5 Skills Essential to Success

2008 | Dec 11 in Home Page News , Leadership

In Michael Gerber's book, The Power Point, he states that there are five essential skills every entrepreneur must have in order to create a great business. Consciously or unconsciously, every entrepreneur does these things to some extent in their business. But it's the ones who master these skills that will create world-class businesses.

At E-Myth we suggest that your business is your product. When you think about it that way, you understand that you need to work on your product (your business) just as you would on the products you sell. To do that, you must master the skills of business ownership. A baker develops the cooking skills necessary to create tasty treats. An architect develops the drafting techniques to design beautiful homes. An entrepreneur must possess the skills necessary to develop a successful business.

The 5 Essential Skills Needed to Create a Great Business

Concentration
The inner force and energy that allows you to focus your attention. This is the foundation for everything — without the ability to focus, you can not live on purpose.
If you have three projects on your desk and you work on all of them at once, you're not likely to get anything done. Not to mention the fact that when you spread your attention too thin, you're just not capable of doing your best work. Concentration allows you to focus with laser precision on that which needs to be done.

Discrimination
The ability to choose upon what, where and who our attention (or concentration) is directed. It's through discrimination that a business develops standards and discipline.
Discrimination is about picking and choosing your battles. It's about prioritizing. It's about choosing to work on the things that will deliver the biggest return for your efforts. We've worked with tens of thousands of clients and this is the skill that often trips people up. When you're bogged down in the day-to-day activities of running a business, prioritizing can be a struggle. All of our programs offer worksheets and tools to help you create systems that allow you to discriminate the work you should be doing: prioritizing around that which will give you the greatest return for your efforts.

Organization
This is the ability to turn chaos into order. Once you're able to concentrate and discriminate you need to create order and predictability so you can successfully grow your business. This involves the creation of systems that allow your business to run efficiently.

Innovation
Once you've begun to hone your focus on the right things, and you've achieved some order to your world, you can begin to innovate. Innovation is part of the the Business Development Cycle. Innovation is that spark of genius that all entrepreneurs have and should be seen as an asset. An asset that can be leveraged for the greater good of the entire organization. An asset that will add business value over time.
Lots of us have ideas, but when you've developed the skill of innovation, you're able to take that moment of inspiration and capture it, recreate it and most importantly: take action on it.

Communication
The ability to transmit ideas with clarity, precision, passion and purpose. People want to be inspired and part of something important. You must communicate your passion, your vision and your ideas to your employees, your customers your lenders, your vendors — everyone who is touched by your business.

Concentration provides the energy and attention needed for action, discrimination provides the intention and standards to know what action needs to be taken, organization provides the room for right action to take place, innovation spurs new ideas and communication is the channel through which the ultimate vision is realized.

Tell Us About It

How have you put these skills to work in your business? Are there any that you struggle with? Leave a comment and tell us about it. We love to hear your stories.