The 6 Drivers of an Entrepreneurial Vision. In Blackboard Fridays Episode 113, Jacob talks about Commercial Vision. Need this implemented into your business? Talk to the international business advisor who can do exactly that – Contact Jacob, Learn More, or Subscribe for Updates.

Undoubtedly, my favourite Blackboard Friday episodes are the two we created on Empowering Your Team (episodes 21 and 22).

We talked then about how your team value Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose – and broke down the 6 drivers that create an organisation that delivers those outcomes, and empowers those around you.

So what about you? What about the entrepreneur, the business owner, the founding spark who already had the empowerment to found and lead this business?

Well it turns out that the six fundamental human drivers that impact your staff, also impact you as the CEO. So how do these conflicting needs, Independence and Belonging, Stability and Risk, Present and Future, act to support or sabotage your vision?

How well driven is your business? (Not sure? Reach out for our Strategic Business Review service to unstick your stuck and accelerate your ambitions.)

Watch this week’s episode here.

Who is Jacob Aldridge, Business Coach?

“The smart and quirky advisor who gets sh!t done in business.” Back independent since 2019.

Since April 2006, I’ve been an international business advisor providing bespoke solutions for privately-owned businesses with 12-96 employees.

At this stage you have proven your business model, but you’re struggling to turn aspirations into day-to-day reality. You are still responsible for all 28 areas of your business, but you don’t have the time or budget to hire 28 different experts.

You need 1 person you can trust who can show you how everything in your business is connected, and which areas to prioritise first.

That’s me.

Learn more here. Or Let’s chat.

Transcript

 My personal favorite Blackboard Fridays episodes are episodes 21 and 22 where we talked about the employee empowerment journey. How it’s your responsibility as a business owner to create an organization that touches on all six of the key human drivers and how difficult that is because different drivers are actually in conflict with each other. And so individuals may change over time or even on short notice flip about what’s important to them.

The same human drivers impact the entrepreneurial vision and the behavior that you have as a business leader. Being aware of which of these are a priority and how they’re impacting your decision making and behavior can help you communicate better with your team, with your spouse, and make better decisions with yourself aware of which of these are driving you.

As a quick recap, we know from the research of Dan Pink that once you get beyond the money, humans are driven by a sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. But when we break that down, we find these conflicting human drivers.

Around autonomy, that self-driven responsibility, we simultaneously have a desire to belong to something bigger than us and to have independence to be able to make decisions on our own.

Around mastery, we want the stability of being good at something and we want to be able to take risks to try new things and learn new skills.

And on a purpose front, we don’t just want that future vision, we also wanna know that what we’re focused on in the present is actually making a difference in the world.

As your business evolves and grows, what motivates you, what drives you is likely to shift. Some people start a business very, very much from a sense of independence. Maybe they were part of a big corporation where they felt that they were just a number and so starting their own business was about having more time and more freedom around what they were doing.

After a while, they can start to feel lonely. They start to realize that they can achieve more in a collaborative approach whether that’s having a team around them or finding a way to work more closely with their clients so that they have that sense of belonging.

On the flip side, some people really know from the get go that they want that belonging. They might even join a coworking space so that they’ve got that sense of community, that vibe, that hub, that hum that helps them to drive.

After they find after a while that they actually do want their own space, their own brand, their own autonomy and so they go looking for some semblance of independence and we can fluctuate between those as we can fluctuate between any of these over time.

Perhaps the most compelling example of how these drivers shift is between risk and stability. In a startup with a new product, business owners are often quite excited about taking risks and doing things differently.

If and when they succeed, their entire motivation shifts and they get much more excited about creating stability, about holding the dominant market position that they’ve got. Apple Computers is a great example of this. An organization that in the 1980s was all about doing things differently, of smashing down the paradigm of IBM and then Microsoft. And now that Apple is with Amazon the most valuable company in the world, they are much more interested in ensuring stability.

Mastering their skills to such a level that they can’t be challenged by a competitor. So what’s driving you right now? Which of these and it may just be one or two of the six or it may one from each of the columns. Which of those are most important to you right now? Have you shared that with your team? And diaries to reflect on this on a regular basis? Because as your business changes, your drivers change and that will impact your vision and how well your team and your clients support you to achieve it.

Next Steps

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