The Wisdom of Titans: Secrets of Success from Entrepreneurs Who Rose to the Top by William Ferguson

Author:William Ferguson [Ferguson, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781937134594
Publisher: Bibliomotion, Inc.
Published: 2013-05-28T07:00:00+00:00

Achieving the Vision with the Right People

The vision cannot be limited to the entrepreneur, however. As plans take shape, a business builder needs to inspire and engage others. “You’ve got to have people with the ability to execute on the vision and utilize and deploy capital appropriately,” Johnson said. “As the leader or the business manager—the visionary—you’ve got to make sure you can motivate people to achieve exactly what you conceived as the vision. You’ve got to make sure you’re getting the best people and nurturing them in a way that brings out the best in them.”

As the entrepreneurs interviewed and those with whom I’ve worked can attest, successful execution is ultimately about having the right people. Money, alone, will not be sufficient to achieve the necessary commitment and buy-in to take a business, particularly a start-up, to the next level. A shared vision is needed, from which culture is built. “Once you’ve got that, it’s easy to sustain. Then you’re not building ships in the desert. You should have a viable business,” Johnson said. “The question now becomes, how big can it be?”

Central to building an effective team is having strong communication skills to share information and empower others. Johnson attributed the foundation of this skill to growing up in a large family, which necessitated a high degree of interaction. Later, he espoused the belief that communication helps to engender trust and confidence in a shared mission. Discussions become more robust as opinions and viewpoints are shared in an environment that encourages give and take.

For entrepreneurs, this type of communication can be a challenge; as the ones with the vision, they are often more comfortable with telling others what to do instead of building consensus. Johnson has described the early stage of an entrepreneurial firm as a “tribe . . . like hunters and gatherers.” With no formal structure other than a “chief,” the start-up organization revolves around the work to be done, which is directed from the top. “And as long as people believe in the chief they’re O.K., they’ll stay around, but there is always infighting,” Johnson told the New York Times in a November 2011 interview. “And what you tend to do in that situation is to have this kind of primitive reaction—you try to force people to your will. And because you’re afraid that people may not do what you want them to do, sometimes you do it for them. And they never get a chance to grow because you’re basically telling everybody what to do, when to do it, how to do it.”1

Johnson admitted this was the dynamic early on at BET, where he tried to do everything and others had to do things his way. “You don’t let that control go away until you begin to see the business take shape and get a bit of lift to it,” he added. “And then you feel a little more comfortable giving people the authority and the responsibility to do things their way—which was different from the entrepreneurial way, and my way.

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