5 Disciplines of the Entrepreneur
By Jeri T Denniston, Chief Marketing Strategist, Denner Group International 4-12-2010
Takeaways: Every Enterprise Leader must have five essential skills that comprise the five disciplines of the entrepreneur: Concentration, Discrimination, Organization, Innovation and Communication. These help to build a strong enterprise.
According to Michael Gerber, author of E-Myth Mastery, there are seven disciplines that a successful entrepreneur must develop to build a World Class Company. Each discipline is like a puzzle piece that makes up the enterprise. Each discipline is like a puzzle piece that makes up the enterprise. It’s not a building block working in a linear fashion, but rather part of a system of components that work together to complete the whole that make up the company. The entrepreneur must have all disciplines regardless of the size of the company in order to achieve his or her desired objectives, the vision of what he or she is trying to create. 
The seven disciplines are:
- The Enterprise Leader
- The Marketing Leader
- The Financial Leader
- The Management Leader
- The Client Fulfillment Leader
- The Lead Conversion Leader
- The Lead Generation Leader
Five essential skills
There are five essential skills the Enterprise Leader must have that comprise the five disciplines of the entrepreneur: Concentration, Discrimination, Organization, Innovation and Communication.
The skill of Concentration is learning to feel comfortable with being alone. We’ve heard the phrase, “It’s lonely at the top.” It’s true. The entrepreneur is the final decision-maker. Good or bad, your decisions are the ones that will create the company of your dreams. As the enterprise leader, your work is to lead, not do. According to Gerber in his book E-Myth Mastery, you need to remind yourself every day, “I am a leader. My job is to do the work of leadership.” This skill deals with how to focus your attention.
The second skill, Discrimination, deals with where to focus your attention. You need to learn how to choose between alternatives. The most important things for an enterprise leader to consider are the vision, mission and values (the culture or consciousness) of your enterprise. Focus on the end game of what you’re trying to create. Every option or path you choose to pursue should be held up against those elements. Ask the question, “will this path get me to the vision I’m trying to create? Does it tie into the mission of what we’re doing?”
The third skill, Organization, deals with the functional components of your enterprise. This is how you organize your business, turn chaos into order, how you structure your business so everything has a place and function and it works in an orderly fashion.
Innovation, the fourth skill, depends on Discrimination. Everything you do must be held up against the standards of your vision, mission and values. Performance is judged by the standards of how well it contributes to achieving the future objective of the enterprise. Innovation comes from following a series of steps that include determining what you want to improve, deciding how to improve it, quantifying the improvement or its effect on the enterprise, testing it, and re-quantifying, and testing it again and again, until you get positive results.
The fifth skill is Communication. This involves how you communicate to your people what you expect of them, how you listen to their understanding of your expectations, and how you improve your communication to close the gap between your expectations and their understanding of them. Organize your communication so it’s clear, compelling and inspiring. Present it in a variety of ways, in person, via e-mail, in newsletters, on the website, in brochures and other marketing materials.
Develop and perfect these Disciplines of the Entrepreneur in yourself and you’ll become a better leader and more effective enterprise owner.
