The Good Entrepreneur

I had the pleasure of giving a guest lecture today based on our new book, The Good Entrepreneur (co-authored with Michael Naughton from the University of St. Thomas). It is so affirming that today’s students are looking for more out of their business than simply cash. Don’t get me wrong — they want to be financially successful! But they also want so much more out of their lives and view an entrepreneurial career as a path to reach all of their goals in life.
In our discussion today we talked about the question: “Who is the good entrepreneur?”
Traditional entrepreneurial virtues have been thought of in terms like ambition, ingenuity, diligence, perseverance, tenacity, and self-discipline. While these virtues are necessary for building a financially healthy and successful venture, they ignore the fundamental purpose that leads many people to become entrepreneurs.
When we survey entrepreneurs and ask them how they define success in their businesses they will include things like building a certain type of culture in their businesses and creating good jobs for people in the same breath as building profits and wealth. Building a culture that reflects our intention of how we want to treat employees, customers, and other stakeholders in a way that is consistent with our core values requires that we broaden how we define entrepreneurial virtues. It does not mean that the traditional virtues listed above are unimportant or irrelevant — quite the contrary. They are necessary to create a financially successful business. But they are not sufficient to create what we call a truly good company.
Being a good entrepreneur challenges us to think about the virtues that define our character. Character forms with each act and each decision we make in our business. It is formed by the opportunities we choose to pursue, who we choose as business partners, who we hire, our product and market decisions, and how we engage our local communities. Every business decision or action we take, no matter how small, can shape this character.
The executives at Enron did not wake up one morning and suddenly decide to cheat their employees and shareholders. In all probability their actions were the culmination of a career of actions and choices that shaped who they became as people, which dictated how they would act when it came to the big decisions that led to that company’s demise.
We choose to look at entrepreneurship in our book from the classic cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, courage and temperance.
Prudence refers to being good stewards of the resources we pull together from others to build the business. We understand the obligation we have to those who give us their money, their labor, their business, and ultimately their trust. The good entrepreneur does not take that trust lightly.
Justice refers to treating people fairly. For example, if our employees help us create profits and wealth, it is just to find ways to share that with them be it through compensation, profit sharing, phantom stock, stock options and so forth.
Courage doing what is right in spite of the added risks and challenges that this path in life creates.
Temperance is understanding that we are more than entrepreneurs. We are spouses, parents, friends and citizens. We need to take actions that lead us to be good in all that we do. That may mean that we temper our ambitions to make sure we have time for family and friends.
So who is the good entrepreneur?
The good entrepreneur is intelligent and technically competent. She is a good steward of the resources and gifts she has available. She is prudent.
The good entrepreneur builds strong relationships in his family, with employees in his business, and in the broader society. He does this by being just.
The good entrepreneur overcomes obstacles in building her company, but does so without ever compromising what she knows to be truly right. She does this with courage.
The good entrepreneur moderates his work ethic with rest. He does this through temperance.
I will be writing more on all of this as our book comes closer to being released next year by Regal Books.