The Questions Every Entrepreneur Must Answer

Most newly launched business ventures never get off the ground because entrepreneurs often neglect to clarify their strategy. To chart a successful course for your new venture, start by articulating your goals for the enterprise. Do you want the rush that rapid growth delivers? Capital gains from selling a successful company? Define the kind of enterprise required to achieve your goals. For example, if you want to sell the business eventually, you’ll need to build a sustainable organization that can renew itself through changing generations of technology, employees, and customers. And you’ll need a company big enough to support an infrastructure that won’t require your daily intervention.

How Your Management Team Can Have A Good Fight

Think "conflict" is a dirty word for top-management teams? It's actuallyvaluable for team members to spar (figuratively, of course!). Handledconstructively, conflict helps teams make high-stakes decisions underuncertainty and move quickly despite intense pressure.
But the key to managing conflict is preventing it from taking a personal turn.Tactics for doing this include multiplying the alternatives under discussion. Asyour team weighs a decision, consider four or five options simultaneously --even some you don't support. This diffuses conflict by preventing teams frompolarizing around just two possibilities. For example, executives at onestruggling company brainstormed alternative solutions that included entering anew market
and even selling the company.