Note: If you click on the picture above, and blow it up to its full size (with incredibly poor resolution), you'll note that the fellow wearing the armor is either saying or thinking, "Man! It's getting awfully hot in here!" -DC
Above and Beyond - Do You Have What Is Required To Be Part Of An Entrepreneurial Team?
Dear Friends, TNNWC Members, Fellow Entrepreneurs and Frustrated Leaders of Emerging Enterprises:
One of the first, but most challenging jobs of championing an entrepreneurial enterprise is the dilemma of choosing and assembling a team. Assuming that you have some brialliant and commercially viable ideas, and the ability to articulate them, you are going to have to sift through hordes of "helpful" people in order to find the right players. The qualifying questions that will be running through your weary and wary mind will include some of these:
1. Does this person have a skill which we require? Is this persons level of skill adequate? Is this person capable and complementary to the team's objectives?
2. Is this person trustworthy, honorable and reliable?
3. Is this person purely a "talker - i.e., a member of the philosophical and cerebral elite" or is he or she a "roll up your shirtsleeves and get it done" person? If everybody on the team is working the soil, is your prospective team member "above it all," either because he or she is lazy, too egomaniacal, or too obsessed with enjoying the harvest that is being sown and reaped by his or her teammates? Someone who likes to stay away from all of the dirt and detail, small-time operational problem-solving, and things that are not included in his/her "Executive Job Description" is not so much an entrepreneur as an opportunist.
4. Is this person willing to be an active participant in the venture, and take the journey with you and your team?
5. Is this person socially skilled enough that he/ she can truly become an integrated part of the team? Does this person know how to communicate, to listen and to openly share?
6. Does this person have a hidden (or obvious!) personal agenda that he or she is merely using your team to help him or her to achieve? Does it conflict with your team's agenda, or does it coincide and harmonize with your plan for the team?
7. How would you feel about introducing this person to a third party as your partner or teammate? This question goes straight to your gut. You can either build yourself up or destroy your own reputation by those people whom you choose to keep company with -- you are judged by the company you keep. [This is sad, but true]
Your choice of teammates is actually your choice of Human Capital - the most important assets in the world. If these assets aren't truly adequate, you're going to fail. Tainted assets and attitudes will destroy or dissuade your very best Human assets if you put them together on the same ship. Choose your team members well.
Each team member should not only be a helpful addition to the team's collective competence and synergistic potential, but should be interested in the success of the whole venture and in the success of all of its participants.
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NOTE: An aside to those of you whose skill sets are truly centered around any or all of the following "personal and professional assets":
1. You want to wait for the best opportunity for yourself, and you want to join the team as one of your options. After all...it might get funded, and your stock could be valuable if you just hang around;
2. You are good at proposing ideas for others to execute, but do not like to participate in the raw sweat work of getting things started;
3. You do not really believe in either the team's objective, your teammates' abilities, or the leader of your team;
4. You are ggod at delegating and instructing, but you do not want to "put yourself out on a limb" to negotiate as necessary and to recruit capable people to delegate this work to;
5. You generally have a "let's wait and see attitude."
My message to those of you (the vast majority of the population) who feel a resonance with the five characteristics listed immediately above should not be entrepreneurs. If you are fortunate enough to have a high-payiong trade or profession, stay with that. If you don't have either of those advantages, put on your best smile, polish those shoes and prepare a batch of resumes at Kinko's - some company might have sufficient funds to expend on sustaining you, and you might be hired! (too bad about the rough economy though). Some government "employment opportunities" and even financial aid might be worth looking into.
On a personal note, if you are a member of the vast majority of the persons described above, please do not waste your time, or anybody else's, on trying to take up space on an entrepreneurial team. You are probably not an entrepreneur, or a true team player.
Most importantly, please don't attempt to engage me in conversation -- I am far too busy working to create value for my teammates and myself. I might even be out there in the field helping my teammmates work the soil. As a leader, my job is to serve my team. As a teammate, each member of my team is working to serve all of the other team members.
Nothing less would be acceptable to either my teammmates or myself.
Faithfully,
Douglas Castle
http://www.tnnwc.com/
Douglas Castle - THE DAILY BURST OF BRILLIANCE .001 http://aboutdouglascastle.blogspot.com/
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