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entrepreneurship

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Entrepreneurs aren’t primarily risk-takers; their main mindset is something else entirely

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Entrepreneurship isn’t about taking risks

Entrepreneurship is all the rage these days, and I’ve had a lot of people ask me if they have “the right personality type” to be entrepreneurs. They think entrepreneurship is about risk-taking. Entrepreneurs must love risk, right? Since obviously, corporate employees love safety, and they’re the opposite of entrepreneurs. This sounds like a great story and a great rationale. It’s just wrong.

Entrepreneurs generally are not huge risk takers. Indeed, non-monetary considerations are often more important. In fact, many entrepreneurs try to minimize risk. What makes them different from corporate employees is that entrepreneurs maximize experimentation.

A business starts with an idea for a product or service that benefits some market: pink widgets. The business launches the widgets, trying to sell them to football players. No one buys. So they make some blue widgets. Some football players buy, but unexpectedly, many teenage goth girls buy. The next year, the company tries selling blue widgets to teenage goth girls in a different country. They sell tons. They’ve found their product (blue widgets) and their market (teenage goth girls). Now they expand into more and more countries, creating billions of the same products to sell to the same market.

In the early lifecycle, the startup is rapidly experimenting and testing the product idea and the market. Once they’ve found the combination that works, the mindset shifts from rapidly-experiment to scale-the-business. Scaling requires getting good at doing the same things over and over and over. Suddenly, it’s all about doing the same thing over and over, getting better as it goes.

This is a profound shift. Experimentation needs quick decision-making, creative thinking, and a willingness to cut corners as long as you get the learning you need. Scale requires rigor, process improvement, and a willingness to have single-minded focus, and tweak the details so you can be as efficient at mass-production as possible.

That is what you need to assess when deciding whether to pursue something entrepreneurial. Yeah, it’s risky if you don’t control your costs. But that’s only part of the equation. Think less about taking risks, and more about doing experiments. Because at the end of the day, entrepreneurship is about minimizing your risk while maximizing the learning you get from rapid experiments with your product and market.

Punt resolutions; use strategy, instead!

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It’s January, and we all know what that means: time to set New Years resolutions that we’re going to break! The main things resolutions are good for is causing the gym to get way too crowded for the first six weeks of the year. You have a tool at your finger tips that will do far more for you than simply setting resolutions.

Skip your resolutions and set strategy, instead.

A strategy is a 50,000-foot view of your life or business. A good strategic plan gives you a roadmap for where to put your time and effort this year. It tells you what to say “yes” to and what to say “no” to.

As you know from my article on how vision and mission relate to strategy, your strategy for a year answers the question, “How can we further the company vision, given the realities of the markets, customers, and resources under our control right now?” Strategy is how vision plays out in today’s real world context.

But when you’re setting your strategy, make sure to approach it from both the outside and the inside.

Look Outside to Set Strategy

Your strategy depends on what’s going on outside your company walls. You need to develop a plan that makes you more desirable to customers than any of your competitors. That means knowing:

  • How do your customers think of you? What product category do they put you in? (Don’t assume you know. A yacht isn’t necessarily a vehicle. Rather, it may be a status symbol.)
  • Who else is in that product category? If you’re a yacht, are you competing against Toyota and JetBlue (transportation) or are you competing against Jetstream and Sotheby’s (status symbols)?
  • What advantage do you have over your competitors?
  • How can you best communicate that advantage to the market?
  • Who has the power in your ecosystem, and how can you increase your power?

One of my favorite books on external strategy is Co-opetition by Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff. If you’ve ever heard of Michael Porter’s “Five Forces,” Co-opetition goes one step further and deepens the model. Just the way Brandenburger and Nalebuff define competitive and complementary relationships is worth the cost of the book.

Strategy Looks Inside

Looking outside is only half of the equation. You also need to look inside when you formulate your strategy. If strategy is vision made real now, part of “now” is the resources you have under your control. You need to take stock of your resources and decide which resources will form the foundation of your strategy.

When you make ultra-yachts, two of your assets are your customer list (oodles and oodles of rich people), and your yacht design capabilities. If you base your strategy off your customer list, you will expand into other products and services that your current customers might want. Like platinum dinner place settings. If, however, you base your strategy off your design capabilities, you might instead expand into other kinds of yachts, or other sea-faring vessels.

