I encountered interesting behaviours of few entrepreneurs and promoters in the past few months. Some useful for me study, some for my own improvement as a person and some became interesting subjects for my study. I am focusing in this article on the conflict of advisory and entrepreneurs' requirements.
Entrepreneurs take enormous risk in the path to build their businesses. Sometimes, the risks and gamble pays off and sometimes it doesn't. I am using risk with the meaning that the information available on hand is sufficient for a person to take a decision in that direction, whereas gamble is a clear directional call without any deep study.
As an advisor, Iam used to constantly watch for the risks and gambles of the promoters and post a warning signal and create a path around the potential traps. This process is the toughest. The reason being the visibility of the results of our work are not visible remotely from where the entrepreneur stands forget about being at the round the corner. Entrepreneur is always in a mode to address the immediate issues than worry only long term. They struggle to balance both the time frames. The mind set and thought process has to change often to live up to the requirements of both strategic and tactical requirements. Entrepreneurs say "now and here". Therefore the mantle of long term planning and strategy building falls in our lap.
Entrepreneurs have a great task of balancing the short and long term objectives. This balance is extremely critical as they would loose sight of their existence if any of them are ignored. In my experience the entrepreneurs are good at combining the short term to look at long term. Their ability to handle current issues and finding quick solutions to even the path is amazing. These have to be combined with the long term implications. Therefore, they need strong sounding board. Entrepreneurs seldom like to take no for their ideas and thoughts and force you in one way or the other and come around to pressurise you to say yes. That's why you see lots of yes men around entrepreneurs. In one of the case an entrepreneur has given the responsibility of taxation to his admin assistant who slept on the issue for a long time and woke on the tax filing day. There were some thoughts provided from our end from a long term perspective. The entrepreneur felt very happy to see the admin guy putting a lot of hard work to save the tax than look from the long term perspective. Yes entrepreneur is right as he immediately saves tax but has to face long term implications of short cuts taken. This is the trait which I always admire and abhor in entrepreneurs. Admire for the reason that short cuts addresses their immediate requirements; abhor because long term implications are ignored. Then you don't need an advisor.
Majority of the times I get a dirty look when I get introduced as Advisor and few jokes on advisory and consultancy will kick off and the discussion will hover around bad experiences with advisors they had when the consultants were engaged.
One of the entrepreneur commented that I have all the professional qualifications and B school degree to give him quick solutions. The entrepreneurs feel that we have a magic wand to quickly arrive at solutions and deal with situations. The situations are generally related to investors, people, fundraising, sales ets. If they are not addressed in a day's time they feel that they are wasting money and energy in employing us. Advisors are to think long term by balancing the short term executional objectives.
As Dan Ariely describes in his introduction note in Behavioural Economics guide 2015 "There are lots of biases, and lots of ways we make mistakes, but two of the blind spots that surprise me most are the continuous belief in the rationality of people and of the markets. This surprises me particularly because even the people who seem to believe that rationality is a good way to describe individuals, societies and markets, feel very differently when you ask them specific questions about the people and institutions they know very well. On one hand, they can state all kinds of high order beliefs about the rationality of people, corporations, and societies, but then they share very different sentiments about their significant other, their mother-in-law (and I am sure that their significant other and mother-in-law also have crazy stories to share about them), and the organizations they work at. Somehow when we look at a particular example of life up close, the illusion of sensible behavior fades almost instantly".
Jonathan Haidt in his book Happiness Hypothesis talks of the both sides of the brain and the interlinkages that exist. He makes an important observation that people on whom experiments were conducted where the interlinkage between the both sides of the brain is affected. He quotes patients seeing things but not able to spell out as seeing and speaking are controlled by different sides of the brain. He even says that they manipulate the answer to satisfy the examiner. Taking a page from that experiment and its results, entrepreneurs take this invisible risk and fall back on people to execute. What they is invisible to people around. So is the job of advisor keeping in mind the situation on hand what can be the best for the entrepreneur. The most common criticism is that whether I have ever tried to be entrepreneur and succeeded to to capable of advising. Frankly, it is immaterial.(Though I tried my hand and was successful and not so successful in some of the trials).
Education is an important tool that plays a big role in bridging the understanding. Equally educated can converse on the same lines and any disparity will drag the discussion in different directions and might end up on a jarring note. Education in this context does not mean the certificates one has earned. Brain treats familiar topics with ease compared to unknown and difficult ones. Majority of the friction arises here as an advisor wishes to pool all his knowledge and push down the throat of the organisation but the organisation may not be ready for it. So entrepreneurs beware of bringing in advisors before your organisation is ready.
A Company where I was asked to implement the processes was very happy to see the template of the processes and manuals. But I ended up reading them myself and started reciting to all than anybody taking the ownership of implementation. So I became the creator, doer, trainer, updater and what not. Then suddenly promoters step in and feel that the processes are not yielding results. Critical lesson is that the weight of the management to implement what is suggested as process is important. I had to question the intent and readiness of the promoters who later on took the issue seriously and implemented and saw the results coming through.
