I was watching more highlights of the British Open this morning on the Golf Channel, and I was struck by another lesson golf offers entrepreneurs. Even after all of the preparation and planning, sometimes the Open comes down to one or two unlucky bounces. The links courses are infamous for their quirky landscapes that create quite unpredictable outcomes from perfectly executed shots.
There is a certain randomness that we can never completely prepare for in golf, just as in business. I saw several well struck shots hit a mound just wrong and go in directions the players never imagined. The same is true in business. No matter how much we plan and no matter how much data we gather, random acts happen. We had a business that was providing vocational assessment and training for workman’s comp cases that was growing quite nicely until one day we woke up and found out that the state legislature had added language to a bill that basically took away most of our funding from workman’s comp insurance. It was a bad bounce from which we could not recover. Nobody saw it coming. It was as if we were playing our way around the course flawlessly, but on the final hole we caught a bounce that sent our ball out of bounds to cost us the championship.
Luckily for us, this was a small part of our total operation, but it taught us an important lesson. Although we could manage our risk by careful planning and solid execution, we could never eliminate the random outcomes that arise from uncertainty. Bad luck can happen at any time and without warning.
Depending how bad the bounce is, the golfer either plays on from where they are, or if the bounce is bad enough, knows that he will be able to play again tomorrow and hope that the golf gods will be kinder. A good lesson for entrepreneurs, too.

Matt Homann asked me to contribute to a feauture called “Five-by-Five” that he uses at his blog the [non]billable hour. He asks five experts to contribute five comments each about a particular topic. This week he asked for advice that we would offer lawyers on how to work effectively with entrepreneurs.

WomensWallStreet.com has some more advice on starting a business out of your home that goes along with a recent post at this site.
“Begin by deciding if a home-based business is really right for you by making an honest assessment of yourself and your needs and availability. It’s harder than pointing and clicking, but it’s where the real work begins. Talk to your family about how much time you want to devote to work, and research every option thoroughly – you’ll learn a lot and avoid a bad match. If you’re determined to keep your weekends free, for example, avoid retail and real estate.
Be sure working at home suits your temperament. If being cooped up in the house doesn’t sound appealing or if you’re easily distracted, think twice….”
Successful home-based workers I have talked with all say the you need to set some clear boundaries of place and time that define your working at home. Set aside a “work place” in your home such as a designated office, but only go there during predetermined working hours. This may even require getting two computers and two phone lines–one for working at home and one for family use–to make sure the boundaries are kept clear and consistent. This can help with distractions.

This week’s Carnival of the Capitalists is posted at The RFID Weblog. It is a great and varied collection of posts this week.

We have talked about the growing number of aging baby boomers becoming entrepreneurs later in life. This article at Entrepreneur.com reports that many of my comrades are choosing franchising as their entry strategy. This is not a bad approach, as many of these folks have spent their lives in the corporate environment. Franchises can help provide structure and systems to help with this sometimes difficult transition.

Well, that’s it for this stop of the Business Book Blog Tour. It’s been an enjoyable day!
Thanks to Tom Ehrenfeld for sharing his insights from his book The Start-up Garden.
Thanks, as always, to Todd at A Penny For for putting all of the BBBT’s together.
Join in the discussion with Tom tomorrow as the Business Book Blog Tour moves on to The Small Business Blog.

Question: Many entrepreneurs like to talk about a culture of “family” in their businesses. Yet, you talk about the importance of setting boundaries when relating to employees. Is it unwise to build a business with a sense of family as the basis of its culture?
Answer: First of all, the answer depends to some extent whether you are talking about the Partridge family, or the Manson family. In other words, a happy family or an unhappy one? Hint: the former tends to be better than the latter. Because everyone has a different sense of family, I’d state instead what seems to me an ideal to strive for in terms of creating a healthy culture at work.
On the extreme, and not necessarily unhealthy situation, great companies are “cults,” as several experts point out. The individuals feel a strong sense of belonging to and identification with the company, they understand the rules and beliefs and way of doing business. They are loyal to the company, and expect that they will where can i buy topamax serve the company as it will serve them.
In terms of startups, I think the key issue has to do with setting boundaries and being extremely clear about mutual expectations and agreements in the present and evolving future. Because the roles and responsibilities of individuals often cross functions, exceed traditional working hours or settings, and change on the fly, it’s critical that issues such as compensation, responsibility, and authority are explicitly discussed at the beginning, and revisited over time. Moreover, individuals must have some set of goals that are defined in a manner that supports and grows the company. None of these conversations need to be excessively formal or bound in absurdly overdone legal terms. The point is, however, that the people who run the company and do the work must establish a process of managing people that is perfectly transparent and never prey to personal fiddling. This means establishing a formal way of establishing goals, reviewing performance, sharing the upside, and putting so-called undiscussable issues on the table. Anything less essentially invites confusion and conflict down the road.