management

Time Flies!

In early May, I will be speaking at the SIIA Ed Tech Industry Summit about the opportunities and challenges that innovators and entrepreneurs face.  And, one of my topics will be that time flies!!  Bringing innovation into educational markets is hard work, and there is way more to do than there are hours in the day.

This past month, I have created pieces of my business plan, financial projections, a website, overviews of the company, and a concept video. I have traveled nearly half the time meeting customers, partners, advisors, investors, developers and my team. I have worn more hats than I can imagine.  I haven’t managed to cross everything off my list in months.  And, Carrieonfire.com has suffered from this flight of time!

Here is what I do when time is flying (and spinning out of control!):

  • Focus on the 2-3 critical success factors for your company today, and give yourself milestones with due dates for these priorities.  For me, it’s setting up pilots and seed funding.  I know what I need to accomplish and when.
  • Take things off your list.  You can’t do everything, but it is better to delegate or postpone than to regret that you failed to complete something critical. Jim Collins, one of my favorite leadership gurus, argues that we all need a “stop-doing” list, because we have too many projects and initiatives.  Isn’t that the truth!
  • Build a team that is GREAT and brings the expertise, skills and passion for things that aren’t your forte.  If you don’t have a lot of money to hire people (most of us don’t), your team can include partners, advisors, potential and current vendors, and friends and family.
  • Take a day off every week.  Starting a company is grueling work, and you need to get away from it or you will burn out. About 10 years ago, I learned this the hard way when I landed in the hospital and spent 3 months recovering my health.  Even when I am swamped, I try to take off one day a week.  And, I find time every day to clear my head.  I exercise or practice yoga nearly every day, and I take walks with my dog, Luna.
  • Give yourself a break when you fail or fall behind.  You are only human.  And, you know that every successful entrepreneur encounters many pitfalls along the way.  You will be a lot less stressed and more effective if you  acknowledge your failure to get something done or that big SNAFU and let it go so that you can move on.

Know Who You Are

If you don’t know who you are, and why you are doing all of this, then nobody else will. And, who you are begins with your mission and values.  Wow, these are important!

I learned a long time ago that values are critical to helping your team create a winning roadmap. Values provide a barometer for making important decisions.  We frequently cite our values to keep everybody focused on what is important.  Our values are simple:

  1. Learning.  Learning is fun.  We learn from each other, from our successes and from our mistakes.
  2. Honest and clear communication.
  3. Innovation and creativity.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter, one of the famous Harvard Business School thinkers, recently wrote a good blog post, Ten Essentials For Getting Value From Values. Much more eloquent than I ever could be, she points out that it’s not just values that count, it’s keeping them alive by creating a conversation about your values.

If values are your barometer, then your mission is your guidepost.  When I think about my mission, I think:  what do I really love?  And what do I want to change?  What will guide me and inspire me, even though every business changes frequently (especially lately, and if you want to be around next year)?  My mission is as simple as my values:  transform the educational experience so that people love learning.

Missions are huge! Larger than life!  They need to be big enough to get you out of bed to slog away at your company day after day and year after year, even when the problems are totally stressing you out. And, they need to give you the inspiration to imagine the possibilities and do great things.

It is really good to find a community of like-minded entrepreneurs who will help you get out of the day to day weeds to work on your business and the critical path to success.  I belong to Women Presidents Organization, which has over 100 chapters of 20 Presidents who help each other succeed.  This month, my chapter is working on, guess what, mission and values…

Get The Right People On The Bus

I’m a fan of Jim Collins, who has spent years studying and writing about great companies; his most recent book is Great By Choice. One of his enduring principles is to get the right people on the bus, which he describes in this video:

As an entrepreneur, you are always cash-strapped, so sometimes you think it’s better to focus on hiring lower cost people. I can tell from hard-earned experience that it is critical that you surround yourself by GREAT people, and then figure out how you can afford them. A few things I have learned:

