I became a management educator at some graduate business schools (GBS) in Malaysia and the Asian region after having retired from serving corporate sector for 40 years as leadership and management development as well as human resource development (HRD) professional. One of my favorite course that I enjoyed facilitating for young managers is taking your success in your own hands - “The Entrepreneurial Mind-set versus the Employee Mind-set.”
I believe that this mind-set shift is the single key distinction that separates the self-made success - on ample display during my working experience - from passivity, feelings of victimization, helplessness & “quiet desperation” (to use a famous phrase from Drucker) in which most people sadly find themselves. (Dr. Peter Drucker: Management Challenges for the 21st Century: The Next Society (Corpedia Script for Online Program)
When my two sons Farouq & Fariz wanted to quit their jobs with a good company to set up their own 3-D new business venture, I cautioned them “Keep in mind, this distinction has nothing to do with whether you're actually an entrepreneur or an employee. It's about mind-set. Many employees display the entrepreneurial mind-set (they're usually the ones who get promoted and promoted again and again), and many entrepreneurs display the employee mind-set (they're the ones who typically go out of business. One key point: You are an active creator of you success, not a passive task master & rewards.”
Based on my academic research, I share with them what a famous US entrepreneur, Henry Ford writes in his autobiography: “An educated man is not one who is trained to carry a few dates in history - he is one who can accomplish things. A man's real education begins after he has left school. True education is gained through the discipline of life … A man may be very learned and useless. Merely gathering knowledge may be the most useless work a man can do. What can you do to help and heal the world? That is the real educational, business leadership & management, as well as the entrepreneurship tests.”
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