I don't really care for the text book definations for these people , we could also call them type L, M & N respectively.
Business acumen as seen in in entrepreneurs is when you know instinctively which is the right decision to take to maximise your returns for your efforts and inputs without endangering your short term or long term interests, mostly it is a gut feeling.
Professional management is more like a structured way of working wherein there are guidelines fitted in a series of" if-then" situations based on information available.
Entreprenuers are like solo players who are frustrated with the slowness of the mind and actions of others. Their actions can result in amazing changes in pace, direction and quantum, acceleration and u turns are not unusual. It does not mean that they are indisciplined, they simply work best without a rigid system. Such people create an individual based organisation. Things change dramatically for better or for the worse when the individual changes.
It is difficult for such people to build big organisations but Henery Ford is an example of how an entrepreneur can build one of the largest empires in his time.
Entreprenuers are normally workaholics and work until one day they drop dead. Their work is their pleasure, they have no interest in socialising and participate to the bare minimum to get their spouses and families off their backs.
Entreprenuers often entice spouses and family to particapate in their work, supposedly to involve them in their work, but in reality its more a justification to keep working 24 hours 7days a week. These people are exhausting and tire everyone around them.
Such people are the best for starting a business, organisation or an initiative, but need to be reined in once they reach a particular stage or else they become the main problem in the organisation. They have wide knowledge on wide range of topics, and great depth in certain areas. Sometimes they also have great depth on wide range of subjects related to their work.
Professionals need to operate within guidelines, and involving very clear systems, roles and responsibilities etc. By its very nature professional management is slow and complex. Data is key ingredient or input for a professional to work. Professionals keep their families away from their work and the two worlds hardly ever overlap. Professionals look forward to their hobbies, friends, weekends and retirement. They are averse to taking risks and prefer to hide behind systems, guidelines and officially sanctioned authority. They resent any discretionary authority granted to them, Decisions are slow and rarely reversed once made. CYA is preferred. They maintain empires and bureaucracies and are great in maintaining the trajectory of a business with stability. Like building blocks they ca build and build. They grow step by step. Examples are the Roman empire, Multi national companies, most modern governments. The organisation normally outlives the individual.
The professional normally has great depth in his/her subject or vocation and often ignorant of other areas or vocations or subjects.
The third and most interesting type of leaders or people I call the entrefessional.
They are the people who come in work with data and systems but give it an entreprenueral flair. These pople I call entrefessionals.
They are the people who get an army and a buracracy of people to give effect to their vision without getting bogged down in details. When they are successful they are like nimble giants, and they are people who can provide quantum leaps to their organisations, technology and management base and can generate breakthoughs.
Instinct combined with data is the most effective management style.
Such leaders are mercurical and appear inconsistent, but they often have a manner in their madness.
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