What I wish I knew before starting a business
entrepreneur.venturebeat.com
entrepreneur.venturebeat.com
1. You will need to be more agile than you could ever imagine. It's amazing how much dexterity and foresight is needed to manage things when they're moving at such glacial pace, but timing is critical. An hour could mean the difference between eating next month or closing up shop.
2. Some items will succeed quickly, but only temporarily. You need to burn the kindling, but you also need some good wood. This is especially critical when you're in a service-based company. Your first few clients might bring you a lot of bacon, but the clients you build relationships buy you a pig farm.
3. You can't do it alone. Whether it's financial, technical, social, or moral support, you're going to need it eventually.
Overall, I think this list petered out a bit in the end, and some of the points missed the mark. Overall, I think that running a business is a lot like fishing, playing a game of poker, and riding a bicycle at the same time. You need patience, attentiveness, social and observational skills, and endurance.
And a very understanding wife.
If you've ever worked for, or with, the government this is readily apparent.
I mean, ever talked to an AT&T call center? Do you see them going out of business any time soon?
There was this guy I worked with on a previous job. He was simply unqualified to do his job, and displayed no interest in becoming more qualified. He did the bare minimum to survive, and very often others had to do his work for him so they can make progress in their own job. For various reasons his managers preferred to keep him even though he knew of his low performance. He was there for 3 years when I left. The organization is in no danger of dying, even though around 30% of the employees were of similar quality.
HP? IBM? Oracle? Verizon?
Although "market manipulation" is broad enough to include any large company at all. Same with "anti-competitive barrier rising".
So, we can say that past a certain size companies become evil bastards and have many bad employees and they survive quite well.
They are still not government though, and consumers could choose to stop using their products and they could go out of business. Except they don't.
When I think of firms not dependent upon nor beneficiaries of the government's largesse, the government's market manipulation, and government's anti-competitive barrier raising, AT&T isn't what comes to mind.
And of course the firm's resistance to market forces is not binary, but rather proportional to how close the firm is to the government corpus. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac more so than AT&T more so than Apple.
The cellphone market is highly regulated, but the large computer and software manufactures don't seem to depend on government manipulations.
i know a good number of employees who were extremely loyal not because they were bad, but because they had been with a company for so long that their skillset had narrowed from deterioration down to exactly what their job was, and they were very good at it.
There are a lot of technically brilliant people who aren't looking to move for a 10% pay rise (unless they are grossly underpaid - sheesh, don't underpay your people). Great people will stay for a good boss (see above), a happy environment, a degree of creative freedom, opportunity to work independently, the chance to extend their skills, etc etc.
It's true that bad employees generally don't quit, though.
[Edit: Don't believe me? Ask Pixar what their staff turnover rate is. Is Pixar full of bad employees? Methinks not.]
Your bad employees will be loyal.
That doesn't mean your loyal employees will be bad.
The statement, "bad employees don't quit" holds more water than "bad employees are more loyal." If they were more loyal, their loyalty would offset their badness, generally speaking. It's possible to have an imcompetent employee who tries really hard, but generally, the 'bad' employees are the ones who could do better, but who aren't loyal to the work, loyal to the customers, or loyal to a work ethic.
I don't know if that's what the other responder meant, but the rewording you put makes it slightly less accurate, though I definitely agree with the sentiment.
Why is it that these management blogs always pander to the readers without ever suggesting that the problem may be you - the manager/boss.
If things things that succeed tend to do so quickly, why is the idea of a pivot so important?
It is also my experience that letting poor performers slide has a big impact on your top performers. Top performers want to be part of a winning team, and letting slackers ride sends a terrible message.
But there's probably also a difference between working with someone who does no work, takes 3 hour lunches, and never gets anything done on time. Versus the person who works hard, but just takes 20% longer than you to get stuff done. The former really bug people, but the latter tends to just make you look good, while still helping the company.
I'm having trouble parsing that. What option is the last sentence better than?
Edit: (I should note that I'm more interested in this observation as applied to people than I am applied to products, though. Are great salespersons great on the first day, or is it possible that some people just need time to get used to the environment?)
Just be sure to keep some emergency cash reserves on hand if you can afford to do so. It can save your sanity and your company (I've had 2 instances where the cash reserves have saved my company's behind: (1) was for a costly rescue from DriveSavers and (2) was for some hefty but worthwhile legal fees from an unexpected legal dispute.