I was remembering that many years ago I read the famous book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey and I found it interesting to adapt his valuable advice to the daily activities of entrepreneurs, since this would allow them to achieve important achievements because, in In many cases, the bad habits of our daily life prevent us from emerging and prevent our ventures from emerging.
We must remember that each belief, each action, each habit and each undertaking begins in our thinking and is made sustainable by our will, perseverance and determination. Our habits are the software of our life and they determine our automatic actions, our subconscious responses.
The first habit pointed out by Covey refers to proactivity. Can you imagine an entrepreneur who is not proactive? That almost impossible. An entrepreneur must be proactive, because the different stages of the undertaking started will require the individual to assume different roles with different degrees of complexity and for this not only skills, abilities and competences on entrepreneurship are required, but large doses will be demanded willingness to take on challenges.
An entrepreneur must be willing to take on new challenges constantly, because in general, no matter how planned an entrepreneur is, the natural environment of entrepreneurship is uncertainty. In this type of environment such as the one that characterizes Venezuela at this time, one must have a high level of consciousness and a responsible behavior, understanding very well their frustrations and achievements, the challenges to assume and their consequent responses, in addition to understanding and master your ambition.
The second habit was called by Covey thus: Begin with the end in mind. Obviously if an entrepreneur has no idea where he wants to go, much less will he be able to start the trajectory with some minimal chance of hitting the target.
It is required to be the first leader of oneself and understand that the destiny of one as a person and that of our entrepreneurship largely depend on our actions, so it is necessary to understand and internalize the reason for the existence of our entrepreneurship and its basic mission, beyond the mere generation of wealth. It is also essential that the entrepreneur understand and internalize the vision of the future of his project.
Of course, an effective entrepreneur could not be if he does not establish a clear Order in priorities. That's what the third habit defined by Covey is all about. We must find the differences between what is important and what is urgent because this is decisive in defining the priority and quality of the decisions that are made on a daily basis and thus make the existence and performance of our enterprise more productive.
The author defines as urgent those activities that require immediate action and as important those activities that are directly related to the results. In this way, in the daily development of our activities, we will come across activities that in a state of crisis will be simultaneously urgent and important, others that will be important, but not urgent, so that the management of the enterprise will be proactive. These are the quadrants in which an entrepreneur must maintain their continuous management of key activities, because in this way the objectives and goals can be defined in the short, medium and long term, although in today's Venezuela, characterized by constant changes in the economic, political, legal and social environment, the planning tends to be projected simply in the medium term.
Seeking and guaranteeing the benefit of all those related to entrepreneurship is one of the main tasks of an entrepreneur who acts in good faith and takes his project seriously. If some of the parties are harmed, the venture will become unviable. Covey defined the fourth habit as Think win-win.
Always, in any personal, work or commercial relationship, mutual benefit must be the premise. This contributes to balancing human relationships and achieving collective satisfaction.
It is sufficiently demonstrated and documented that not understanding and not acting in accordance with this principle is the main cause of great failures and social, political and commercial conflicts.
The fifth habit defined by Covey tells us that we must first try to understand and then be understood. Wisely, the author defines the supreme importance of communication and with this we can understand that if an entrepreneur does not make a clear reading of the needs of his potential clients or users, he will not be able to define his value proposition, nor his minimum viable product. It is essential to clearly identify, with a high level of precision, the needs that we must satisfy our customers in the present and in the future. After there, we are in a position to make ourselves heard, presenting our proposal and giving more opportunities to our undertaking.
Synergizing is the penultimate of the seven habits. By understanding the importance of achieving results superior to those achieved individually when working collectively effectively, even greater results are achieved. You just have to understand that the result of collective work is superior to individual work, but only when it is done well.
When we are undertaking, not all collective work is done well, so not all processes that are believed to be synergistic necessarily are. Hence the importance of being proactive and continuously adapting our management on the project, innovating, growing, giving new approaches to entrepreneurship, but with the firm intention of obtaining validated knowledge.
The seventh habit described by Covey consists of sharpening the saw or taking a rest to be able to observe our business and its different edges from another perspective, giving rise to the possibility of making adjustments, redefining objectives and goals and expanding the vision of the project.. If we cannot redefine ourselves on the fly, reinvent ourselves, reengineer our business based on the constant changes in the environment, our business will have little chance of survival.
Personally internalizing the seven habits defined by Stephen Covey is a necessity for many people, but I am sure that applying them in the development and evolution of an enterprise represents a fact that will make the difference between the continuous evolution or the death of our business or draft.
