Entrepreneurship benefits the world in terms of economic growth and, in the tech space, that is amplified in terms of scale and significance.
This is the word from Steve McClelland, who has exited a Silicon Valley start-up to manage product in global megatechs like Yahoo and Twitter. He says entrepreneurship is “where we can make the world a little better and someone’s life much better”.
Today, McClelland spends his time devoted to understanding how entrepreneurs tick, in his role in academia at Duke University, as “Executive in Residence”. At an event at Rise Cape Town – Absa’s Cape Town-based innovation hub – he shared his insights and tips to both those on their start up journey and those innovating from within their corporate worlds.
He explained how he and the Duke research team are exploring ways in which entrepreneurs can make their employees’ work life a little better and their companies’ productivity a lot better. Apart from understanding the trajectory that entrepreneurs get through, following a process and theories like the lean startup are quite common practice now.
The researchers at Duke are looking beyond the steps or the “what” and focussing more on the “who” and the “how” by getting to grips with “mindset”.
“When we refer to ‘mindset’, we mean the culture and mission that the founder brings to the workplace. When you get these values and positive habits embedded in teams, they will follow you in your mission with an enthusiasm and drive,” says McClelland.
He referred to Silicon Valley to illustrate his point, where the roles pay well and the snacks are free, the talent are not just looking for the best paycheque, they are looking at the company culture they want to get behind.
“With this trend in mind, the theory and skills they teach their students at Duke include curiosity, empathy and servant leadership – a leadership philosophy that helps people perform as highly as possible. These values then translate into habits that they hope their students will lead with as founders in future: getting messy and involved, constantly teaching yourself and surrounding yourself with a team of people who are smarter than you.”
According to McClelland there is an iteration to this as many startups dream of exiting through an acquisition by a bigger corporate but worry about merging their people into a new environment due to the different type of cultures.
He adds that there is hope, however, as the industry is seeing the emergence on ‘intrapreneurship’ as a way to harness some of the positive values and habits into a bigger corporate setting.
McClelland learnt a few tricks that he shared with the audience at the event like realtime feedback, inclusion of team members in decision making and merging the mission while being process-driven. The way he led these teams was simple, in his view: give teams permission to solve, be the optimist as the leader, even when it feels delusional and drive the optimism with a sense of urgency where your role is catalytic and you get things started.
According to McClelland this is a business imperative now – your people are your competitive edge and this is informing the future of work for the sector.
“This has become a big part of recruiting and retention, and is ultimately the only way you will continue to compete for good tech talent. As a tech entrepreneur, regardless of whether you’ve been acquired or not, you have to have a mission – recognising this is what will attract the best tech talent.”