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your business is nothing more than a distinct reflection of who you are.
The technical work of a business and a business that does that technical work are two totally different things!
the business that was supposed to free him from the limitations of working for somebody else actually enslaves him. Suddenly the job he knew how to do so well becomes one job he knows how to do plus a dozen others he doesn’t know how to do at all.
The problem is that everybody who goes into business is actually three-people-in-one: The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and The Technician.
It is the tension between The Entrepreneur’s vision and The Manager’s pragmatism that creates the synthesis from which all great works are born.
The Entrepreneur lives in the future and The Manager lives in the past, The Technician lives in the present.
we all have an Entrepreneur, Manager, and Technician inside us. And if they were equally balanced, we’d be describing an incredibly competent individual.
“So the work of an Entrepreneur is to wonder,”
three phases of a business’s growth: Infancy, Adolescence, and Maturity.
“If you want to work in a business, get a job in somebody else’s business! But don’t go to work in your own. Because while you’re working, while you’re answering the telephone, while you’re baking pies, while you’re cleaning the windows and the floors, while you’re doing it, doing it, doing it, there’s something much more important that isn’t getting done. And it’s the work you’re not doing, the strategic work, the entrepreneurial work, that will lead your business forward, that will give you the life you’ve not yet known.
If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job. And it’s the worst job in the world because you’re working for a lunatic!
“The purpose of going into business is to get free of a job so you can create jobs for other people.
Adolescence begins at the point in the life of your business when you decide to get some help.
technical help.
businesses that ‘get small again’ die.
growth would bring additional responsibilities, additional skills required, additional capital needed to respond to the added demand that growth always places on a business and on people.
your job is to prepare yourself and your business for growth.
A Mature company is founded on a broader perspective, an entrepreneurial perspective, a more intelligent point of view. About building a business that works not because of you but without you. “And because it starts that way, it is more likely to continue that way.
No, companies like McDonald’s, Federal Express, and Disney didn’t end up as Mature companies. They started out that way!
The person who launches his business as a Mature company must also go through Infancy and Adolescence. He simply goes through them in an entirely different way. It’s his perspective that makes the difference. His Entrepreneurial Perspective.
I realized that for IBM to become a great company it would have to act like a great company long before it ever became one.
Every day at IBM was a day devoted to business development, not doing business
the Entrepreneurial Model has less to do with what’s done in a business and more to do with how it’s done. The commodity isn’t what’s important—the way it’s delivered is.
without a clear picture of that customer, no business can succeed.
less than 5 percent of franchises have been terminated on an annual basis, or 25 percent in five years. Compare that statistic to the more than 80-percent failure rate of independently owned businesses,
the true product of a business is not what it sells but how it sells it.
The system runs the business. The people run the system.
every great business in the world is a franchise.
your business is not your life.
if your model depends on highly skilled people, it’s going to be impossible to replicate.
How can I create an expert system rather than hire one?
There was absolutely no consistency to the experience.
What you do in your model is not nearly as important as doing what you do the same way, each and every time.
How can I get my business to work, but without me? • How can I get my people to work, but without my constant interference? • How can I systematize my business in such a way that it could be replicated 5,000 times, so the 5,000th unit would run as smoothly as the first? • How can I own my business, and still be free of it? • How can I spend my time doing the work I love to do rather than the work I have to do?
“Creativity thinks up new things. Innovation does new things.”
how the business interacts with the consumer is more important than what it sells.
blue suits outsell brown suits! And it doesn’t matter who’s in them.
Orchestration is the elimination of discretion, or choice, at the operating level of your business.
unless your unique way of doing business can be replicated every single time, you don’t own it.
think of your business as though it were the prototype for 5,000 more just like it.
“The difference between a warrior and an ordinary man is that a warrior sees everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man sees everything as either a blessing or a curse.”
The truth is, nobody’s interested in the commodity. People buy feelings.
Tactical Work is the work all technicians do. Strategic Work is the work their managers do.
COME AND SEE OUR TURN-KEY OPERATION. COME AND SEE OUR MONEY MACHINE. NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY. JUST AN OPEN MIND AND A WILLINGNESS TO LEARN.
Murray has replaced himself with a system that works in the hands of a person who wants to work it. And now Murray’s job becomes managing the system rather than doing the work. Murray is now engaged in Strategic Work.
Operations Manual.
it’s not the big things they talk about; it’s always the little things.”
‘The work we do is a reflection of who we are. If we’re sloppy at it, it’s because we’re sloppy inside. If we’re late at it, it’s because we’re late inside. If we’re bored by it, it’s because we’re bored inside, with ourselves, not with the work. The most menial work can be a piece of art when done by an artist. So the job here is not outside of ourselves, but inside of ourselves. How we do our work becomes a mirror of how we are inside.’”
making sure they understand the idea behind the work they’re being asked to do.
everyone who works here is expected to work toward being the best he can possibly be at the tasks he’s accountable for. When he can’t do that, he should act like he is until he gets around to it. And if he’s unwilling to act like it, he should leave.
