Are you an Entrepreneur, a Manager, or a Technician?
In The E-Myth Revisited, Michael E. Gerber states that if you’re thinking of starting a business, chances are you’re doing technical work. And you’re probably really good at it.
But there’s an assumption that some people make, thinking that if they understand how to do the technical work of a business, then they understand a business that does technical work.
So, the technician who starts a small business runs the risk of turning the work he loves to do into a job that he can’t keep up with.
One Business, Three Personalities
Most everyone who creates a small business has three personalities:
- The Entrepreneur – The visionary. The dreamer. The imagination. Thinks about the future.
- The Manager – The pragmatist. The organizer. The planner. Thinks about the past.
- The Technician – The doer. The tinkerer. The skilled worker. Thinks about the present.
Each personality wants to be the boss, and none of them want to have a boss.
Each personality has its strengths and weaknesses, and figuring out how to make them work together is key in order for a small business to grow.
A Business in Infancy: The Technician’s Phase
If the business and the owner are one and the same, or if the business is even named after the owner, then that’s a big hint that a business is in its infancy.
If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business–you have a job.
The infancy phase comes to an end when the owner finally realizes that something has to change.
At that point, the owner can either quit, or move toward business adolescence.
A Business in Adolescence: The Managerial Phase
If the small business owner decides to hire some help, the business is said to be moving into adolescence.
At that point, the technician owner has to do a very difficult thing.
He has to let go of some control.
He has to resign himself to the fact that he needs technical help in order to make the business run.
He has to delegate some of his responsibilities, his prized technical work, in order to focus on running the business.
A Business in Maturity: Adopting the Entrepreneur Mindset
For the small businesses that don’t close or revert to their small, humble origins, they can move on to a stage of maturity. The owner must start asking the right questions:
- Where do I want to be in X number of years?
- How much estimated capital will that require?
- How many employees will I need?
- What work will they be doing?
- How will they be doing it?
- What are the technological needs?
- Is physical space needed? If so, what size?
These questions are hard, and even with thoughtful, educated guesses, many small business owners will get the answers wrong at first and make mistakes.
But the critical part is having a plan. Envisioning. Taking the time to articulate what you hope for the future.
If you don’t articulate it–write it down, clearly, so others can understand it–you don’t own it!… Any plan is better than no plan.
We’ll discuss how to do that in Part Two!