Entrepreneur Qualities and Characteristics: Patience
by Bruce Wade on 04/08/10 at 9:30 am
4 comments
Patience, long suffering, endurance of pain and discomfort – all words that describe one of the hardest characters of successful entrepreneurs. I always thought that only doctors needed patients to survive in business, I soon came to realise that this was just some sick joke. Ok, enough with the humour.
Patience is the ability to wait and wait for the best time or result. We are called on to be patient and wait for the right time to launch a product or to take the shot. At this time we need to override the physical and mental need to spring into action and go for the moment and risk. To assist with patience we need to build good information processes around us that will feed us correct reliable facts to enable us to act at the right moment and not on impulse. I can control my need for action and be patient if I understand the situation better. When to launch a product, when to send an email, when to post a blog, when to call a client. All these counter our urgent need and assist us with patience.
Another time we need to be patient is when working with people who we subconsciously rate as less competent as ourselves. I find the overwhelming need to boot people out of their seats and get the job done faster myself, when with a little patience, I could take time to teach and then never have to do the task myself again. People can be annoying and drive us up the wall but keeping a calm head when everything else tells us to rip out the chain saw and attack the person on the other side of the glass window at the bank is a quality that will not only keep you out of prison but make a better person and superior entrepreneur.
I choose my emotion today and I choose to be more patient with people and processes.
Bruce Wade is a survivor of the corporate and NGO world, author, speaker, business owner and entrepreneur, Bruce now runs the Entrepreneur Incubator; a member based organisation dedicated to serving those in the trenches of business through coaching, mentoring and leadership education. View more articles by Bruce Wade.
Tags: Entrepeneurship, Entrepreneur Qualities and Characteristics, Entrepreneurial Ideas, entrepreneurs
Karin H
Aug 4th, 2010
Seth Godin wouldn’t agree with you about waiting patiently for the right time to do anything:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/06/fear-of-shipping.html
(And I agree with him: ship, because the perfect moment will never be perfect enough)
Karin H. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)
Tyron Bache
Aug 4th, 2010
“If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late. – Reid Hoffman (@quixotic) http://j.mp/9Hy3RN“
20 Entrepreneur & Small Biz Posts from Around the Web | Grasshopper Group
Aug 6th, 2010
[...] Ideate [...]
Michelle
Aug 6th, 2010
There is a material difference between Patience and Fear of Shipping.
Launching a business too early, shooting from the hip and not having fully read all the strategic info and thereby losing 2.37million in the first year has a very scientific label: stupidity.
So TOO is doing all the strategy and then procrastinating thereby losing millions.
Patience is not procrastination or fear of shipping. It is the intelligent and proactive use of time and resources.
One needs to utilise wisdom and significant insight to unpack some of Seth GODin’s laws and it might be considered prudent to utilise restraint and apply context in interpretations to avoid fundamentalist following of Icons.