We hear much about the need to encourage more people to take the entrepreneurial plunge and start a business. Leaving aside the argument about whether encouraging more start-ups is the most effective way to stimulate growth, I wonder whether more entrepreneurs is really what the country needs.
Every owner manager knows that they can’t build a significant business on their own.  They will need to build a management team. Indeed, it’s almost become trite to hear VCs and other investors talk about investing in the “management team” not just the entrepreneur.
And, we also know, from our experience of working with hundreds of ambitious owner managers, that one of the things they find most challenging is finding the right people to be part of their management team. Typically, they keep trying to recruit a second-in-command or specific senior roles – and it keeps on “not working out”.
Now part of this may be to do with the emotional challenge that many owner managers face in allowing other people to do jobs that they previously used to do themselves and finding that, inevitably, those other people don’t do those jobs in quite the same way the owner manager did. So, they start to closely monitor the people they’ve taken on and meddle in their work.  Both the owner manager and the other people get increasingly frustrated and, eventually, something has to give. Usually, the other people leave, either of their own choice or because the owner manager sacks them in exasperation.
This situation, that we see many, many times, means that the business gets stuck and can’t grow.
So, here’s a radical thought…if we want more of the fast-growth businesses which create the majority of jobs in any developed economy, the so-called “gazelles”, maybe what we need isn’t more entrepreneurs at all. Maybe what we need is more people who can handle the peculiar set of conditions of working for an entrepreneur. More number 2s who can deal with the high passion and high expectation of the entrepreneur and can implement the entrepreneur’s ideas and visions, sometimes subjugating their own thoughts and feelings. These paragons of virtue need to be able to challenge the entrepreneur, offer their own ideas and suggestions, and not mind when they get rejected. They will find themselves having to support the entrepreneur in making the difficult behavioural change described above. They need to be resilient, positive, hard-working, determined, challenging, supportive, brilliant at solving problems and getting things done, capable of delivering to extremely high standards, accepting that things won’t always be perfect, and self-aware – to name but a few of the personal characteristics needed for this most demanding of roles.
So, all praise the number 2. Without one, you and your business are likely to get stuck.
Of course, such people are incredibly rare!  And, that’s why so owner managers face such a tough time in finding them.
If you have one in your business, I suggest you do everything you can keep them! Provide them with whatever resources and skills they need in order to do their job better.  Recognise and reward them for the contribution they make to your business. Make them into a hero.
Oh, and if you know any one who fits this bill, tell them to give me a call!
so by that do you mean you’re struggling to find a ‘number 2′?
@gtt2 Yes, I’m ambitious to grow my business and I know that I need a great number 2 in order to do that. The most important characteristic this person needs to have is to be able to work with me!
The emotional challenge of allowing a potential ‘number 2′ to introduce new ideas to your business has proved hard to overcome for you then? would you say you’re a meddler?
I’ve had a number 2 in the past and it worked very well. Unfortunately, she got offered a job somewhere else which was her lifetime’s dream and she felt she had to grasp that opportunity.
So, I know that I can work with a number 2!
And now I’d like to find another who’s just as good at working with someone who, in her words, is “high passion and high expectation” and at making things happen.
Of course, that’s not to say that I don’t meddle!
By the way, who are you?
I was looking for management courses for a start up business & came across your site. There seemed to be an indication that you hadn’t been successful in finding a ‘number 2′ which I found interesting; in a way it’s good to see that even someone who tries to help others to make their business better faces still faces the same struggles!
I really need No.2 to learn develop and take over from me next year, do you nhave any tips on finding the right person?
Hi Kevin,
I’ve had many conversations about this over the last few days. In fact, when your post came in, I was talking to another owner manager about exactly the same thing!
Here’s a few thoughts on what to look for, in no particular order.
Probably, the single most important characteristic is someone who can work with you! That means lots of different things including: being willing to subjugate their own ideas to yours while also knowing when to challenge you and offer their own ideas, being robust and mature enough to handle it when you point out things that you’re not happy with, having the emotional intelligence to recognise that you will have great strengths (otherwise you wouldn’t be an owner manager) and probably correspondingly deep flaws!
There needs to be mutual trust between you. Easy to say/write – a lot harder to build up and to recognise.
They need to not be a “victim” who always blames you, or other circumstances, when things are going quite right.
They need to be passionate about the business and what it does for its customers.
Ideally, they will have worked with an owner manager before. Another option would be that one of their parents was an owner manager so they know the territory.
And you probably want them to be sufficiently experienced to be able to run your business, develop a strategy and take it to the next level!
Because of this need for experience, they’re probably not an entrepreneur – if they were, they would have already done their own thing by now! At the same time, they may be someone who is looking for a lower risk way of owning their own business.
The owner manager I was just speaking to had decided to look for a big-hitter externally. He had employed head hunters to find him an MD who could build his brand and grow his business very ambitiously over the next few years. The reward package was going to be very significant indeed. As we spoke, the more personal factors (trust, being able to work with him, etc) came more into his mind and he began to realise that the most likely place to find someone like that is someone who has worked with him in the business for a number of years already. He identified such a candidate who he trusts hugely, he knows her strengths and weaknesses, and who is already passionate about the business. Yes, she has some areas where he would need to supplement her with internal and external support. Even then, she might not have the wherewithal to achieve the type of explosive growth that he claims he wants.
He realised that, like so much in the life of an owner manager, the most appropriate approach comes down to risk and reward. Recruiting the external big hitter is higher risk and, if it works, would lead to greater reward. The internal appointment would be much lower risk and may lead to less growth and less reward.
Hope that helps.