Every entrepreneurial journey begins with a VISION. But as the entrepreneur treads farther and farther away from the familiar environs of his pre-entrepreneurial comfort zones and heads deeper and deeper into the uncertainty-riddled paths of the business world, he finds himself being slowly but surely engulfed in the kinds of pressures that he never even knew existed. At this point, the original vision of a majority of entrepreneurs starts to fade... and before long, darkness takes over!
This 'loss of vision' occurs primarily because most entrepreneurs don't have the guts to stomach short-term losses even when they believe that these losses could potentially lead to long-term gains. They find it easier to cop-out rather than persist with their vision.
This is where Jeff Bezos's philosophy of being "stubborn on vision, but flexible on details" is truly inspirational. The Founder & CEO of Amazon has time and again demonstrated his ability to stand by hugely risky decisions and take on short-term losses because he firmly believed that those decisions would eventually bring long-term gains for his organization. Amazon Web Services and Amazon Kindle are two good cases of Bezos taking on immense pressure from investors and analysts for years on end, but still remaining stubborn on his vision and not giving up until he made enormous successes of these initiatives.
The key, as you can see, is for an entrepreneur to be able to handle the short-term pressures without compromising on the long-term vision... be flexible on the details, if needed, yet stay true to the ultimate vision.
Bezos makes it seem all too simple, but believe me, it most certainly isn't.