My favorite book on internal strategy is Top Management Strategy by Tregoe et al. The book is 30 years old, but is pretty much just as relevant today as when it was written.

Treat yourself to a 3-martini lunch

If you don’t have a formal strategy session planned, then at least take a long lunch. And over lunch, review the vision/mission for your venture. Why are you in the game in the first place? Then ask yourself how that gets expressed in the world of 2017. Review your external factors—competitors, customers, suppliers, and so on. Review your internal resources, and decide which you plan to base your strategy on.

Then go for it. Give shape to your plans for the next year. Make sure to build in time to review and course correct, and get your year off to a good start. A New Years resolution might only last a couple of weeks, but a good strategy will support you for a year.

Leading by Example: Walking Your Talk … Under a Magnifying Glass

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Why don’t my people just do what I say?

It’s a common refrain among my executive clients. Life at the top would be so much easier, if only “they” would “get it.”

In fact, your employees probably _are _doing what you say. You just may be saying things you don’t intend. It’s often not your broad proclamations that give direction; it’s the little things you do that have the biggest impact.

Your actions encourage and discourage behavior

Remember when you were a front-line employee. Executives’ actions were relentlessly scrutinized. A late arrival, a smile, or a nod could introduce chaos. A CEO I worked with was looking over his marketing department’s latest campaign. He frowned at a storyboard before strolling away.

Unknown to him, the team saw the frown, scrapped the campaign, and spent the weekend reworking everything from the ground up. When he found out, he was flabbergasted. He never thought a simple frown would change the team’s direction.

Your reactions to employees and their work will send signals. Remember this! If you notice yourself frowning or smiling, nodding or shaking your head when it may send the wrong message, stop. Think about the message you may have sent, and say or do whatever it takes to make sure your audience knows your intent.

Watch your words, too. A joke may not be a joke. A consulting firm’s Managing Director smiled and quipped “Remember, if you’re not here Sunday, don’t bother coming in Monday.” He was smiling. Everyone knew he was joking. And as one team member later told me, “I felt like I had to come in Sunday. Sure, he was joking. But he’s the Managing Director. Maybe it’s not 100% a joke.”

You lead by demonstration

Of course, the Managing Director was there Sunday, thus insuring everyone would know weekend appearances are mandatory. Your actions will, by demonstration, always be the most significant way you communicate standards of behavior and priorities to your company. The Managing Director cared deeply that his people have an outside life, and said so on many occasions. But his coming in on weekends spoke louder than his words in signaling acceptable behavior.

What you don’t do also matters

What you don’t say out loud, the actions you don’t acknowledge, and the signs you don’t show send powerful messages, as well. The messages sent by omission are harder to detect. After all, there‘s nothing there to examine! But there are things your employees might expect that aren’t forthcoming.

If you don’t acknowledge people, it can send a message that you don’t value their contribution. Different people need different acknowledgment. For some, it’s public recognition. For others, it may simply be mentioning “Hey, you did a really great job.”

If you don’t give feedback when someone does a poor job, you send the message that their performance is fine. If someone is screwing up, they deserve to know as early as possible. Otherwise, they’ll walk away with a message that does neither of you any good.

Common courtesy is increasingly rare, and its absence communicates a subtle lack of respect or lack of individual concern. A simple “Please,” or “Thank you” with a smile and direct eye contact takes only a couple of seconds. If you don’t have time even for that, then people will (rightly!) conclude they aren’t important enough to warrant your attention.

Making decisions in isolation quickly lets people know you don’t trust them. I have worked with companies in which the senior managers are very open with their big decisions, and other companies in which “we can’t tell them that” is a common refrain. As far as I can tell, involvement signals faith that your employees have something of value to contribute. When that involvement is missing, the message of distrust is loud and clear.

Not sharing bad news sends the message that everything is fine. It’s easy to keep bad news quiet, for fear of hurting morale. But framing bad news as a reason to rally builds a team instead of breaking it down. Shared challenge is the stuff of bonding. Use it!

A Great Business Leader Knows His Impact

Matsushita, one of history’s most successful businessmen, knew the impact he had on everyone around him. As this story shows1, he even appreciated the messages conveyed by what he didn’t do.

The father of $75 billion empire, Matsushita was revered in Japan with nearly as much respect and reverence as was the Emperor. And he was just as busy.

