Entrepreneurs engage in high risking ventures and intrinsic motives drive them towards realizing success in all these schemes. According to entrepreneurs, necessity is the mother of invention; they always work towards achieving a goal in their activities (Toren & Toren, 2011). This category of business people always develops winning attitudes in all actions that they pursue and possesses extroversion and a proclivity for risk-taking.
Entrepreneurs may lack finances, but will commit the little they have to ensure that they eventually meet their targets. Moreover, entrepreneurs are creative individuals who are ready to learn for the sake of developing new ideas to make their ideas successful. If one fails to realize his/her entrepreneurial skills and other people help him/her see his/her potentials, it does not make such an individual an accidental entrepreneur.
In connection to this, Jeff Bowling, therefore, is not an accidental entrepreneur. To top it off, when some of his players’ parents informed him of going beyond his career as a baseball coach, he took the initiative of researching on other career options independently.
Evidently, the parents only notified Jeff of his hidden potential in recruiting. His determination to try another career yielded fruits within two weeks of search as he landed on Merritt Hawkins and Associates (MHA) advert for healthcare recruitment.
Jeff’s illusion at his life as a baseball coach opened a new path into the healthcare industry. Notably, the baseball coach identified a leading healthcare firm in the country to help him learn great activities during his employment period. In addition, when a local businessperson, David Wood, offered him space in his office to start a personal shop, he quickly accepted it and went ahead to resign from the leading healthcare firm.
Jeff’s decision of opting for a personal enterprise to an employment job reveals that he is an un-accidental entrepreneur. Starting a personal shop at Wood’s office assured Bowling of getting time for his all-life baseball team. Even though Dave funded entire business activities, Dave relied on Bowling’s active recruitment skills in starting and running Delta Medical Consulting.
Interestingly, Bowling did not wait to receive instructions from Dave on managerial duties even though he lacked these skills. A real entrepreneur does not stay idle in management, but acts to learn the skills in the process (Stephenson, 2007).
This is the direction that Bowling took and learnt through the mistakes that he made thus becoming a competent manager in another field. Although Jeff was quick to deny his entrepreneurial capabilities, his persuasive skills brought out his desire and need for successful business enterprises; this is what entrepreneurship is all about.
An entrepreneur never gives up even when left alone. This is evident when Bowling opted to continue with the brilliant business idea that he had nurtured when Dave decided to withdraw his support for Delta. If Jeff could be an accidental entrepreneur, as he claims, he could have decided to leave the idea of continuing with Delta given that he lacked even financial skills and other back office details.
At this point, Bowling developed and instilled the fighting spirit in the 10 senior people in the firm to enhance their continuous sustainability. As a risk taker, Jeff sold almost all his assets to keep the company a float. He convinced the remaining staff to commit their operating cash in the business operations to ensure the existence of Delta.
When the company incurred some debt between 2006 and 2008, Jeff whom at the time was Delta’s CEO believed that it was premature to call the business a success since they have not proven the effectiveness of the business.
In sum, failure is never an option for real entrepreneurs like Bowling; they always put all their resources in fighting to the end (Stephenson, 2007). Therefore, Jeff was wrong in describing himself as an accidental entrepreneur.
When Jeff realized that with the absence of Wood’s organization in managing back-office functions such as collections, billings and accounting, the company had to hire expertise to put Delta’s strategic functions in the move for great returns on investment.
In 2005, the company recruited a chief financial officer (CFO) and an accountant to assist in analyzing the cash flow statements and investing their funds at the traditional bank in asset-based lender.
These new recruitments helped in setting strategic objectives for the company through starting couples of sub-niches in healthcare staffing. Delta Medical Consulting also took the initiative of compartmentalizing its services to five specific business units.
These units enhanced specialization in service provision at the health facility. For instance, the Liquid Medical Recruiting Unit specialized in providing personalized and efficient recruitment services thus assisting in meeting the company’s professional and personal objectives.
In putting things on steroids, Bowling administered the partnering process with their clients such as universities, hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and clinics to facilitate placement of interested prospective applicants. In addition, the company increased its connection with new contenders by developing and maintaining a database of several health providers through specific promotion campaigns.
The aforementioned processes assisted Delta to address the persistent challenges it had been facing since the transfer of shares from Dave to Jeff.
