The team and the vision.

Building the team and the company’s vision.

The Team

The first article “The Team” talks about the Five People: the entrepreneur, the technical innovator, the delivery specialist, the sales specialist, and the financier.

I do believe that those five people make sense, but the hard part is to actually gather those five people together (or the rest four). Since I came to CMU, I had in mind starting a venture. Therefore I’ve been looking for those other people by becoming member of organizations such as TIE (The Indus Entrepreneurs), and attending seminars, conferences and related events. So far, meeting the right people seems to be a hard task.

“The best place to look for cornerstones is among the people you know.”

Well, this means I should expand my people network. So far, most of the events I’ve been attending were academic and industry events. Perhaps I should explore social events.

14 Ways To Be A Great Startup CEO

This article lists up 14 concrete ways to be a “great startup CEO.” I believe many of them apply not only for startup, but for existing business too.

In the list, there are couple that I need to strengthen (or learn).

Find The Smartest People And Defer On Domain Expertise. Finding the smartest people has been one of my quests. I have seen many smart people, but it is hard to persuade them to join my venture, as they look for safer job.

Be A Good Link Between The Company + Investors. I still, have not had chance to deal with investors. When the time comes, I shall be ready.

Have An Uncanny Ability To Say No. Saying No is not easy for me. In the past, this meant a lot of wasted time trying to cope with dilemmas. I shall learn to say No.

Be A Great Communicator. I know that talking does not always mean communicating. Being able to communicate, to be able to clearly articulate the information, and mediate among people, is an ability that can be learned and refined.

Building Your Company’s Vision.

In this article, the authors say that a well-conceived vision consists of two components: core ideology and envisioned future.

The core ideology is a consistent identity that transcends product or market life cycles, technologies, and leaders. It in turns consists of core values, essential tenets of an organization, and core purpose, organization’s reasons for being.

The envisioned future is an audacious goal (in the paper referred as BHAG, Big, Hairy Audacious Goal), along with a vivid description of what will be like to achieve that goal.

The authors in the paper mentions that the core ideology is act of discovery whereas the envisioned future is act of creativity. Therefore, at this moment, for my venture I can come up with a envisioned future (but not the core ideology):

“To become world-wide recognized senior force market place in 10 years”

“We will provide service were senior people can feel productive and find most adequate place where they can deliver their experience and knowledge to the fullest. We will innovate to make the technology readily available and easily adoptable by the seniors.”

Personal thoughts

I had read two books from Collins and Porras (the author of the last article): “Built to Last,” and “From Good To Great.” Just as I found both books very insightful in business management, I found the article very helpful to understand about the organization's vision.

The questionnaire and simulation based approaches for discovering core ideologies and creating the BHAG seems reasonable and practical.

The “envisioning” is also consistent with one of the books I recently read “The Innovator's Way,” by Peter Denning, and Robert Dunham.

In this book, the authors mention envisioning as one of the key practices that leads to Innovation. Here, the authors describe envisioning as “Vivid, concrete, compelling stories about new worlds embodying possibilities, and means to get there.”

Said this, having a vision for the company is important not only as defining the identity but also for driving innovation.

* I strongly recommend the three books I mentioned above.