The south African entrepreneur, speaker and writer once stated that “Could you take 3 months leave and your business still meets performance targets? If you can’t disappear from your business for 90 days, you are not an entrepreneur, you are what we call self-employed.” Vusi goes ahead to highlight the growth journey of an entrepreneur from being self-employed, to being a business owner and ultimately and entrepreneur. Kuratko and Hodgetts (2007) posit that “an entrepreneur is an innovator or developer who recognizes and seizes opportunities, converts these opportunities into workable/marketable ideas, adds value through time, effort, money or skills, assumes the risks of the competitive marketplace to implement these ideas, and realizes the rewards from these efforts. If Vusi’s assertion and Kuratko and Hodgetts definition of an entrepreneur are anything to go by, it goes without saying that the entrepreneurs must have some wherewithal, but what exactly?
The reality!
The FINACCESS MSE Track Survey (March 2023) revealed that 28.4% of micro and small enterprises (MSEs) had closed their operations. The survey identified several critical challenges confronting Kenyan entrepreneurs: access to financial services, market access difficulties, supply chain constraints, credit access, customer demand fluctuations, and business environment challenges. These can assert pressure on the entrepreneur, who must operate with a rewired mentality to thrive. Several factors that influence entrepreneurship have been adduced, several characteristics of entrepreneurs studied, yet one, in my opinion, is underrated, self-leadership.
Why self-leadership?
In the book ‘Self-Leadership: The Definitive Guide to Personal Excellence’, Christopher P. Neck, Charles C. Manz, & Jeffery D. Houghton, the scholars who first developed the theory of self-leadership, define it as “a process of self-influence through which individuals achieve the self-direction and self-motivation necessary to perform at their best, using various behavior-focused, natural reward, and cognitive thought pattern strategies to manage their behavior and achieve goals”.
The average Kenyan entrepreneur needs to have strong inner motivation and belief in themselves, as well as other qualities that help in getting through many challenges that usually interrupt the path to triumph. The inner force is vital because, through this force, they get the energies required in battling all the hurdles they face. Additionally, self-leadership is the main launching pad that will motivate such entrepreneurs in strategizing good systems and getting the mental fortitude required in establishing companies that will outlive them. Self-leadership gives entrepreneurs the much-needed mental resilience that is vital in withstanding and overcoming the inevitable ordeals and misfortunes that come with business ventures, especially given that as many as a large 28.4% of Kenyan micro and small businesses, or MSEs, end up closing up shop. Such an influential idea allows them to turn what would otherwise be calamities into worthwhile learning experiences, therefore enabling them to persevere despite being confronted with disheartening statistics and situations.
The cognitive thought patterns associated with the concept of self-leadership empower entrepreneurs to creatively confront and address the various unique challenges that are prevalent in Kenya, including; accessing various markets, limitations of available financial services, and inefficiencies within supply chains. Self-leadership will help entrepreneurs devise innovative solutions and find alternative routes to effectively circumvent these obstacles, instead of allowing themselves to become paralyzed by the difficulties. Despite the numerous entrepreneurial challenges, self-leadership provides the foundation upon which the consistency in the execution process of Kenyan entrepreneurs is maintained at an all-time high. This involves several things, including the keen development of effective work habits, prudence in resource utilization, and the unrelenting adherence to the long-term objectives that characterize their big hairy audacious goals (BHAGs, like Jim Collins refers to them). Self-leadership provides the self-governance and personal accountability needed to transform promising opportunities into successful and thriving business ventures, all while minimizing the associated risks that often accompany such entrepreneurial endeavors. Thembekwayo’s entrepreneurship development model has traces of self-leadership. Thanks to self-leadership, the Kenyan entrepreneur can grow from the level of being self-employed to the level of building companies that can function independently, being able to delegate tasks, as well as create processes.
Self-leadership, is the strategic and leading inner voice that is used to guide and influence the entrepreneur in the delicate moments of confusion and unpredictability, in which clear thinking may be absent. The internal locus of control is instrumental in keeping entrepreneurs determined and focused when they face various kinds of challenges and setbacks. Additionally, it injects in them strategic thinking that allows them to effectively glean challenges as opportunities for development and creativity in the Kenyan marketplace, which is awash with vast external obstacles and weak/inadequate support structures. The entrepreneurs’ success, as Neck et al. (2016) opine, is in their ability to self-influence, self-direct, self-motivate themselves to put their best foot forward, use behavior-focused, natural reward, and cognitive thought pattern strategies to manage their behaviour.
Sakwa is the co-founder and managing director of HRD Ingenuity Limited, a management training and consulting firm.
