Entrepreneurial Leadership

No success in public life can compensate for failure in the home.

“Sir, I’m sorry, but I reserve Sundays for my family,” I said. “I’m happy to come in as early as you like on Monday morning, but I am not available to work on Sundays.”

Entrepreneurial leaders must manage their time effectively—and that’s true both in the office and at home.

Time for family and friends, for health, for learning, for recreation, and for reflection all need scheduling. Work priorities may have to take a back seat when more important ones won’t.

Raising children is the ultimate long-term investment; very often, the day-to-day work of a parent can feel frustrating or unrewarding, especially during the sometimes sullen teenage years.

family is the bull’s-eye at the center of my life and priorities.

people think of their lives like a big mason jar. After fitting in “the big rocks”—the important stuff—fill the remaining space with pebbles, then sand. And there’s still a lot of room for water—the analogy’s least important matters, filling the interstices.

For me, the big rocks were always my kids. As a parent, when you miss a concert, soccer game, or parent-teacher conference, you’ve lost an opportunity that won’t come back. Worse yet, your absence during these moments sends a message to impressionable young people. Being with my kids meant sleeping a little less, missing occasional business trips, and leaving the briefcase in the car—all worth it in a big-rock scheme of life.

I would never consider starting a business without a business plan, without a clear notion of what “winning” meant, or without measurement along the way.

the key questions I asked myself were What am I solving for? What would winning look like?

success as parents would ultimately be measured by our children’s maturity along six dimensions: spiritual development, intellectual development, physical development, emotional development, character development, and skill development.

creating lists of family and individual activities that would help our children achieve these outcomes.

important element of the process was that our kids had the sense that we were “about something.” We weren’t just picking them up from school, attending their games, and helping them with schoolwork while figuring out how to pay our mortgage and juggle other social and financial obligations. We had a plan, an objective, a mission—one that we’d taken the time to define as winning and that communicated a purpose beyond just getting through the day. We

the presence of goals and objectives at home helped activate my ambition and need for achievement—and helped prevent me from falling into the trap of sacrificing personal goals for more easily quantifiable professional goals.

it’s so important to set limits on how much of your life you will devote to your career.

“There [are] two sets of virtues, the résumé virtues and the eulogy virtues,” he wrote. “The résumé virtues are the skills you bring to the marketplace. The eulogy virtues are the ones that are talked about at your funeral—whether you were kind, brave, honest or faithful. Were you capable of deep love? We all know that the eulogy virtues are more important than the résumé ones.

Every entrepreneurial leader needs a plan to help him or her escape the strong gravitational pull of work.

Set boundaries on your work to make room for nonwork interests and commitments.

Operationalize those commitments, giving them the same priority you give to professional assignments and career rewards. Expect to be “out-of-balance” during certain seasons, but don’t abandon the need to reprioritize and rebalance your priorities.

Mission answers the question “What would winning look like?” Mission clarity puts everyone on the same page and resolves conflicts.