How to maintain business passion

Your great idea and the three stages of love

You have a brilliant idea. Your boss will love it and you can already see your career growing on the back of it. Or maybe it’s an inspired concept for a new start-up. It’s the one that will launch your entrepreneurial dream.

This is love at first sight. You speak about it in those terms. It’s an expression of you; an extension of yourself. This perfect mate will help you manifest your real desires by creating something special.

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Inquisition versus Acquisition

The case for window shopping.

Mergers and acquisitions are exciting stuff. This is the sexy end of the growth equation. It’s all about structures and strategies, and trying to rearrange the mix so that one plus one equals three. If you like strategic board games, you’ll love this.

Sadly, in the real world one plus one usually equals only one – or less. The history of M&A is atrocious and the list of casualties grows each year. Why is that?

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Getting out at the top

Nice work if you can get it

Sooner or later, entrepreneurs sell their business. It’s tradable just like any other asset.  Ideally, they do so at the right time, preferably when their life’s work is highly valued.

It’s different to “getting out at the top”. That’s a more dubious concept. For a start, it’s hard to do. It’s often more by chance than design. Can you really predict the top? I can’t. In forty years in finance, sometimes I’ve been right; sometimes wrong.

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Instagram: The Entrepreneur's Dream

A Kodak moment for mobile apps.

It’s a story for these times. Young geek collaborates with Silicon Valley network to build simple but popular product. Engages customers with social media to get rapid market traction. Risk-taking venture capitalists provide cash while user base grows to 30 million customers. Within two years, with a total staff of 13 and zero revenues, the business is sold to Facebook for a billion dollars.

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Is the leadership thing taking us in the right direction?

Real change doesn’t start in the corner office.

Want to disempower someone? Just tell them exactly what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. Don’t tell them why it needs to be done. Avoid any reference to the importance of their input, and never ask if they have any ideas on how it might be done differently.

Command and control had a good run through the industrial revolution. It didn’t start running out of steam until the middle of last century. Even today it persists as a leadership option, often clothed in jargon about complexity and the need for simplicity. Got a problem? Don’t worry; we’ll sort it out with a new policy.

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