EL-10

Entrepreneurial Leadership Strategies and Values: Keys to

Operational Excellence
The major reflections of operational excellence and success in entrepreneurial
organizations revolve around the care of customers, constant innovation, committed people and
managerial leadership. An analysis of the keys to achieving acceptable levels of excellence
focuses on the four primary entrepreneurial leadership strategies, 1. Attention through vision, 2.
Meaning through communication, 3. Trust through positioning, and, 4. Confidence through
respect. The heart of successful entrepreneurial leadership strategies is a concern for people and
interpersonal values that provide a paradigm of interactive cues and the foundational core for the
successful fulfillment of those strategies. Entrepreneurship is fundamentally a way of thinking
that bridges innovative discoveries with need fulfillment.

Concept of Entrepreneurial Leadership

The process that create value for organizational stakeholders by bringing together a
unique innovation and package of resources to respond to a recognized opportunity. In fulfilling
this process, entrepreneurs function within a paradigm of three dimensions, 1. Innovativeness, 2.
Risk-taking, and, 3. Proactiveness. The practice of successful entrepreneurial leadership is
thereby fulfilled within an array of exciting activities and new creative developments—full of
innovations and evolving concepts, constantly changing, and in many cases eluding
classification.

Primary Reflections of Excellence

Whether the organization is large or small, broadly based in several market segments or
only a few, these primary reflections of excellence are of major importance to success. The
organization must first focus on the set of customers who are or will be served by the innovation.
This foundation facilitates the establishment of a “winning team” of people committed to the
achievement of the operational goals and objectives of the organization.
Primary Leadership Strategies

In achieving organizational excellence, an entrepreneurial leader is thereby a person who

inspires, by appropriate means, a level of competence necessary to influence a group of
individuals to become willing participants in the fulfillment of innovational goals. The four
entrepreneurial leadership strategies are, 1. Attention through vision, 2. Meaning through
communication, 3. Trust through positioning, and, 4. Confidence through respect.

Key Leadership Values

Values are foundational attitudes that affect behaviors or states of affairs and are of major
importance to successful entrepreneurial leadership. These values may focus on such
perspectives as fairness, justice, honesty, discipline, freedom, equality, humanitarianism, loyalty,
patriotism, progress, self-fulfillment, pragmatism, courtesy, politeness and cooperation.

Value programming is a significant factor in the development of successful

entrepreneurial leaders. This value programming is a term used to highlight the extent to which
forces outside the individual shape and mold leadership values. There is a paradigm of four basic
values that comprise important keys to strategic success and achievement of organizational
excellence, joy, hope charity and peace. Joy is defined as the radiation from within of a spirit of
genuine friendliness, cheerfulness and positiveness. Hope is defined as the belief that one can set
goals, figure out how to achieve them, and generate the appropriate motivation to accomplish
them. Charityis defined as one’s reflection to other living things of a spirit of patience, kindness,
appreciation, acceptance and support. Peace is defined as a general freedom from unnecessary
self-imposed conflict, as well as a sense of personal worth, well-being and security. Truly
successful entrepreneurial leaders nurture an organization that is fundamentally value-led.

Conclusions

Entrepreneurial leadership values and strategies are the primary competitive advantages
that differentiate one organization from another. These values and strategies are, in turn, the keys
to achievement of excellence in the entrepreneurial organization. There are four primary
reflections of excellence which these leaders help to achieve for their respective organizations:
care of customers, constant innovation, committed people, and management leadership. The
leadership values of joy, hope, charity and peace provide the foundational paradigm for the
implementation of successful entrepreneurial leadership strategies and the commensurate
achievement of excellence by the organization.