One day, Matsushita was to eat lunch with his executives at a local Osaka restaurant (Matsushita Leadership by John Kotter). Upon his entrance, people stopped to bow and acknowledge this great man. Matsushita honored the welcome and sat at a table selected by the manager.

Matsushita ate only half of his meal. He asked for the chef, who appeared in an instant, shaken and upset. The Great One nodded and spoke: “I felt that if you saw I had only eaten half of my meal, you would think I did not like the food or its preparation. Nothing could be less true. The food and your preparation of it were excellent. I am just old and can not eat as much as I used to. I wanted you to know that and to thank you personally.”

Concrete next steps

If you find yourself under the magnifying glass, here are ways of mastering the situation.

  1. Don’t get caught off guard. Schedule five minutes at the end of the day to review your day, note who you came in contact with, and simply ask yourself what messages you sent.

  2. Use the magnifying glass deliberately. At the start of the week, choose a message you want to communicate by example. Spend a moment or two identifying exactly where you can send the message, and how you have to behave to send it. Then do it.

  3. Check for messages of omission. During your daily review, ask yourself who you didn’t contact, but who might have expected it (you may not know who at first, but over time, you’ll learn). What message does the lack of contact send? What message will rumors of what you did do send to those who didn’t see/talk to you?

  4. Review company systems. To make sure you’re sending the same message as your company, review the systems once a year or so. Review your compensation plan: what does it communicate about company goals? What behavior does it encourage? Discourage? Review your decision making and feedback processes. Ask yourself if you’re omitting anyone or anything in those areas.

Communicate well!

  1. Matsushita story excerpted from Dr. Mark S. Albion’s Making-a-Life, Making-a-Living ML2 E-Newsletter #56. Free subscriptions and information on his New York Times Best Selling new book can be found at http://www.makingalife.com. ↩

More than one strategy is actually… no strategy at all.

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Creating a strategy

My friend Carey’s business had stalled. Since I’m one of those people who loves to offer unasked-for advice (knowing the recipient will be eternally grateful), I offered some. “You need an overarching strategy,” I intoned, sagely. The unfathomable response, “Thanks, but no thanks. I already have lots of strategies.”

Lots of strategies? Hmm. You can’t have multiple overarching strategies at once. But Carey wouldn’t know that, because we’re never taught what a strategy is, or how to make sure you have a good one.

Do you have a strategy? For business? For life? Do you even need one? What is one?

Strategies Aren’t Tactics

People use “strategy” to mean a to-do item, but that’s not a strategy. That’s a tactic. Carey has 16 different products under development at once. Those aren’t 16 strategies; they’re 16 tactics.

A strategy is a directed plan you use to commit your time and action in a single direction. By aligning how you spend your time, your money, your resources, and your communication, you greatly increase your chances for success.

If Carey’s projects include designing a high-fashion clothing line for the Milan runway and opening a Veterinary Pet Grooming franchise, those will compete for time, attention, and dollars. When the clothing line needs another 5-gallon tub of sequins (I never said Carey had taste), that’s money that could have been spent on tick sponge-on. Neither business gets the full resources needed to insure success.

Set a Vision that Drives Your Work

Before you can create your strategy, you need to know where you want to end up. What’s the result the strategy is designed to produce? That’s the vision that drives your work.

Start your strategy by setting a compelling, substantive vision. A vision needs to be specific enough to use to make decisions. It needs to be general enough to allow flexibility in what you choose to do.

My friend Rowan’s vision is “to build a business.” That’s so vague that it could cover everything from fashion design to tick removal… and so it does.

But make it more specific, and it becomes a powerful guide. In an alternate universe where Rowan is capable of focus, the vision could become:

A business that helps pet owners keep their pets healthy 365 days a year[1].

This vision can be used to decide which product lines to enter, and to allow a range of options: tick treatment and nutritional consultation both fit. It can also be used to decide which product lines notto enter: high fashion that features too many sequins[2]. It’s just specific enough to guide a good strategy.

Create a Strategy Linking Your Goal to Your Reality

Now you have a vision. But while visions are great, they’re still too abstract for action. If a new Puppies R Us (We Sell ‘Em, You Care For ‘Em™) opened down the street from Rowan’s storefront, concentrating the business on dog care could be Rowan’s ticket to mansions and private planes. But if the new store is Spiders Galore: Unusual Pets for Unusual People, concentrating on the care and grooming of Brachypelma emilia might make the most sense.

