The Complex System: Story of an Entrepreneur

I Love Progress

I love progress; I love it in the world as much as in my own life. Wiktionary defines progress as a moving or going forward; a proceeding onward; an advance toward ideal completeness or perfection in respect of quality or condition. Often I see it; sometimes I feel it. But right now, I'm deep in it.

This week marked ths biggest jump forward in the "building" of Leads360 2.0. I've been arranging the blocks, recruiting the talent, defining the strategy and taking the actions; and more importantly, so has everyone around me. By month end, we will have hired 10 new faces and have added more talent to our team than I could have imagined was possible. That must be progress.

I think progress is what happens when I’m not looking. It’s the spontaneous accomplishments of the people around me. I can hear it from my office; that instinctive hum of hard work and forward thinking. At Leads360 things just seem to be moving along without me. It’s not as if I’m making less of a contribution; maybe that the engine is running on its own more and more each day and the great people I’ve hired are doing what they do best; make progress.

I’ve been preaching the strategy forever, perhaps now it’s really proving to work.

What Does Management Really Mean?

My fascination with management and what it really means began when we started to evaluate raising money. One of the most common questions posed to me in meeting with venture capital firms was “what is your management team look like?” They pounded me on having the right executive management staff to get the job done. Of course at the time, I didn’t have great answers for them. Perhaps that is why we ended up with Rustic as they banked on the idea that we were open to the idea of building a stellar management team rather than penalizing us for not having it yet.

Furthermore, in speaking with other proven CEO’s (by the way, I regularly reach out for advice from many mentors in the business community), the consistent message is; “build a superstar management team.” They say this is the key to managing and delivering exponential growth.

So as you can imagine, I've been wrangling with the question of management quite a bit lately, and I think there is more than meets the eye. As I strategize about the answers to this question, I think about my father’s long standing advice "hire people smarter than me", which I have posted about numerous times. I'm pretty sure this strategy plays heavily into being a good manager.

So what is management? Is it the same as leadership? Peter Drucker tells us management is doing things right, whereas leadership is doing the right things! In formulating my own thoughts on management I’ve pulled together elements from numerous sources including Wikipedia who defines management as directing and controlling a group of one or more people or entities for the purpose of coordinating and harmonizing them towards accomplishing a goal. The site continues citing these four critical aspects of management:

1. Planning: deciding what needs to happen in the future (today, next week, next month, next year, over the next five years, etc.) and generating plans for action.
2. Organizing: making optimum use of the resources required to enable the successful carrying out of plans.
3. Leading/Motivating: exhibiting skills in these areas for getting others to play an effective part in achieving plans.
4. Controlling: monitoring -- checking progress against plans, which may need modification based on feedback.

I love the simplicity of these four themes. I’m of the belief that simplicity is going to be a key driver of our success in 2008. Of course there is more to management than what’s listed here, but I think this list is a framework for my management plan.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to post more about my management strategy and how I hope to make Mr. Drucker proud.

Less is More

We've all heard the old addage, less is more. In 2008 it's more true than ever; at least for me. Quality sacrifices when we take on too much, and it's become somewhat of a habit for me to do just that. People have already started asking me the popular January question, "what are you New Years resolutions?" I put some thinking into that question this year and I have a different approach to answering it.

Rather than focus on making a resolution to do somthing that presumably I haven't done before, I'm going to focus on improving on the things I do, but maybe don't do as well as I could. It's that whole strengths vs. weaknesses thing that I frequently talk about. To that end, one of my resolutions is to focus on quality. I'm already good at getting thigns done and doing them well. But am I as good as I could be? Could I do things even better? That's where the whole less is more concept comes into play. If I focus on doing less things, I could do them even better. The upside is exponential.

Ok, so if less is more, that means I have to choose to do some things and choose not to do others. How do I prioritize on the things that are most important? I love that Stephen Covey quote "the things that are most important must never be at the mercy of things that are less important"; that's just it. I am prioritizing what I spend my time on, and as a CEO it's my responsibility to help those around me prioritize what they do. That means I have to utter the unfamiliar words "NO" much more in 2008. No, we can't do that now. No, that's not a priority. Maybe then if less is more, than no is even more important than yes!

As much as I like doing more, sometimes doing less makes all the difference.

Happy New Year!