Step 2: Choosing Disciples (Looking Outward at Key Individuals)

Success and growth in business usually entails a corresponding growth in people. The earlier the better in this process, the entrepreneur must identify who the core leadership team of the company moving forward should be both by role and skill set. The easy path is to simply go by seniority. After all, those who were there in the beginning as the entrepreneur took his first steps have demonstrated loyalty and must have been doing something right to help the business succeed. However, are they the right people to make it grow?

Entrepreneurs going through this transformation must balance loyalty to those who brought them initial success with realism about what is needed in the future. This is certainly not to say that the old guard must be jettisoned for a new one. The entrepreneur must have a system to make an objective assessment.

This stage has two distinct yet interdependent components. First, the entrepreneur must objectively assess his current leadership team in terms of competencies and potential. Second, based on fact (rather than emotion) the entrepreneur determines who should be on the future leadership team. In some cases, this may require hiring from the outside to fill a specific need.

The fact that the entrepreneur had already sought and received a 360 degree feedback report makes this one potential tool in this process to utilize with others. The entrepreneur’s own 360 report will also be valuable as it will highlight areas in which he should compensate with other people’s skill sets. The details of this process are created specifically for the set of facts that are present in the company at the time.

At the completion of this stage, the entrepreneur will have chosen the group of people who will lead the company forward. But he will have not yet created a powerful, synergistic team.