Entrepreneurs are rare
To create tasks is difficult. To create tasks for oneself is even more difficult. That is why, we have people to assign us tasks in large companies. You get your tasks from your manager, the manager gets his tasks from his manager and the chain continues till the top. It does not end even there. The people at the top are answerable to the board, the shareholders and so on who indirectly set their tasks.
It is pretty obvious that a majority of the world’s population does a task assigned to it by someone else. The majority do not want to be in a situation where they have to decide what to do next. The majority want someone else to tell them “You are supposed to do ‘x’, ‘y’ tasks in ‘z’ days and you will be guaranteed a secure life.
However, we do not like to accept this simple fact and instead find a thousand reasons for behaving this way. “I have commitments” is the most common reason. I used to believe in that reason until recently. However, now I feel it is the fear of ‘not knowing to create tasks’ that makes us want to work for others. Here are 2 strong reasons to believe this:
- When you are the task-creator, the probability of having a secure life is just 50% (or may be even less than that). However, when you work for others, the probability of a secure life is most often 100%.
- Evolutionarily, humans have been hunters and then farmers. In both cases, the exact work to be done so that one can survive has been taught from father to son, mother to daughter. We have always followed instructions from others. The psychology that seems to have been hardwired in our brains is: “Follow this routine and you are safe”.
And that is why, I think entrepreneurs are so rare. You have to break the routine, you have to forego security, you have to work against the hardwired psychology.
August 7th, 2009 at 7:34 PM
Hi Ashwin,
Nice post and agree with you to a some extent.
However, Evolution always has had outliers. Thats the essence of the theory of evolution. Not all of them make it, but the ones who do, make it really big
And as far as we humans are concerned, the earliest entrepreneurs would have been the ones who had to courage to move out of Africa. You can say the same for Vasco Da Gama and Co
Also, as far as Task Creation and Entrepreneurship is concerned, I disagree with you. From what I understand from your post, only the person who is setting the task or rather, the one running the company is the entrepreneur. I think it is more to do with how the team is structured and is an entirely different ball game. And you can still have companies like 3M where an individual has almost unlimited freedom to do his work.
An Entrepreneur for me, is one who see an opportunity and goes all out to make the most of it. And the brethren exists, becase almost everybody can see the opportunity, but very few have the balls
Good one, Keep ‘em coming
August 7th, 2009 at 7:39 PM
Very well written. Everyone needs a secured life, which they strive to achieve by taking orders. They do not want to take the risk of being judgemental. Go to school, finish college, take up a job and impress your boss. Now, thats what everyone strives to do all through their life. As long as people get paid for taking orders, they’ll continue to do that without any regrets. To come out of beaten track requires lot of guts and only few can do that.
On a different note, I think your writing style matches that of S.Godin.
August 7th, 2009 at 8:30 PM
HI
August 7th, 2009 at 8:31 PM
For some strange reason, The comments region here does not support characters in Caps
August 7th, 2009 at 9:40 PM
@sunil: I agree. An entrepreneur is one who sees an opportunity and grabs it. Task creation is a very core part of execution of that opportunity and as far as I see it, this is the toughest part for an entrepreneur. In fact, I think opportunities exist everywhere. How you analyze it, break it into tasks and execute those tasks is more important.
@vishwas: Have I become so influenced by Seth?
I was not aware of that.
@sunil: WordPress has the habit of over-using its formatting capabilities
I’ll see what can be done.