A Business Owner's Vision Partner

Successful business owners are noted for their highly creative energy as entrepreneurs and marketers. What others see as difficulties or non-value, they seize opportunities and transform the perceived negatives to growing business, thereby providing employment and revenue to the nations and society.

As business empire grows, complexity also increases : both externally and internally. .

External factors include market forces, changing political scenes, international trades and currency movement. .

Internal factors can be the ever adjusting corporate or organization structures, management system, changing technology and most challenging of all, human element. .

A business owner's giant vision is certainly more than just making money, after much exposure and experiences to the interrelated forces in this borderless world. Making money is closely linked with sustainbility and expanding business in a long time frame, benefiting the society at large. A healthy and growing society also propels the expanding business. Business and Society are inseparable elements. Profit is the outcome of a harmonious relationship between business and society. .

The vision of a sustained and growing business with perpetual life (beyond the life span of a single human being) depends on the collective intelligence and wisdom of the members of the organization or corporation. The success depends largely on the core business team, in a genuine true teamwork, with dedication, commitment and sharing the same vision, who in turn inspires the rest of the organization or corporation. .

Traditional approach to realize such business objectives relies heavily on the well known industrial model of "divide and manage" - with hierarchy of structures, policies and procedures and clearly defined roles and responsibilities for personnel to execute work. Although these are legitimate and logical means, there are also the constant cries for genuine teamwork, proactive leadership and creativity for all levels of the organization, sharing the same vision with that of business owner. But cries remain cries and result in millions of dollars spent on external consultants and management programs like TQM, ISO 9000, Reengineering, Information Technology, Benchmarking, Learning Organization etc. .

A sincere and humble business owner knows his or her own limitation. Having creative ideas, experience and skills in generating ever bigger business does not necessary mean ability to mobilize every ounce of members intelligence and commitment towards a shared vision, nor make sense of the complicated organization structures and system due to its sphere size and multitude, knowing very well that a mishap or defect in one of the critical part among millions, can spell disaster for the business e.g. Barring Bank downfall due to a single trader's action, Union Carbide incident in Bhopal that killed thousands. .

A business owner may then need a complimentary partner to share his vision and make it a realization. .

What then are the complementary Knowledge, Techniques and Skills of the business owner's partner, and with what role-play? .

The Partner's Vision .

The partner should share the vision of the business owner not just on theoretical basic, but has compelling belief in his personal vision that is of no lesser dimension than that of the business owner. Although the partner does not own the business in the material and legal sense, the interrelatedness of the business on the society and this fragile earth, in which the partner is a part is the rationale that he or she has a stake in the business. .

Increasing Business owner's sphere of influence .

The partner needs to possess the necessary skills to help the business owner to increase his sphere of influence to the organization members, starting from the core management team. The source of energy for increasing the owner's sphere of influence is the owner's vision and wisdom, not just authority alone. The ultimate goal is the influenced core-team will create their respective sphere of influence to the rest of the organization or corporation. .

Organization Observer and Thinker .

The partner needs to possess sound theoretical model to make objective observations of the organization with insightful thinking and share with the business owner. This will greatly compliment the business owner as the later will have to be personally involved in the organization, be it policy making or events participant - a necessary role being the business owner. But this also imposes limitation as the owner cannot be an effective objective observer. The partner then has extra pair of eyes for the business partner, acting as the owner's mirror of the soul. .

System Thinker .

The business owner, being successful in building a large empire, is already a seasoned system thinker. However, the domain of system thinking is largely in detecting the market forces : political, economic etc. i.e. the various external factors where are inter linked and interdependent. But it can be a demanding challenge for the same business owner to see and appreciate interrelationship, interdependent and interaction of the multitude of parts, elements, diversity of individual opinions / agenda, subsystems and processes etc. etc. within the organization / corporation. The internal human dynamic can unleash creative energy to move the organization to greater excellent height, or wreck or destroy it in no time, if it is not properly steered, facilitated and led. The business owner's partner then will need to possess the necessary knowledge, techniques and skills to compliment the business owner to see the underlying organizational dynamics on the foundation of sound system theories. .

Personal Coach and Organization Coach .

The partner will act as a Personal Coach to the business owner in the knowledge domains that are complimentary. At the same time, the partner also acts as Organization Coach to the critical members who possess their individual specialized knowledge, with the objective of mobilizing and synergizing collective intelligence and wisdom. The knowledge domain should be based on universal principles to guide the behavior of the partner, as the partner is also a human being with whatever weaknesses or imperfection. It may be necessary for the partner to use appropriate process tools or system tools to coach and guide the relevant personnel. .

Thinking Framework Designer .

The partner needs to be skillful in designing thinking space for greater participation of the organization core-members. This is for the purpose of tapping the existing intelligence of the organization. The partner is not a specialist in giving solutions to organizational problems, but a motivator or facilitator to help organization members to be creative, to help them to focus well on the organizational vision with ideas and effective actions, and not on shallow and narrow subjects that often lead to internal politics and turf protection. .

It will be an ideal for a single business owner to possess all the necessary skills, knowledge and techniques in expanding business and at the same time be the inspirational motivator to the entire organization, playing the role as coach, facilitator, system thinker etc. But it will be a daunting task as there are day to day operational and policy issues to be resolved with responsibility and accountability. Being a participant of the business, it takes enormous discipline to be an objective observer also. Similarly it will be difficult to have one of the senior management members to play such role, as it often contradicts with the assigned position of defined accountability and responsibility. .

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