‘optimal first step’.
An iPhone is bought by an individual. They can make purchase decisions that work only for themselves.
Often the optimal strategy is to focus on the ‘innovators’ and ‘early adopters’.
What is ‘acceptable / mainstream’ for an innovator is likely ‘fringe / insane’ for a laggard.
If you are selling to individuals often the best strategy is to build your ‘utopian vision’ this gets ‘innovators’ on board who then shift the Overton Window for everyone else.
This is taking ‘10 steps of change in one hit’.
A textbook is bought for all teachers in that subject. So the purchase decision needs to work for everyone, not just one segment of teachers (eg innovators, or late majority)
If you have some teachers ‘not onboard’ then the product will not be bought.
IMO for a textbook you want to = optimal first step.
This is taking ‘1 step of change each year, so that in 10 years you have taken 10 steps. Not taking 10 steps in 1 year’.
IMO often:
Selling to individuals = best strategy is utopian destination product (ie 10 steps in one go)
Selling to teams = best strategy is what is the optimal first step (ie 1 step in one go)
One product strategy I have for selling to teams = 1. Have no scorched earth (ie do not abandon any of the use cases for the different teacher users segments) + 2. Changes to existing ‘Jobs To Be Done’ (JTBD) are one step from current usage (this is typically inside the overton window) + 3. You can do new JTBD that eg replace an existing JTBD but best not to ‘replace’, do in addition.
*aside: this probably deserves it’s own blog. Haha!
How to shift the Overton Window... IS ALSO stress testing and calibrating your Strategy… IS ALSO Leadership
One articulation I have for strategy: Strategy = a collection of evolving theorems (or Earned Secrets)
IMO theorems help more than they hinder.
IMO theorems work somewhere but not everywhere.
IMO strategy is a collection of intelligently layered together theorems that work in a positive sum fashion.
IMO strategy is constantly evolving. Strategy is never done. IMO thinking that strategy can be done is dumb. IMO constantly evolving strategy is lots of fun!
IMO you build, evolve and get feedback on strategy by:
Present strategy at company all-hands meetings
Write blogs on strategy constantly - eg weekly or fortnightly (IMO this is not something you do once for a year etc)
Have meetings on strategy constantly - eg weekly or fortnightly
Have others write about strategy constantly - eg weekly or fortnightly
Have informal chats with people every day or two about little components of strategy
Share external readings on strategy and discuss constantly - eg weekly or fortnightly
Comment
IMO the process of building and evolving strategy IS the same as moving the Overton Window.
If you just send eg one big email a year with ‘new strategy’ people might have no context, not get it, the strategy is outside of the overton window, etc etc.
How much you can shift the Overton Window is related to how much credibility you have
See ‘Cultivating Credibility’ blog.
IMO one avenue to cultivate credibility is communicating with others.
If you only take away one thing
IMO to have a great outcome for a company, country, sports team, etc you need BOTH great Entrepreneurship AND great Leadership.
If you want to go fast, go by yourself.
If you want to go far, go with others.
No journey is long with good company.
If you want good company… and a good company ;) then constantly work on cultivating your strategy (entrepreneurship) and leadership (communication) skills.
Peace, love… and theorem evolution!