Apart from the above process of specializing the services within the company, Jeff should have used sponsored the already existing staff on financial management. Notably, this process will guarantee continuous staff loyalty given that no new employee will get into the system (Kaplan & Warren, 2010).
In addition, the process will reduce cost of management, as the current staff will not require further trainings on the operations of the firm. The process of recruiting new employees also required more logistics than training the current staff on specific areas of management such as accounting, billings, and collections.
Moreover, the company could have used exchange programs in understanding how other firms in the industry have been operating. In exchange and outsourcing programs, Delta would have used task analysis and job reorganization to identify transferable templates and processes to other units.
The company could also adopt performance management process where the organization would have ensured that all departments improve performance and deliver real results. Under this process, an automated performance management solution enables managers to measure and evaluate departmental performance in order to optimize productivity.
Since the main concept was to increase deliverance on their strategic objectives, performance management process could have assisted in gauging the level of outputs (Kaplan & Warren, 2010). The process could have also established focus on skill development and learning of new activities and aligned employees’ daily actions with the company’s goals and objectives.
In managing change, Jeff would have incorporated all staff for them to understand aims and ways of responding to diverse situations. Imposed changes never see the light of the day; therefore, the CEO ought to have created a favorable atmosphere for trainings, seminars, and workshops for the staff.
In a speech of how to build a business, there are key issues that Jeff should deliver to the entrepreneurship class. Using Jeff’s scenario of moving from a baseball coach to a CEO, he ideally used the advice of Dave Wood and acted on them, instead of following how his predecessor use to manage the affairs of Delta Company.
For instance, Bowling did not copy Dave’s management style in separating the company’s services into five core units. In building a business mansion, where one is currently does not matter, but it is only ideas that have billion potentials that take one to his/her destination. It is essential to understand that building a multi-billion company does not take place overnight. An entrepreneur must be unique in his/her dealings.
The process involves coming up with new ideas that is, becoming innovative and creative to prevent situations of copying what others do (Kaplan & Warren, 2010). Clarities of purpose, vision, and core values are essential in driving a personal idea to great heights.
Since people have different personalities, tastes and preferences, it is prudent not to copy how one managed his/her way to the top, but to follow his/her advices of how he/she made it to that point. Clarity helps an entrepreneur to understand where he/she wants to go and for what reason.
When one carry out duties in his/her own way, he/she opens up to learn new ideas hence setting their own targets rather than relying on what others have done. For instance, in managing Delta Medical Consulting, I used Wood’s advice and even developed a learning culture, which enable me to grow my individual capacity to lead the company to its present position.
Markedly, the process brings different thinking in a person’s mind hence increasing the chances of applying new ideas. If one acts on the instructions he/she gets, there are higher chances of giving an idea a stinking shot that it requires, instead of following how others have implemented the idea.
One must believe in himself in order to build a successful business such that when other people withdraw their support, he/she can have the courage to soldier on with the dream.
Additionally, an entrepreneur must believe in accomplishing the visions and purposes of the business so that he/she can develop trust in the entire process. In essence, one must be ready to learn new ideas in order to discover and comprehend current market dynamics.
The process of building a business empire needs individual actions on one’s thoughts and remaining steadfast on them. Since the market is changing at a drastic rate, businesses also require alternative approaches of management. Successful entrepreneurs always know their expectations and do not need to follow someone’s way of implementing a personal business idea given that they had different perceptions (Toren & Toren, 2011).
Therefore, they only borrow ideas of how to build their enterprises from others through networking. Curiosity drives this category of people into knowing what others understand on their lines of interest, but do not engage in meaningless debates. In addition, one has to stick to his original beliefs at all cost to prevent other people’s ideas from swaying him/her, as these may cause distractions from hitting the target.
If an entrepreneur can follow actions of his/her advisor, there are high possibilities that the entrepreneur will not be engaging in risky ventures that the advisor evaded. This shows an entrepreneur’s lack of confidence in building trust among potential investors and clients. During the business talk, Jeff should stress that an entrepreneur must believe in his/her capabilities, be visionary, courageous, open-minded and confident.
When Jeff sold his car and house to acquire the business, senior staff members realized that he was a man who could do anything for success to come forth. This is the first action that made the entire executive adopt the culture of collective responsibility.
For new hires, the immediate exposure to the company’s core values through emails, attending a new-hire class, and holding two 90-minutes meeting with the CEO assisted in inculcating Delta’s traditions into the new recruits.
