Page 163 - ENTREPRENEURSHIP Innovation and entrepreneurship

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156 THE PRACTICE OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP

lists the areas in which performance has fallen below budget, in which
there is a “shortfall,” in which there is a “problem.” At the monthly
management meeting, everyone then goes to work on the so-called
problems. By the time the meeting adjourns for lunch, the whole morn-
ing has been taken up with the discussion of those problems.
Of course, problems have to be paid attention to, taken seriously, and
tackled. But if they are the only thing that is being discussed, opportu-
nities will die of neglect. In businesses that want to create receptivity to
entrepreneurship, special care is therefore taken that the opportunities
are also attended to (cf. Chapter 3 on the unexpected success).
In these companies, the operating report has two “first pages”:
the traditional one lists the problems; the other one lists all the
areas in which performance is better than expected, budgeted, or
planned for. For, as was stressed earlier, the unexpected success in
one’s own business is an important symptom of innovative oppor-
tunity. If it is not seen as such, the business is altogether unlikely
to be entrepreneurial. In fact the business and its managers, in
focusing on the “problems,” are likely to brush aside the unex-
pected success as an intrusion on their time and attention. They
will say, “Why should we do anything about it? It’s going well
without our messing around with it.” But this only creates an
opening for the competitor who is a little more alert and a little
less arrogant.
Typically, in companies that are managed for entrepreneurship,
there are therefore two meetings on operating results: one to focus on
the problems and one to focus on the opportunities.
One medium-sized supplier of health-care products to physi-
cians and hospitals, a company that has gained leadership in a num-
ber of new and promising fields, holds an “operations meeting” the
second and the last Monday of each month. The first meeting is
devoted to problems—to all the things which, in the last month,
have done less well than expected or are still doing less well than
expected six months later. This meeting does not differ one whit
from any other operating meeting. But the second meeting—the one
on the last Monday—discusses the areas where the company is
doing better than expected: the sales of a given product that have
grown faster than projected, or the orders for a new product that are
coming in from markets for which it was not designed. The top
management of the company (which has grown ten-fold in twenty
years) believes that its success is primarily the result of building