The Start of an Organisation
Many desire to start an organisation. Those that start a businesses for the love of freedom soon realise that entrepreneurship further ties them down with responsibilities. With the lack of freedom, they soon get tired, distracted and demotivated to do that extra mile which their roles demand.
Those that start a business to get rich are perhaps the shrewdest of all. They often earn a bad reputation among the public, and unless they meet the social expectations of charity and philanthropy, they are often considered to be greedy.
Those that start an organisation to bring a change, soon realise that change isn't entirely in their hands—it requires public participation which is hard to campaign for. And if you do campaign, the adversaries will attack your character and credibility since you would be compelled to fight using the very same system that you wanted to change; often drawing criticisms of double standard or hypocrisy.
Those that are in business for the passion of product design create the best products in the market. But for a number of reasons—especially the price—these products are not the most popular or best selling products in the market.
Whatever the motivations are, I have come to realise that organisational management is common sense—leadership is outlook, decision making is rationality, product design is problem solving, marketing is psychology, sales is persuasion, customer relationship is ownership and accounting is mathematics. Unlike other subjects, management cannot be taught. But it can be learnt through observation and exertion. Failure is bound. The right decisions teach a thing or two, and the wrong ones teach a lot more.
It has been long held true that the management's responsibility is to increase shareholder value (share value and dividends in case of for-profit ventures, and the funders' interest in case of non-profit ventures). But, this seems to be a myopic view. Managements' responsibility must be the organisations' health measured in terms of financial sustainability, value proposition, customer relationships, environmental impact, etc. When these are taken care of, the stake holders are taken care of too: including the shareholder.