Boredom and startups don’t go together. By the very nature of a startup there are always 100 things to do because there is a lack of resources and people to execute on all the ideas. At today’s EO Accelerator accountability group, one of the entrepreneurs mentioned he was bored with doing a certain part of the business related to a third-party service. When he used the word bored I knew what he really meant: that function was no longer adding value to the business.
My takeaway from that conversation was that as soon as something becomes boring or doesn’t add value, immediately kill it. Too much cruft gets added along the way as the business grows and leaving things in there that you don’t care about only makes it worse.
What do you see that should be stopped in your business? Can you get rid of it?
David, I love this post. Have you seen Mike Landman’s post on ROWE at Ripple? and the additional articles on results oriented work at best buy?
As entrepreneurs grow their business there is a push to organize and control and eventually to “fill”… fill time, activity, meetings, “desk time” etc. And that gets boring.
The book good to great talks about not doing as much as doing and I think that is a great lesson for driving value within the enterprise.
Thanks Pete. Mike and I have talked about ROWE many times. I agree that too much time gets filled for the wrong reasons.