My father in his hey days used to advise people who come with problems sometimes strange. His natural reaction and advise was to say "everything will be fine with the time" at the end of all his statements. This advise used to come after listening to all the details spelt out and detailed narration by the other person. After listening to him time and again saying the same thing majority of the times, I countered him as to why he is not addressing the real issue. He gave me an excellent piece of his mind which I can never forget in my life. To share it briefly, "No human being is devoid of problems. The solutions always lie within. No external solution can fully satisfy the other person. Majority of the problem is solved when the person shares with the person he believes that he can provide solutions. While stating the problem the person carefully puts in perspective as to how he should narrate it and identifies the strengths and pitfalls of his narration and by the time he ends the narration, he would have identified the solution to a large extent. If not he is searching for a technical solution which he is not in know of. Inspite of all the narration the person who is listening is never in the complete know of all the facts the other person is narrating nor can he imagine the situation the person is going through. It is therefore important for us to put the facts in order, provide technical feedback and make the narrator find the solution rather than stating the solution". Initially I felt that this was an escapist mode of giving a solution. His method was to counsel people in a passive way. But as I grew up and started facing issues and sharing them with my friends, I never was in complete agreement with the solutions they gave but it definitely kept me thinking in different directions and forced me to arrive at solution; good or bad.
A guy doing research in Psychology is well aware of Psychological situations and problems a patient might go through but is he the right person to treat a patient? Same way, the division of labour and knowledge separates advisory from entrepreneurship. Each is equipped with their own skills which should complement the business than contradict.
An elite B School guy can never give you advise when you don't want to listen in the first place. When you want a solution that is there in your mind and if you want it come through the Advisor one is doing great disservice to their own mission. Dan Ariely studies on irrational behaviour when it comes to decisions taken while dealing with money are eye openers. As businesses are meant to be money spinners there will never be dearth of irrational behaviour.
An advisor's primary duty is to go by Habit 5 of Franklin Covey:"Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood" to start with, then to his Habit 3:"Put First Things First" and then to Habit 6:"Synergise" and then to Habit 4:"Think Win Win" and not to forget Habit 2:"Begin with the End in Mind". The fruits of entrepreneurship are enjoyed by those who got in with their ideas. Bring in as a team those who share your passion and ideas after careful filtering.
Entrepreneurs take enormous risk in the path to build their businesses. Sometimes, the risks and gamble pays off and sometimes it doesn't. I am using risk with the meaning that the information available on hand is sufficient for a person to take a decision in that direction, whereas gamble is a clear directional call without any deep study.
As an advisor, Iam used to constantly watch for the risks and gambles of the promoters and post a warning signal and create a path around the potential traps. This process is the toughest. The reason being the visibility of the results of our work are not visible remotely from where the entrepreneur stands forget about being at the round the corner. Entrepreneur is always in a mode to address the immediate issues than worry only long term. They struggle to balance both the time frames. The mind set and thought process has to change often to live up to the requirements of both strategic and tactical requirements. Entrepreneurs say "now and here". Therefore the mantle of long term planning and strategy building falls in our lap.
Entrepreneurs have a great task of balancing the short and long term objectives. This balance is extremely critical as they would loose sight of their existence if any of them are ignored. In my experience the entrepreneurs are good at combining the short term to look at long term. Their ability to handle current issues and finding quick solutions to even the path is amazing. These have to be combined with the long term implications. Therefore, they need strong sounding board. Entrepreneurs seldom like to take no for their ideas and thoughts and force you in one way or the other and come around to pressurise you to say yes. That's why you see lots of yes men around entrepreneurs. In one of the case an entrepreneur has given the responsibility of taxation to his admin assistant who slept on the issue for a long time and woke on the tax filing day. There were some thoughts provided from our end from a long term perspective. The entrepreneur felt very happy to see the admin guy putting a lot of hard work to save the tax than look from the long term perspective. Yes entrepreneur is right as he immediately saves tax but has to face long term implications of short cuts taken. This is the trait which I always admire and abhor in entrepreneurs. Admire for the reason that short cuts addresses their immediate requirements; abhor because long term implications are ignored. Then you don't need an advisor.
Majority of the times I get a dirty look when I get introduced as Advisor and few jokes on advisory and consultancy will kick off and the discussion will hover around bad experiences with advisors they had when the consultants were engaged.
One of the entrepreneur commented that I have all the professional qualifications and B school degree to give him quick solutions. The entrepreneurs feel that we have a magic wand to quickly arrive at solutions and deal with situations. The situations are generally related to investors, people, fundraising, sales ets. If they are not addressed in a day's time they feel that they are wasting money and energy in employing us. Advisors are to think long term by balancing the short term executional objectives.
