Lots of people on the web comment about what it takes to build a successful start up or organization. Not to beat a dead horse or add to an over exhausted universe of commentary on this subject. So if this topic bores you - move on. Two qualities in managers and start-ups come to mind based on my personal experiences.
The first is simply leadership. Does an organization and its founders have the vision, determination, talent, and execution capabilities to deliver? All of these traits or characteristics stem from leadership. Leaders chart a vision, provide a road map and navigate the organization through the difficult incubation period. Leaders must recruit and keep the best and most qualified people. In my experience many seem to focus on recruiting rather than retaining. Obviously a start up is going to hit some rough patches but it is exactly those soft skills and emotional IQ that are going motivate your employees and help them execute and produce. Leadership is also fundamentally about building a culture of excellence and cultivating and building excellence and capability within. Successful ventures today require more than just a dynamo CEO or executive, they require the ability to scale innovation and excellence throughout an organization - to make that spirit permeate an entire organization.
The second trait or quality that comes to mind and something that I think is easily and often overlooked but at significant peril. Business planning. Not forecasting, not hyperbole, but some tough questions that need to be answered - or at least understood. Not every start up is going to have an air tight revenue generation model or an established market. That's not what I'm talking about. I think there has to be an even more basic set of questions posed and answered. For example, is there a viable and paying market for the goods and services you seek to provide? Who is the market? Which services or organizations are already in this space and what differentiates your services or goods from those being provided by competitors? Can you bring your goods and services to the market for less (or faster) than competitors? Can you bring these services or goods to market at an eventual if not immediate profit? These must seem like basic questions that all start ups have ready answers to but I'm confident that many don't. Sometimes it becomes easy to be enamored with the sheer genius of a product that we forget to ask the basic question of whether people would pay to purchase that product.
What's amazing is how many startups fail, not because of a lack of good ideas or the ability to execute but because they lack the leadership necessary to maintain and grow momentum and also because of poor business planning - the latter is most always easily preventable.
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