  1. Don’t hire clones. One of you is enough. You need to surround yourself with people who think differently and who are going to challenge your thinking. It is also really important to foster diversity in your company—age, race, gender, etc.
  2. Hire people who want a challenge and aren’t afraid to roll up their sleeves and dig in. In a startup, every person has to pull more than their weight. You don’t have extra support people, so you need to hire people who are willing to wash the coffee mugs, then build a bullet-proof budget, and then meet with clients. Wow, that is a rare person. It takes resilience and a zest for trying new things.
  3. If someone isn’t working out, part quickly, and be fair about it.
  4. Beware of the pigpen effect. Over the years, I have hired a number of people with this effect: they spend an awful lot of time working (routing around in the muck), dust is swirling, but nothing ever seems to get done. Sometimes, they are hard to spot, because they are generally hard workers—so remember point number 3 above.
  5. Pedigree is less important than flexibility in a startup. I have seen a lot of entrepreneurs hire people with very impressive big corporate resumes who didn’t know the first thing about how to get things done in an unstructured startup environment. So, probe carefully to gauge someone’s ability to be flexible and agile.
  6. Hire people who are smarter and better than you are. You will never go wrong by hiring people who are GREAT in areas that you are weak! One of the first things an entrepreneur learns is that nobody is competent at everything, so you need to figure out what you aren’t good at and hire people who will fill in these gaps.

Finally, it’s important to have some fun in life. I like it best when some of the folks on my team are whacky, off-beat and just plain fun. Life is too short, and when the going gets tough, the tough get off the bus for an hour and have some fun.

It’s Not What You Know. It’s Who You Know.

connecting[1]Isn’t that the truth! A few months ago, I met with a friend who is a very successful entrepreneur and asked him for advice about launching my new business. He responded that you already have everything you need to launch your new venture: expertise, passion, and most importantly, your network.

My new company isn’t going to look anything like yesterday’s companies. Business development will likely be more important than human resources. And I spend a lot of time meeting with really smart people who can help me figure out the future. I would bet that everyone you need to know to build a successful startup is within 3 degrees from you on LinkedIn or FB.

“Who you know” is a two-way street. I can’t stress this enough. I also spend a fair amount of time helping other people build the network. This is critical. And, you can’t believe what you learn by giving advice or connections to someone in need. By so doing, you have also earned the right to reach out and ask others for help.

A few tips for increasing “who you know”:

  • Get involved in some organization or association related to your start up. Begin giving back now!
  • Online networks are a treasure trove. If you “meet” someone who could help you with your startup, contact them. There is no online equivalent for a live conversation—face to face is ideal, but virtual is great too.
  • Conferences are expensive, but dollar for dollar, and if you use the opportunity to network, you get the best value for your investment.
  • Connect with people who are in between jobs, especially those who are pretty high up the food chain. They have time, and a little more perspective than people in very busy jobs, so they often have great ideas and advice and connections for you.

If you want a primer on building your network, check out the book: The Connect Effect, by Michael Dulworth, who is an expert on building personal, professional and virtual networks.

Charting A Path Through The Desert

DesertA few months ago, I transitioned away from running my first company, O’Donnell Learn.  That first Monday morning, I went into the office, sat down and thought, “now what?”

Starting a business is like charting a path through the desert.  There is nobody but you to figure out how to spend your time.  And, you have to be very disciplined about your time.   You have to plug along and put all those pieces in place so that you have a business (with customers) when you cross that desert.

Here are the primary ways that I spend my time these days:

  • Networking—meeting with      people who can help me get this off the ground, and helping others get      their initiatives off the ground.
  • Researching the market to      understand the problems and pain points, the need, and how my company can      uniquely fill that need. This involves hours of reading, and also speaking      to customers, experts and potential partners.
  • Planning the offering or      product.  This is a staged activity,      called market development.  Work with      customers every step of the way to shape your offering.  Right now, we are creating a two-minute video      that demonstrates our offering, which we will take to customers for      feedback in prep for creating our detailed product requirements.
  • Putting together my      advisory board and founding team—finding the perfect people for it and then      recruiting them to join me.
  • Articulating the vision      and message—then trying it out on others and then rearticulating it.  This takes a long time for every      business and new offering.  Getting      it right is essential!
  • Developing the business      plan and pitch for investors.

Wow.  That is a lot to get done!  And, I need to be very disciplined so that I am not scattered all over the place.  Here is a video I found that gives three great tips for time management.