The Pride that Blinds

I read an interesting article written by a self styled “coach” for entrepreneurs and other “high-achievers” who spent 25 years at Harvard Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry -

The author relates the story of a failed entrepreneur who came to him for help/treatment.  The entrepreneur’s failure was compounded by his inability to recognize and respond to the market’s feedback regarding his expresso bar/book store hybrid concept.  As I read about this entrepreneur, I started to wrestle internally with the tension between the necessary entrepreneurial qualities of determination and ruthless pursuit of carefully developed goals on the one hand and flexibility and responsiveness to market direction on the other.  I’m not sure there is an easy synthesis here – the author related the story of Alfred Sloan, frequently credited with inventing the assembly line, as an example of an entrepreneur who succeeded in balancing these imperatives.  In my work I view this conflict and similar ones played out each day as growing companies labor to increase their enterprise value.  As the expresso entrepreneur was eventually helped by the author/coach so too are many young companies helped by skilled consultants, advisers, investors and other third party professionals in dealing with these consequential conflicts.  Want to discuss?