Day 10: How do the Perceptiveness, Persistence and Risk Taking Characteristics affect FullEmploy?

Welcome to day 10 of the Characteristics of a business owner cum entrepreneur. I know it's been over 2 months since I blogged but it should be worth the wait.

Perceptiveness:
When delegating or negotiating you not only need to be flexible and open-minded but you also need to be perceptive to the needs of your counterparts. When delegating, it's crucial to perceive your subordinates' feelings so that you can better understand what they think you expect from them and you can more accurately understand their contributions so that it makes it easier to incorporate them into your plans. With negotiations, perceptiveness can help you avoid pitfalls and get better deals.

FullEmploy's staff cooperate with each other; they don't negotiate. They all work on the same remit. If different methods of solution are suggested they may be tolerated but they will be reviewed based on the effects on the original remit.

Persistence:
This sounds similar to the Drive characteristic which is the energy to drive projects through. Persistence is usually invoked in the face of failure. Theory has it that successful people look for the opportunity in every failure. FullEmploy has formalised this into what it calls the Business Development Lifecycle (BDL). This is where staff consider WHAT activity they're required to do; the RESOURCES needed to do it; HOW it's going to be achieved; and WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

The BDL imposes that staff do a brainstorming session to come up with a series of methods of solution. Then using the best one in their action plan and the remainder as alternative method of solution in a contingency plan for that activity. Then they produce a Monitoring Plan not only to monitor the progress of the agreed upon method, but also on the effectiveness of the chosen resources including the human resources.

These reports are analysed and regularly reviewed at set milestones in the action plan. If a failure occurs before a milestone is due, then if the failure is minor, an alternative method and/or resource can be used. But if the failure is major and that none of the alternative methods and resources can ameliorate it, an emergency review is convened where a new plan is created or the project is abandoned.

Risk Taking:
When a project is being planned, many alternative methods of solution are proposed. The best ones are used in the project action plan and the rest are used as contingencies for each activity. During planning "What if" analyses are performed to stress test the plan.

Sometimes you get conflicting answers some of which suggest that the project should be abandoned. The entrepreneur has to take a measured risk but should treat it as an activity and monitor the risk as part of the monitoring plan and review the results at the review meeting or emergency review.

All entrepreneurs learn the lesson from any setback (failure) and continue in the light of the new experience i.e persist until successful. Napoleon Hill once said "A quitter never wins and a winner never quits". FullEmploy's interpretation of this is "A quitter never wins but a winner knows when to quit". A horse racer knows when to stop flogging a dead horse and a shrewd business person knows when to cut his/her losses.