As Dan Ariely describes in his introduction note in Behavioural Economics guide 2015 "There are lots of biases, and lots of ways we make mistakes, but two of the blind spots that surprise me most are the continuous belief in the rationality of people and of the markets. This surprises me particularly because even the people who seem to believe that rationality is a good way to describe individuals, societies and markets, feel very differently when you ask them specific questions about the people and institutions they know very well. On one hand, they can state all kinds of high order beliefs about the rationality of people, corporations, and societies, but then they share very different sentiments about their significant other, their mother-in-law (and I am sure that their significant other and mother-in-law also have crazy stories to share about them), and the organizations they work at. Somehow when we look at a particular example of life up close, the illusion of sensible behavior fades almost instantly".
Jonathan Haidt in his book Happiness Hypothesis talks of the both sides of the brain and the interlinkages that exist. He makes an important observation that people on whom experiments were conducted where the interlinkage between the both sides of the brain is affected. He quotes patients seeing things but not able to spell out as seeing and speaking are controlled by different sides of the brain. He even says that they manipulate the answer to satisfy the examiner. Taking a page from that experiment and its results, entrepreneurs take this invisible risk and fall back on people to execute. What they is invisible to people around. So is the job of advisor keeping in mind the situation on hand what can be the best for the entrepreneur. The most common criticism is that whether I have ever tried to be entrepreneur and succeeded to to capable of advising. Frankly, it is immaterial.(Though I tried my hand and was successful and not so successful in some of the trials).
Education is an important tool that plays a big role in bridging the understanding. Equally educated can converse on the same lines and any disparity will drag the discussion in different directions and might end up on a jarring note. Education in this context does not mean the certificates one has earned. Brain treats familiar topics with ease compared to unknown and difficult ones. Majority of the friction arises here as an advisor wishes to pool all his knowledge and push down the throat of the organisation but the organisation may not be ready for it. So entrepreneurs beware of bringing in advisors before your organisation is ready.
A Company where I was asked to implement the processes was very happy to see the template of the processes and manuals. But I ended up reading them myself and started reciting to all than anybody taking the ownership of implementation. So I became the creator, doer, trainer, updater and what not. Then suddenly promoters step in and feel that the processes are not yielding results. Critical lesson is that the weight of the management to implement what is suggested as process is important. I had to question the intent and readiness of the promoters who later on took the issue seriously and implemented and saw the results coming through.
My father in his hey days used to advise people who come with problems sometimes strange. His natural reaction and advise was to say "everything will be fine with the time" at the end of all his statements. This advise used to come after listening to all the details spelt out and detailed narration by the other person. After listening to him time and again saying the same thing majority of the times, I countered him as to why he is not addressing the real issue. He gave me an excellent piece of his mind which I can never forget in my life. To share it briefly, "No human being is devoid of problems. The solutions always lie within. No external solution can fully satisfy the other person. Majority of the problem is solved when the person shares with the person he believes that he can provide solutions. While stating the problem the person carefully puts in perspective as to how he should narrate it and identifies the strengths and pitfalls of his narration and by the time he ends the narration, he would have identified the solution to a large extent. If not he is searching for a technical solution which he is not in know of. Inspite of all the narration the person who is listening is never in the complete know of all the facts the other person is narrating nor can he imagine the situation the person is going through. It is therefore important for us to put the facts in order, provide technical feedback and make the narrator find the solution rather than stating the solution". Initially I felt that this was an escapist mode of giving a solution. His method was to counsel people in a passive way. But as I grew up and started facing issues and sharing them with my friends, I never was in complete agreement with the solutions they gave but it definitely kept me thinking in different directions and forced me to arrive at solution; good or bad.
A guy doing research in Psychology is well aware of Psychological situations and problems a patient might go through but is he the right person to treat a patient? Same way, the division of labour and knowledge separates advisory from entrepreneurship. Each is equipped with their own skills which should complement the business than contradict.
An elite B School guy can never give you advise when you don't want to listen in the first place. When you want a solution that is there in your mind and if you want it come through the Advisor one is doing great disservice to their own mission. Dan Ariely studies on irrational behaviour when it comes to decisions taken while dealing with money are eye openers. As businesses are meant to be money spinners there will never be dearth of irrational behaviour.
An advisor's primary duty is to go by Habit 5 of Franklin Covey:"Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood" to start with, then to his Habit 3:"Put First Things First" and then to Habit 6:"Synergise" and then to Habit 4:"Think Win Win" and not to forget Habit 2:"Begin with the End in Mind". The fruits of entrepreneurship are enjoyed by those who got in with their ideas. Bring in as a team those who share your passion and ideas after careful filtering.
Interesting take on the Entrepreneurs Behavior. I agree to the most part we will discuss this in peace when we catch up.
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