Economics For Entrepreneurs – Managing Expectations
Deze aflevering van Economics For Entrepreneurs kijkt naar hoe om te gaan met verwachte resultaten. Gesprek met George Phelan.
Entrepreneurs operate in the future. They imagine a future where lives are improved because dissatisfactions are removed and there’s greater well-being to enjoy. Everyone can embrace that future. So what could go wrong? Well, your customer may expect more than they feel they actually get, so they stop being a customer. Investors and bankers may expect you to get to your next milestone faster, putting you in a race to recover their confidence. Suppliers may expect a better relationship than they actually experience, and they become more difficult to deal with. And heck, you didn’t expect all this angst, so you are dealing with your own disappointments.
What’s the commonality here? Mis-managed expectations. Steve Phelan reckons you might spend half your time as an entrepreneur on the task of expectations management. If you can do it well, it’s a resource for you. Follow these management steps.
Publicatie 15 juli
Definition: Expectations management is actively and purposefully changing someone’s opinion about the value of a resource or asset. For example, many start-up or growing businesses suffer from a perception liability of newness or smallness. Target customers or potential investors or even potential employees might have a negative expectation about the company’s future prospects, which might present a barrier to securing capital or resources. You need to overcome the risk premium of smallness / newness in their eyes. You do so through expectations management.
At the outset, when you are identifying your entrepreneurial opportunity and polishing your idea for a new business, a new project, or a new expansion phase, the expectations that most require management are your own. Get help. Entrepreneurs are confident, action-oriented people. Confidence is good — but research indicates that entrepreneurs are often over-confident about their plans. Steve Phelan calls this the Identification Phase, the point at which the entrepreneur forms the belief that arranging a new set of resources to serve customers in new and better way will achieve a profit.
While start-up entrepreneurs tend to over-confidence, those in business over 5 years tend to demonstrate tighter control over their expectations about what’s possible. So experience can be a good expectations management tool. But, if you don’t have the experience, try to gather more perspective from people who have. Assemble an extended team, even if it’s only by e-mail or Slack. Ask them to share their experience to substitute for your own experience gaps.
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