This month features the fourth in a series of six challenges facing executive coaches who coach entrepreneurs. The first three challenges discussed in previous newsletters included: perceiving the need for change, moving towards commitment and planning, and accepting the pace of change.

 

Given the fast pace that changes take place discussed in last month’s newsletter, it’s only natural that instability and uncertainty can lead to regressing to “the good old days” when status quo meant “don’t make any waves.” Work load in vertical bureaucracies that focuses on procedure and “doing it right” tends to take on a life of its own. The recent two hurricane disasters with Katrina and Rita and the FEMA’s ineffectiveness to deliver needed help to families and small businesses in New Orleans is a case in point in “getting bogged down in red tape" and miscommunication between federal, state, and local levels. Without getting into the blame game, suffice it to say that only two small businesses were helped within the first thirty days after applying for a small business loan (Fortune Small Business, October, 2005). Many of the supplies delivered to families were generously donated by individuals and local governments, as evidenced by the city of Houston offering shelter, clothing, and food.

 

Let’s take the above scenario and offer a hypothetical entrepreneurial intervention to the hurricane refugees mentioned above. Suppose Wal-Mart provided food and household items for the crisis intervention teams responding to the hurricane victims. Half of their stores had suffered sufficient damage and electrical outages that the food would soon become spoiled anyway. Why not give the food to the relief workers and victims who had electricity? Or perhaps offer the food and hardware items to a cooperative housing project that provided rent subsidies to those left homeless. For a brief period of weeks, this is exactly what happened in several Gulf Coast communities. Wal-Mart employees began offering items without the bureaucratic red tape of getting approval from the top. This was made possible by the astute Wal-Mart leadership that had already gone into an entrepreneurial mode to assist their store managers and employees.

 

Although there were service disruptions in the daily operations of many large and small businesses, professional management knew to let their store managers make executive decisions without micromanaging by policies and procedures. There are untold stories of small business owners reaching out to the victims. People in Houston and other Gulf Coast communities emptied their refrigerators and brought food and gasoline to the victims stranded on the highways in the largest metropolitan evacuation in history as two million Houstonians took to the highways to escape Rita’s wrath. Although there were some mishaps as far as opening up highways and having gasoline trucks ready for stranded motorists, the mayor, governor, and FEMA did a remarkable job, having learned from the mishaps in New Orleans.

 

The point is this—entrepreneurial spirit is like a “strike force team” that can attack the problem quickly, effectively, and efficiently, precisely because there are no standing policies and procedures and multiple, vertical levels of jurisdiction and turf protection. This is not to say that entrepreneurs don’t operate without a vision, strategy, and business plan. But entrepreneurs can tolerate uncertainty and disruptions and change course quickly to meet a crisis or develop a new product line. It’s the willingness and ability to take calculated risks in the face of uncertainty and doubt.

 

Helpful Hints:

1. Pick up your local newspaper and go to the city and state section. Look to see how a local business responded to crisis.
2. Look at the business section of your local paper and see what local businesses are offering the community in the way of information, financial assistance, and volunteers.
3. Ask your company what their policy is regarding time off to help your family in time of crisis without evoking the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA).