Please see Syllabus for further detail on weekly reading and assignments.

 

Week 1: The Entrepreneur Must Grow, Too! In order for a business to grow, the entrepreneur must grow. First, the entrepreneur’s role will evolve from primarily being a “doer” to a manager then to a leader and ultimately to being a coach/mentor. Additionally the entrepreneur in most cases moves from being a specialist to a generalist to ultimately being a “conductor”. We will learn from Barbara Lynch, a much-heralded Chef who, with little formal education or training, built a multi-concept restaurant “empire” in Boston, and from Ryan Dienst, one of the founders of Global Medical Imaging.

 

Week 2: The “Secret” of High Performance is High Employee Engagement. Using the Leaders Bank and Trilogy Health Services stories we will look at how two businesses put in place people policies, practices, and a leadership model that led to high employee engagement, loyalty, and productivity that drove high customer satisfaction. We will also focus on the principles of people-centric leadership. During this Week, you will engage with Community members in Workshop learning.

 

Week 3: Growth Is Much More Than a Strategy—It Requires a SYSTEM. Growth is behavioral. To enable and promote the desired behaviors, entrepreneurs have to create an internal aligned system that links, in a consistent self-reinforcing manner, strategy/business model, culture, structure, leadership behaviors, measurements, and rewards. This week we will learn from John Gabbert, who built highly successful retail home furnishings chain Room & Board his way, rejecting the common business practices of his industry. My MBA students find this story mindboggling. If you have work experience, you will also use the Growth System Assessment Tool.

 

Week 4: The Surprising Difficulties in Building a Senior Management Team.  I was surprised in my research at how difficult it was for entrepreneur’s to build a senior management team. In many cases it took multiple hirings to get the right fit. And even then, getting the senior management team to “play well together” was challenging. Lastly, most entrepreneurs were not prepared for the need to “upgrade” their management team as the business grew. This week we will study how Mike Cote took over as CEO of SecureWorks, a floundering Internet security company, and grew it into an industry leader ultimately selling the company last year to Dell for hundreds of millions of dollars.