Category: Leadership

Towards the end of today’s meeting with the EO Accelerator accountability group that I mentor on a monthly basis, we got into a discussion about goals. We went around the table in my office and I quickly realized that almost none of the entrepreneurs there (five not counting me) set goals for the month, quarter, or year — I was very surprised.

As a group, we decided to set three objective, numeric goals in our businesses for this quarter and next. At our December meeting, and meetings going forward, everyone will share their progress report towards the goals. In my company, we set our goals on a quarterly, annual, and three year basis as part of our one page strategic plan. My advice is to do a one page strategic plan, update it quarterly at an off-site, and make it part of the company routine.

Note: For companies with fewer than 10 employees, I’d still set quarterly and annual goals, but not worry as much about all the details in the one page strategic plan.

As an entrepreneur, the more successful you become, the more people outside of your company ask for your time. The challenge becomes balancing the desire to give back and help others with the demands of continuing to grow your business. There’s no silver bullet here but at the end of the day it comes down to having great people that you can trust so that you have time to give back and help others.

My advice for entrepreneurs is to set aside 5-10% of their time from the beginning for giving back and helping others. You won’t regret it.

Here’s one of the most important phrases entrepreneurs need to be able to confidently say: I don’t know. Too often, the reaction of confident entrepreneurs is to shoot from the hip and offer the first thing that comes to mind. I know I’ve been guilty of that many times. The key is to immediately follow-up and say “but I’ll find out and get back to you.”

It doesn’t matter if you’re talking to employees, partners, customers, or investors — tell it like it is if you don’t know. The most important thing is to say you’ll follow up and to actually follow through on it. Give it a try — you’ll be amazed at its effectiveness

In a startup, there are so many moving pieces that change on a daily basis it is easy to spend all your time putting out fires and being reactive to what’s going on in the company. One of the more important things I underestimated is the value of celebrating the small victories. I’m talking about progress-type victories as opposed to serious, signed-on-the-dotted line victories.

It is important to stop everything, get the team together, and do some cheerleading.

As much as technology like IM, Skype, and email make it easy to not do things in person, nothing beats the emotional connection of being face-to-face. I recommend teams get together once a week and celebrate the small victories.

Note: Celebrating the small victories is separate from an accountability-type weekly tactical.

I’ve seen several entrepreneurs and business leaders cite The Art of War as one of their most influential business books. While I haven’t read it yet, a colleague of mine just started a weekly practice of picking a section or quote from the book and writing about how it is relevant to our company. There are a few takeaways here:

• Look to military books and other non-business books for inspiration
• Find third-party ideas and adapt them to your business
• Look for things you’re passionate about and use them to inspire your team
• Never stop reading

I’ve added The Art of War to the list of books I want to read.

One of the most important things the entrepreneur of a startup company does is set the tone for the company’s corporate culture. Corporate culture truly is a competitive advantage when done well. The best time to set the tone for new employees, after the actual interview process, is their first day at the office.

I like to take new hires out to lunch on their first day as the CEO of the company. Corporate culture starts at the top. Of course, this isn’t always feasible as the company gets larger, but for companies under 100 people, it should be doable.

I recommend startup CEOs and co-founders take new employees out to lunch on their first day.

One of the biggest strengths of startups, and a major reason why they can compete with much larger companies, is the ability to innovate faster. It’s truly a competitive advantage to be closer to the customer and iterate quickly. Much has already been said about customer driven development related to talking to your prospects or customers throughout the product development lifecycle, but I don’t think enough has been said about using the same tenants of soliciting feedback to drive all aspects of the business.

Here are some common examples:

• Listening to employees to improve corporate culture
• Asking the right questions with potential employees to effectively recruit
• Interacting with suppliers to find how to work better together

Obviously, this is a broad topic but I encourage you to work to build a feedback-driven business.