Entrepreneur to Professional Management Research Paper

Perfect manager for all stages of growth is difficult to find in just one person, but there are examples. During the initial stages, the manager needs to be visionary. This is often the entrepreneurial stage, where an idea is just being articulated, and the manager needs to first coalesce the business plan for the product/service idea, and then get a team of people to buy into the idea on top of that. Entrepreneurial leaders are often visionaries, and this is their key strength (Lewis, 2014). They are often risk-takers as well. But the key to the success of an entrepreneur is to have a great idea, get the buy-in from others, and then begin to professionalize the operation.

The next stage of a business is the growth cycle. At this point, the operation is probably focused on building markets and on scaling up the business. Flamholtz and Randle (2007) note that this can be a challenging stage for many managers because the entrepreneurial mindset holds that the person probably is a jack of all trades, performing many different tasks. As the company grows, however, this becomes less feasible.The best manager is one who is capable of performing all of the tasks, because the entrepreneur needs to do that, but one is also capable of delegating when the time comes. This requires a transformation in the mindset of the leader at this point in time, where the leader recognizes that his/her tasks are going to be substantially different from what they were during the earlier stages of the business.

The growth stage is basically the professionalization stage of the business. Flamholtz and Randle (2007) make clear that at this point there needs to be much more formality, in terms of training, in terms of planning, and that at this stage the jobs an responsibilities of different people within the organization need to be defined. If the business is wildly successful, the entrepreneurial manager might not see the need for this formality, but that is an illusion caused by success. Formal structures do need to be put into place during the growth stage in order that the company is ready when challenges do….....