My Last Lecture

I have never felt entrepreneurial. The only reason I took this class is because it’s a requirement. My ideas have changed in fourteen weeks. Even though I may not have ideas for companies, I have learned that I have an entrepreneurial mindset and view of business. Whether or not you start your own company, having that mindset is crucial to doing business in today’s ever changing world.

Here are some key principles I have learned in this course.

Jeff Sandefer, in talking about living life as an entrepreneurial hero, teaches the concept of choosing your fellow travelers well. 

I read somewhere that you are the aggregate of the five people you spend the most time with. I had to stop and think - am I spending time with people who lift me, make me better, share my goals and morals? Sandefer said that “No matter how talented the person is, life is too short to put up with jerks. And life is too long to associate with liars or cheats or gossips.”

We are like chameleons; we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.

                                                                                                   --John Locke

Lesson Learned: Choose carefully those with whom you associate, because you will likely become as they are.

Stepping Stones:

As Steven Covey teaches, you must start with the end in mind. How can you get where you are going, if you don’t know what the ultimate destination is? You need to determine what it is that you really want and what will remain important to you throughout your life. Create a bucket list. Make goals. Write down your dreams. Make them real. These goals become your stepping stones to your ultimate destination.

The ultimate horror is not death. The ultimate horror is to wake up at age fifty-five or sixty and realize that you have wasted your life; either that time has slipped past while your dreams waited, or that you never had any dreams at all.

-          Jeff Sandefer

Lesson Learned: Decide what your ultimate destination is and determine the stepping stones that will get you there.

What is Irrelevant:

Magdalena Yesil grew up in Turkey in the 1960’s and went on to become a respected product design engineer, businesswoman, entrepreneur, and angel investor in Silicon Valley during the 1980’s and 90’s. As a young girl she somehow developed a deep abiding belief that gender was irrelevant to accomplishment. This had a huge impact on me. I feel that you can change the word “gender” to anything that fits your situation.

 “_________ is irrelevant to accomplishment.”

I am working toward my Bachelor degree in my late 40’s. Age is irrelevant to accomplishment. I can do this even if I will be 50 when I graduate. 

What is it you think is holding you back? Determine that it is irrelevant to that accomplishment and go do it!

Lesson Learned: “_________ is irrelevant to accomplishment!”

How Will You Measure Your Life:

Professor Clayton M. Christensen’s HBR article “How Will You Measure Your Life?” made a huge impression on me. At the end of his course he asks his students to answer these three questions:

·         How can I be sure that I’ll be happy in my career?

·         How can I be sure that my relationships with my spouse and family become and enduring source of happiness?

·         How can I be sure I’ll stay out of jail?

He isn’t flippant in asking question #3. Two of his Rhodes Scholar classmates spent time in jail. Jeff Skilling of Enron was his classmate at HBS. Christensen said “these were good guys—but something in their lives sent them off in the wrong direction.” 

What do we learn about going off in the wrong direction? “Allocation choices can make your life turn out to be very different from what you intended.” If we don’t spend our time doing what we want to become, we will become what we spend our time doing.

Regarding question one Christensen says: “Doing deals doesn’t yield the deep rewards that come from building up people. I want students to leave my classroom knowing that.”

Management is the most noble of professions if it’s practiced well. No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognized for achievement, and contribute to the success of a team.

-          Clayton Christensen

Speaking to question 3 he states: “justification for infidelity and dishonesty in all their manifestations lies in the marginal cost economics of ‘just this once.’” He gives an example of his college basketball days when his resolve to never play on Sunday was tested. He was pressured by coaches and players alike. He remained strong and didn’t play. After that experience he learned it was one of the most important decisions of his life. Why?

My life has been one unending stream of extenuating circumstances. Had I crossed the line that one time, I would have done it over and over in the years that followed. The lesson I learned from this is that it’s easier to hold to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold to them 98% of the time.
-- Clayton Christensen

Lessons Learned: Build up others to receive truly deep rewards and spend time doing what you want to become.

Ethical Guardrails:

While you are creating your goals, dreams, and visions, decide on your ethical guardrails. Think of these as the bumper guards children use in bowling alleys. These are things that you will either always do or will never do. Decide now so that when situations come up, similar to Christensen’s “never play on Sunday” rule, the decision will already be made. 

Ethical guardrails will help keep you from going off course and making decisions that go against who and what you want to become.

Lesson Learned: Ethical guardrails can help keep you safe.

