40 REFLECTIONS ON CHARACTER AND LEADERSHIP
professional help. The recognition of this need is a step in the right
direction.
However, many entrepreneurs only realize that they are in trouble
when it is far too late. They are not able to balance action with refl ec-
tion. They have no sense of the continuity between past, present, and
future. Unfortunately, the old adage that those who do not understand
the past are forced to repeat it is true. If more entrepreneurs were aware
of the fact that they are the keepers of the keys to their own prison,
if they accepted the craziness inside them and did not run away from
it, they could make more of an effort to do something about their
situation.
In this discussion I have focused on the dark side of entrepre-
neurship. The cases I ’ ve outlined here are extreme; many of the
relationships between entrepreneurs and others do not deteriorate so
dramatically. Entrepreneurs do not necessarily have more personal
problems than other people, nor do they inevitably have personality
disorders. What one can extract from the previous comments, however,
is that entrepreneurs have their own unique ways of dealing with the
stresses and strains of daily life. In saying this, I want to emphasize
that the boundaries between very creative and aberrant behavior can
be blurred; normal and irrational behavior are not discrete categories
on an established scale. The mix of creative and irrational is what
makes entrepreneurs tick and accounts for their many positive con-
tributions. Entrepreneurs create new industries and jobs and stimulate
the economy. Their visionary qualities and leadership abilities enable
those around them to transcend petty concerns and attain great
achievements.
In one case I know, the president of a conglomerate worked hard
to build a relationship based on mutual trust with the entrepreneur
running a company he was considering acquiring. The two talked about
the working arrangements and operational procedures each would
accept. While the entrepreneur expressed his concern about preserving
his independence, the president described the information he would
need from any subsidiary to make him feel comfortable. They also
agreed that the entrepreneur could call on the president at any time for
assistance. After the acquisition, the president kept his promise to let the
entrepreneur run his own show; he kept interference from headquarters
at a minimum. The arrangement about assistance turned out to be criti-
cal. The president soon found out that the entrepreneur was using him
regularly as a sounding board, which he did not mind since it enabled
him, in an atmosphere of mutual trust, to bring a healthy dose of reality
to the entrepreneur ’ s occasionally high - fl ying schemes. This loose - knit