As an entrepreneur you are always thinking of creating, executing, and doing and are constantly trying to turn your dream into reality.
The entrepreneur is betting on a macro environment, his/her ideas, business acumen, and very importantly, on his partners, colleagues, and team members.
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| Anurag Batra |
As the enterprise and work expand, the entrepreneur leans on his team to execute plans and turn his vision into concrete initiatives.
I recently read this quote from Friedrich Nietzsche:
“I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”
This is the feeling that entrepreneurs have when suddenly they feel let down by the action of a key employee or a trusted colleague, or his or her sudden change of plan to get into bed with another entrepreneur.
When I read this, I realized that it was an accurate description of the kind of dilemma entrepreneurs face when they work with people, trust them, and rely on them for execution and for collaborative action.
When you work with an employee, a colleague, or a team member for a long time, the bond grows and there is a relationship that develops. Entrepreneurs are relationship-driven people and they always believe in their relationship with their employees just like they believe in other relationships.
However, employees, over a time, outgrow relationships. I know I am making a harsh statement, but it is based on experience and insights.
Employees seek more money, newer challenges, and sometimes a bigger canvas. The two biggest learnings I have had as an entrepreneur and employer are:
1. Whenever it suits the employee, he or she becomes a friend, and whenever it is convenient, he or she becomes a professional. The employees know what to get from you and when. They may talk of a relationship, but in real life they are very transactional; and there is nothing wrong with it because they are there to earn a salary and enjoy the privileges. The passion for a larger goal exists but not in the same proportion as the entrepreneur. They may even use your office to get their son or daughter admitted to a good school, but they tend to forget about it soon and deal with you on a professional level when they see a better opportunity outside. How convenient, right? As an entrepreneur you have to live with this. They may lean towards you now, but they might lean elsewhere shortly. They lean according to the wind.
I am an emotional, yet practical person but it’s the speed of this transition that worries me, and I feel that relationships are for keeps.
2. Whenever it is convenient, colleagues and employees compete fiercely, bitch, and complain about each other to bring the other colleague down, but when it comes to dealing with the entrepreneur, they are likely to become one and collaborate. This is, at most times, very irritating and it’s like they are telling you that the sun rises from the west. Suddenly, bygones are bygones and they discover the positive traits of the competing employee’s personality. How noble?
“I view my role more as trying to set up an environment where the personalities, creativity, and individuality of all the different employees come out and can shine.”
I, as a first-generation entrepreneur, follow Tony Hsieh’s philosophy, and it’s an easy one and a not so easy one to follow as all relationships in today’s world come with an expiry date.
I would also like to tell my colleagues what Steve Ballmer once shared with his colleagues at Microsoft— “I’m very, very bullish about our prospects, and as I tell our board, as I tell our employees, this is the time to invest. There’s so much opportunity. Let’s just invest in that opportunity and really get after it.”
The reason I share all this is because an entrepreneur’s success is in a large manner determined by how he or she deals with his or her team members and colleagues. And how do employees feel about the entrepreneur and the organization? Well, I wish Andy Warhol’s famous quote, “Employees make the best dates. You don’t have to pick them up and they’re always tax-deductible,” was true. But certainly, it’s not true in today’s milieu.
Let me tell you that dates can give you heartbreaks, and an entrepreneur has to have a big heart and be magnanimous in dealing with dates, I mean, employees.
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Anurag Batra is real life, first-generation entrepreneur who is Much Below Average (MBA) from the prestigious Management Development Institute, MDI. Anurag is the founder and editor-in-chief of exchange4media group which includes exchange4media.com.
To write to the author, please send an email to dare@cybermedia.co.in with the subject line 'Anurag Batra'.
The views expressed here are that of the author and do not represent the magazine's.
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