The Entrepreneur, The Manager, and The Technician

Michael Gerber, in The E-Myth Revisited; Why Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It. New York: Harper Business, 1995, pp. 19-33 shows us how any kind of business requires three rolls: the Entrepreneur, the Manager, and The Technician.

The Entrepreneur:

The Entrepreneur has the vision. "The entrepreneurial personality turns the most trivial condition into an exceptional opportunity. The Entrepreneur is the visionary in us. The dreamer. The energy behind every human activity. The imagination that sparks the fire of the future. The catalyst for change." (pp. 23-4)

The Manager:

The manager implements the vision: "The managerial personality is pragmatic. Without the Manager there would be no planning, no order, no predictability."(p. 25)

The Technician:

The technician gets the things done that have to be done for the vision to be manifest: "The Technician is the doer. 'If you want it done right, do it yourself' is The Technician's credo." (p. 26)

Gerber says: the entrepreneur lives in the future. "The Entrepreneur builds a house and the instant it's done begins planning the next one. (p. 26). The manager lives in the past. He "creates neat, orderly rows of things. The Entrepreneur creates the things that the manager puts in the rows." (p. 26). The technician lives in the present. He "isn't interested in ideas; he's interested in how to get it done." (p. 27)

Gerber's insight here is that it takes all three roles for the business to be workable. And none of us is good at all three.

I was always better at the vision thing. I think, in retrospect I had an opportunity with my research business back in the 1980s when I was given an employee to work on a project with a utility. I didn't let go of the technical work. Maybe for that, I was put out in the desert of all other things. Sounds pretty Biblical, doesn't it? And then, maybe this is a rationalization, which may or may not be right. Still...

Does this sound like you? What do you think? I'd like to know. Share your experiences. Post to this blog.

Entrepreneurship informs all of my professional activities. Entrepreneurial ideas are their life's blood. For my ideas on entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog and for my ideas on writing and publishing, go to www.kearneymusicschoolmurders.blogspot.com