Entrepreneurial Leadership - Essay Example

Case (2010) identifies three P’s (people, passion and perseverance) as the key ingredients of a successful entrepreneurship. He said that the presence or absence of the three P’s in the right mix can lead to success or failure as an entrepreneur. His successful steering of AOL has been contributed to these 3 P’s by him (Case, 2010). However, the failure of merger of AOL with Time Warner was a result of incorrect focus on the 3 P’s. The merger resulted in cultural clash of employees and hence they were focused on their personal issues rather than the innovations.

The passion that was earlier present in AOL employees was lost in the huge merged enterprise and finally perseverance was hit hard because people lost their belief in internet and they stopped investing in innovation. Another thing lacking in the deal was “vision execution”. A great idea rebounded because the 3 P’s were not rightly focused on “executing” the vision (Case, 2010). Kouzes (2008) talks about five leadership practices which help in motivating people to perform at their best.

Thus, he also focused on people and showed how great leaders inspire them to arouse perseverance and passion in them. The five principles are – having a clear vision of what is required so that the employees understand what is expected of them and they move accordingly, setting example by doing what is being preached, challenging the current state of affairs as status quo never inspires people to perform at their best, enabling others to act in line with the vision by understanding the motivation factors of a team or individual and encouraging the heart by rewarding exemplary performance (Kouzes, 2008).

Drucker (2007) distinguishes between entrepreneurial strategies and entrepreneurial management. The first strategy is that of being seen as the undisputed leader in the market. Strategies are for external markets and can be used alone or in combination with others. It is the riskiest but pays the most if successful. This is what AOL tried to do by merging with Time Warner. Other strategies involve “creative imitation”, “entrepreneurial judo” and finding a specialized “ecological niche” (Drucker, 2007).

This gives rise to entrepreneurial leadership where leaders operate in dynamic market conditions and transform the inconsistency and dynamic character of the market into opportunities (Tarabishy, Fernald and Solomon,). He is capable of using different strategies or a combination of them to establish his product/ service or company in the current environment. The entrepreneurial leader should have a clear vision, communicate it well and then help his people execute it. Types of organizations and leadership styles Organizations can be classified into different types depending on their size, culture, decision making authority and design etc.

An organization which follows top-down communication, has very rigid rules, is bureaucratic in authority and has very narrowly defined tasks is called a “Mechanist Organization” (Kinicki, 2007). On the other hand an “Organic Organization” is flexible, with open communication networks, flat hierarchical structure and employees who perform variety of tasks and not just the specific ones (Kinicki, 2007). Decision making in such organizations is de-centralized and middle and lower level managers have more control over various decisions.

For transformational leaders, an organic organization is best