business entrepreneurs

Many people who set out to be entrepreneurs don't reach the targets they've set for themselves. They may ruefully conclude that they lack the necessary qualities. It's tempting to assume that the richly successful entrepreneur - like Richard Branson, say - has unique talents, like a great footballer or wonderful singer. But Branson, like many millionaires, has a record spotted by several failures: so the talents aren't foolproof.

In fact, all successful entrepreneurs have a number of attributes in common. The Harvard Business Review once published a careful study of entrepreneurial qualities by Geoffrey A.Timmons. He came up with nine:

1. A high level of drive and energy
2. Enough self-confidence to take carefully calculated, moderate risk
s3. A clear idea of money as a way of keeping score and as a means of generating more money
4. The ability to get other people to work with you and for you productively
5. High but realistic, achievable goals
6. Belief that you can control your own destiny
7. Readiness to learn from your own mistakes and failures
8. A long-term vision of the future of your business
9. Intense competitive urge, with self-imposed standards

The list may look formidable: at seminars with people working in large companies, I seldom find anybody claiming more than six of the nine. In the largest insurance group in Finland, nobody owned to any of the atttributes except the managing director: and he only claimed one. And when you do meet an obvious nine-star example, they are remarkable individuals - like the young Michael Heseltine, in the days when he was an embryonic politician and an aspiring small businessmen.

In the early Sixties, the aspirations hadn't produced much result, despite his ownership of all those attributes. Haymarket Publishing had trouble showing a profit, and false starts, like a news magazine called Topic, and a high-prestige, non-profit glossy, Town, kept the business small and struggling financially. But learning all the time from his mistakes and failures (Attribute Seven), Heseltine self-confidently kept on taking risks (Attribute Two) until he at last found the right market: business magazines, like Management Today, Campaign and Accountancy Age.

He had also found a group of people (Attribute Four) who could work with him productively, and whose key members could be imbued with his monetary clarity (agonising over where the next cash will come from tends to clear the mind). Founding father Heseltine duly followed his long-term vision of his personal future by moving full-time into politics. Two of those key colleagues, Lindsay Masters and Simon Tindall, then built on the foundations to create the present group, which also has strong portfolios in medical publishing and leisure magazines.

Heseltine's entrepreneurial efforts thus went on rewarding him with millions long after he ceased to take an active interest in the business. Would he have been any less successful if some of the nine attributes had been missing? Should others worry if they fall short on the nine-star count? The first answer is that you can just get lucky: as when Tiny Rowland, selling a 30% stake in the House of Fraser (which he expected to repurchase), 'gave me the chance on a golden plate,' as Mohammed Al-Fayed gleefully noted.

But golden plates containing Harrods don't appear too often. If your luck fails, lacking any one of the nine attributes may prove fateful - and even fatal. Look behind any might-have-been or bankruptcy and you'll see what could have achieved success, but didn't: it might be greater drive and energy, better risk-taking, proper financial controls, less insistence on being a one-man band, larger ambition, refusal to give up, turning error into expertise, higher standards, or pursuing a dream that could be turned into rich reality.

While some people (like Heseltine) are innately gifted in some or all directions, every businessman or woman is capable of greatly improving their capability and performance on any of the nine counts. Figure-blind financial illiterates can master budgets and management accounts: dictators can learn to delegate: mistakes can be admitted and not repeated: the future can be mapped out. It all takes effort, true, which some people would much prefer not to make. But that's another story - and a poorer one.