Entrepreneurial Leadership Strategies and Values: Keys To Operational Excellence

Entrepreneurial Leadership
Article # 10
Entrepreneurial Leadership Strategies and Values: Keys to Operational

Excellence
Summary
Entrepreneurship is fundamentally a way of thinking that bridges innovative

discoveries with need fulfillment. In essence, successful entrepreneurial leadership can
generally be thought of as leading, through direct involvement, a process that creates value
for organizational stakeholders by bringing together a unique innovation and package of
resources to respond to a recognized opportunity. In fulfilling this process, entrepreneurs
function within a paradigm of three dimensions: innovativeness, risk-taking, and pro-
activeness.
Today, even medical doctors, attorneys and other professionals are learning to think
entrepreneurially—and build better practices and organizations in the process. This particular
historical context offers, as have few other times in recorded human history, advantages for
creative entrepreneurs who can properly identify these evolving opportunities and translate
them into meaningful organizational achievements.
Entrepreneurial leadership is all about breaking new ground, going beyond the
known, and helping to create the future. It is also about helping people to settle into new
opportunities that give them joy and hope for the future (McLagan and Nel, 1995: 46). What
makes a truly successful entrepreneurial leader is not narrowly focused on only intelligence,
education, lifestyle or background. A principal factor that seems to determine success is the
entrepreneur’s ability to effectively deal with opportunities through the dynamics of an
organizational setting, thereby enabling and motivating the people concerned to be actively
and enthusiastically involved and successful. Entrepreneurs who strive to establish a setting
that is supportive of associates and their development also help to instill within those
individuals a loyalty that will serve to enhance the continued achievement of organizational
excellence and the operational success of that organization.
Excellent entrepreneurial leaders concentrate on creating positive results and the

commensurate reflections of excellence. These leaders believe that people are on the payroll
for one primary reason—to make a meaningful contribution to organizational objectives and
to develop their own value to themselves and the organization. Therefore, leaders are the
means for creating an appreciative and peaceful discontent within the organization for the
status quo. In some cases, implementation of the value of peace requires that to nurture an
excellence-oriented entrepreneurial workplace, the leader must occasionally make difficult
decisions regarding the employment requirements for associates. But this is done with
patience and concern for the well-being of the organization and the individuals involved. And
in an orderly and caring manner, the leader continues to reinforce the basic value structure for
the organization. In so doing, the successful entrepreneur is also an accomplished conflict
manager as well as crisis manager (see Darling, Keeffe, and Olney, 2005: 53).
Entrepreneurial leadership values and strategies are the primary competitive

advantages that differentiate one organization from another (Nurmi and Darling, 1997: xiii).
These values and strategies are, in turn, the keys to achievement of excellence in the
entrepreneurial organization. Success in fulfilling leadership responsibilities in today’s
innovative organization is not a destination at which one arrives, but a manner of traveling
that beckons each person into the future. To be a successful entrepreneur today requires from
each one the very best that person has to give, and a constant awareness of one’s own
capabilities and a commitment to oneself and to others to fulfill expectations.
An analysis of the leadership exhibited by successful entrepreneurs in all arenas of

endeavor indicates that there are four primary reflections of excellence which these leaders
help to achieve for their respective organizations: care of customers, constant innovation,
committed people, and management leadership. Successful leadership, while highly
situational within the context of a particular entrepreneurial organization, has been found to
be based upon four key strategies: attention through vision, meaning through communication,
trust through positioning, and confidence through respect. Successful entrepreneurial leaders
make sure that their organization’s philosophy, mission, and objectives are researched,
developed and clearly communicated. They believe the philosophy and mission must pervade
and saturate everything in the organization and form the foundation of its innovation-related
culture.
Conclusion
Research by the authors indicates that the leadership values of joy, hope, charity and
peace, provide the foundational paradigm for the implementation of successful
entrepreneurial leadership strategies and the commensurate achievement of excellence by the
organization. Those entrepreneurs who achieve the greatest level of success in fulfillment of
these leadership strategies are not necessarily the smartest, the richest, the most educated, the
most gifted, or those with the greatest combination of talents and abilities. They are the
individuals who seem to possess the greatest combination of these four leadership values.
Successful entrepreneurial leaders are thereby value-based visionaries and communicators,
functioning from a position of trust and confidence conveyed upon them by the individuals
with whom they’re involved in the organization. They know that the individuals within the
firm will contribute and receive more if they are supported in developing clear feelings of
purpose, direction, dignity and expectation within an organizational culture of appreciation,
recognition and support. The authors welcome the comments and observations of other
scholars and practitioners of entrepreneurial leadership.

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Entrepreneurial Leadership

Entrepreneurial Leadership Strategies and Values: Keys to Operational

Entrepreneurship is fundamentally a way of thinking that bridges innovative

Excellent entrepreneurial leaders concentrate on creating positive results and the

Entrepreneurial leadership values and strategies are the primary competitive

An analysis of the leadership exhibited by successful entrepreneurs in all arenas of

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