Resources
How Will You Measure Your Life, Clayton Christensen, Harvard Business Review

On the True Purpose of Business

There are so many reasons that people go into business for themselves. Once successful, they can be driven by the principle of profit maximization or the Law of Consecration. 

“Just because the world doesn’t factor in the power of God into business, doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter.” 
--Elder Gay

If we follow the Law of Consecration we can use of our means to succor the needy and poor in spirit and truly make a difference in the world. “Business is about service and about rescue.” (Gay)

“Instead of grumbling about how a pharmaceutical company makes filthy money by charging unreasonable prices, why don’t we create our own companies and sell good quality medicine at profit-free prices or at prices with low profits? I think social-consciousness-driven entrepreneurs can be an effective force in the marketplace.”
 – Muhammad Yunus

Virtue and integrity in business are critical as shown through what the lack of it can do to companies, people, and nations. Think Enron, think the banking crisis, and think auto company bail out. Charles Handy in his HBR article What’s a Business For?, tells us that “Proforma earnings announcements by the top 100 NASDAQ companies in the first nine months of 2001 overstated actual audited profits by $100 billion,” and that “CEO’s in America earn more than 400 times the wages of their lowest-paid workers.” (Handy)

This lack of virtue and integrity is driving companies to profit on the backs of their workers and defrauding employees, clients, and the nation out of their life-saving and trust.

Handy goes on to tell us “the real purpose of a business . . . is not to make a profit, full stop. It is to make a profit so that the business can do something more or better. That “something” becomes the real justification for the business.”

Companies like Google and Microsoft have created foundations to help fight poverty and disease. This is the “something” that business is all about.

If CEO’s were to be rewarded with a share of the profit instead of stock options, they may be more interested in the truth of their numbers. Another solution to the problem is if companies would “measure success in terms of outcomes for others as well as for ourselves” (Handy).

It is my hope that I can choose the path of the law of consecration. Use my work in business to benefit others.

References
Entrepreneurship and Consecration, Elder Gay

Microlending: Toward a Poverty-Free World, Muhammad Yunus

What’s a Business For?, Charles Handy, Harvard Business Review

On Becoming Great

To become a disciple-leader is to “lead as Christ leads. It is leadership with a small “L” – the kind of leadership that builds and lifts and inspires through kindness and love and unselfish devotion to the Lord and His work.”[i]

I try to be this type of leader. It is my hope to truly learn to become this way.

A true leader is a person who takes others to a higher ground.

-          Jim Ritchie

One of the greatest abilities to have, in a world full of “average,” is the “ability to execute [and it] is more valuable than education or talent, because it is far rarer.” [ii]

If you want to become the kind of person who others call when something needs to get done, learn how to get the job done. Doing this, without requiring explicit step by step instructions, assembling a task force or consultants, or complaining that something “isn’t your job,” will help you become just such a person.

No matter what has happened in your life, “Make no mistake about it. You have a choice. You can blame your parents, teachers, coaches or bosses. Or you can choose to start developing the attitudes, habits and instincts so your name will be called when success hangs in the balance.” [iii]

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but those most adaptive to change.

-          Charles Darwin

Carly Fiorina stated that the capability to ask a question and hear an answer is crucial. Customer satisfaction is a vital leading indicator of how a company is doing. Customers always know what is wrong with a company.[iv]

Innovation, the ability to take risks, and the ability to celebrate new ideas are also leading indicators. [v]

Keep learning – learn something every day.

-          Carly Fiorina

Since going back to school, I remember how much I love learning. It is my goal to always keep learning!

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[i] Leadership with a Small L. Kim B. Clark

[ii] Message to Garcia. Acton Foundation for Entrepreneurial Excellence

[iii] (ibid)

[iv] Leadership & Capability. Carly Fiorina

[v]  (ibid)

Learning to be an Entrepreneur

I have never thought of myself as an entrepreneur. I have often wished I was. Wouldn't it be amazing to come up with the next "it" item, the software that makes everyone's life easier, or a time-saving gadget that everyone is clamoring to buy?

In studying business, it seems that even if you aren't an entrepreneur, you need to learn to think like one, because business today can turn on a dime. When someone else comes up with that next "it" item, your world could change in an instant.

So, here I am, studying entrepreneurship.

I will be discovering my entrepreneurial "calling." Learning and developing constructive habits. Selecting my next "stepping stone job." Embracing Disciple Leadership. And, journalling my discoveries along the way.

Here we go!