In addition, the firm allowed employees to organize social events, champion causes, initiate fundraising initiatives for local organizations and work towards making Delta Medical Consulting a fun institution to work. Acts of instilling discipline and manners into new hires infused the company’s culture into these recruits.
These organizational deposits are necessary as it enables employees to work in unison in achieving common company goals. Culture unites employees from diverse backgrounds and families. In addition, the principles control employees’ behaviors within and outside the organization thus encouraging loyalty towards the management.
Employees should also understand the organization’s culture in order to bring them into one platform while at work (Importance of Organization Culture, 2010). This eliminates instances of discrimination and neglect at the workplace. Therefore, it is vital for employees to adjust to the organization’s culture and principles. Infusing culture into employees also brings healthy competition among employees in meeting their set goals.
Employees who meet their targets feel motivated from the company’s recognition and appreciation. For instance, from the case study, the CEO reveals the company’s culture of rewarding highly performing workers.
Organizational culture also helps in giving a sense of direction at the workplace as it defines the roles and expectations of all stakeholders (Alvesson, 2002). At Delta, the director is free to release an employee who proves ineffective to deliver on his/her roles or that who cannot get something done in 90 days.
Bowling devoted 50% of his time to professional growth of the direct reports from different offices. The CEO used this time to motivate the representatives to work towards achieving the best results since they had not fully exploited their potential yet. He managed to hold weekly meetings with the eight different teams.
In the meetings, they could review the goals of all the departments in order to align themselves with the organizations’ objectives. There was also a one-hour one-on-one meeting with direct reports, which occurred every month as from 10:30 am.
During the monthly meetings, Bowling would request for annual goals from all the reports. In my opinion, the CEO used effective management skills given that he believed in management development as the top priority. His style of management enhanced transparency and accountability in all the eight offices at Delta Medical Holding.
Further, he orchestrated his analysis of the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) on timely basis given that the company should focus at meeting its strategic objectives at all time (Reh, n.d.). For instance, nonfinancial metrics like customers’ loyalty and employees’ satisfaction are vital for the long-term operation of the health facility.
Bowling was right in applying such management style to ensure that all the company was meeting the interests of all its stakeholders. On the financial aspect, it is through these frequent meetings that the CEO could realize any misappropriation of funds in through the records. Since he had resolved to realize success in business, Bowling should continue monitoring all the eight reports as he had been doing.
Constant meetings were also significant since senior executives could evaluate their competencies during a performance review. The CEO accorded leaders who recorded low performance necessary trainings to improve their level of performance thus resulting to a high-performance culture.
Jeff intentions of knowing the spouses of his executive team show a person who has not only business interests but also the interests of the families of his employees. The move to meet the spouses at least twice a year also presents a CEO who is supportive and caring for the life of his subordinates.
Jeff’s coaching skills is evident when he got a job at MHA when all the players stopped attending the training sessions. Once he left MHA, Bowling could get time to coach the baseball team notwithstanding his new duties at Delta. Upon taking over from Dave Wood, Jeff could guide new hires, senior executives and other employees on how to achieve maximum output at their capacities.
Even at the meetings, Jeff presented himself more as a Coach than as a CEO given that he offered guidance to the senior management to act the way he could see things. As a CEO, he took the initiative of learning new managerial skills at work and was a strong believer in his potentials.
When Dave opted to disengage himself from the activities of the company, Jeff demonstrated the roles of a CEO by summoning a meeting to discuss the way forward for them at the company.
Even though the company presented numerous monetary benefits to Jeff, he could still secure time for his coaching activities, which had no financial return. The aforementioned arguments reveal Jeff’s more coaching skills than a CEO’s managerial skills.
References
Alvesson, M. (2002). Understanding organizational culture. London: SAGE.
Importance of Organization Culture. (2010). Management Study Guide – Free Training Guide for Students and Entrepreneurs. Web.
Kaplan, J. M., & Warren, A. C. (2010).Patterns of entrepreneurship management (3rd ed.). Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.
Reh, F. J. (n.d.). Key Performance Indicators (KPI). About Management – business management – people management – and more. Web.
Stephenson, J. (2007). 25 Common Characteristics of Successful Entrepreneurs. Business News & Strategy For Entrepreneurs. Web.
Toren, A., & Toren, M. (2011). Small business, big vision: lessons on how to dominate your market from self-made entrepreneurs who did it right. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.