Entrepreneurial Traits : Team Oriented

  

                                                

Entrepreneurs build teams to help them to expand their business. To build a successful business is not a one-man show instead, entrepreneur have to surround themselves with talented, like-minded people to fill in the gaps. Ideas contributed by team members can use to form best ideas by combining or modifying it.

‘ Your firms are built on the Taylor model; even worse, so are your heads. With your bosses doing the thinking while the workers wield the screwdrivers, you’re convinced deep down that this is the right way to run a business’

 Konosuke Matsushita, Tokyo 1979

Konosuke Matsushita, known as the ‘god of manangement’, is the founder of Mastsushita Electric Industrial Company (makers of Panasonic, Technics and Quasar brand products). Konosuke Matsushita became nearly obsessed by the image of happy, hard-working people who donated their time to the temple when he visit a temple of the Tenrikyo sect. As a result he concludes that people will be more productive and more satisfied if corporation could be made meaningful like a religion.

Besides, Konosuke Matsushita also drafted seven principles to guide him and his workers. It is a set of standard for the employees’ proper mental attitude for their daily work which include contribution to society, fairness and honesty, cooperation and team spirit, untiring effort for improvement, courtesy and humility, adaptability and lastly graditude. The principle have renamed to ‘Seven Spirits of Matsushita’ because of the guiding principles are such powerful statements and an extension of the Japanese cultural into business..

Wealth for society as well as shareholders and work to alleviate poverty is what Konosuke Matsushita believe that a company should build. His business philosophy led to paternalistic leadership. Paternalistic leadership is managerial approach where employees are viewed as part of a ‘family’ within the company.