Begin crafting your strategy by linking the vision to your current reality. Assess your resources — what you have a lot of, and what you’re short on. Assess your situation — outside forces that might help or hinder different courses of action. Create a high-level plan that uses your resources to move towards some way to realize your vision, given your current environment.

Rowan can take the pet health business vision, and link it to the things in real life that will make it happen.

Point tactics towards a vision to get the job done right. Then link it to reality.

If Rowan has home office space, an email list of pet owners, and a vast network of veterinarians, Rowan’s strategy could be to form an online pet care referral network. There could be an app, and a website, and a huge campaign to sign up hundreds of veterinarians from around the world.

If Rowan has a retail storefront near Puppies R Us, but no mailing list, the strategy could be to create in-person care for dogs and dog-related issues. Rowan could even propose a collaboration with Puppies R Us where Puppies promotes Rowan’s business and gets a referral fee.

These are two different strategies. Both lead towards the vision of “a business that helps pet owners keep their pets healthy year-round.”

Being in possession of the retail storefront, Rowan chooses the strategy of providing in-person dog-related care.

Keep Your Strategy Clear

Lastly, keep your chosen strategy clear and singular. You might have many tactics that comprise the strategy. Rowan can get the word out in many different ways: online banner ads, leaflets in the local community, and a Puppies R Us partnership. These are pretty different activities, but make no mistake: these aren’t strategies, they’re separate tactics supporting a single strategy.

By having only this one strategy, Rowan can now concentrate all resources on the storefront. If the opportunity comes up to run a nationwide banner ad, the explicit strategy tells Rowan what to do: say “no” to the ad; advertising a Springfield puppy health service in Skokie makes no sense.

Think Strategically Throughout Your Life

A strategy helps you make decisions about where to put your time, money, and attention. We’ve been exploring strategy in business, but you can apply strategic thinking to other areas of your life.

What is your vision for your life? For your family? Your Career? Spend some time forming your vision. Then look at today’s reality, and choose a strategy that will realize that vision as possible in your life today. You’ll get a lot more of what you want in life, and a lot less of whatever random the world throws at you. Then you can put your efforts into tactics that support your strategy.

A scattershot approach to success is a recipe for staying stuck. Avoid this by organizing your tactics and resources using a well-chosen strategy. Align it all in pursuit of the vision that inspires and energizes you, and you’ll soon be enjoying plenty of success, while still having time to stop and pet the puppies.

  1. Closed on February 29th.  ↩
  2. Lack of fit with the vision is only one reason not to enter that particular business.  ↩

The Internet will destroy commerce

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Last week I wanted to buy product X, locally. I couldn’t. Every search phrase I could come up with took me to a custom site from a big company. “Widget, Miami, FL” didn’t go me Miami Florida local businesses, it gave me specially crafted, search engine optimized pages from Walmart.com, saying “Miami Widgets” on a domain that redirected to Walmart.com.

I rarely issue proclamations about the future, because I’ve noticed that my ability to predict trends is reasonable, but my ability to pick the timing of those trends sucks eggs. But let’s give it a shot:

Advertising-Supported Business Models Will Decline

The more that media companies and software companies and game companies rely on advertising as their primary revenue base, the more the supply of advertising spots will increase. Eventually, the supply will exceed the demand and, except for a few extremely high-traffic sites, ad prices will be driven down … because ads will become much less effective unless the advertiser has the time, money, and skill to do the detailed analytics needed to find the few venues where they get a positive ROI on their money.

This will drive a lot of the ad-supported businesses out of business, because they just don’t have the reach to be able to be one of the high-value ad space suppliers.

As Will All Businesses That Rely on Ads or Search for Customers

This will drive a lot of smaller businesses out of business, because those smaller businesses don’t have the resources to spend on marketing analytics, which will become necessary for finding the few advertising outlets that actually work for those small businesses. The marketing analytics will become a cost of being in the game.

In other words, the internet will drive us toward a more anemic economy where there are a few big-company winners, and those without the resources will lose.

(Essentially, the internet raises the playing field for everyone to the point where only big companies can survive.)

There will always be exceptions for specialty niches, but not for general commerce.

I hope I’m wrong, but I from what I see on the ground, it looks like a plausible scenario.

The ongoing joke that is Silicon Valley Privacy

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SnapChat just revised their privacy policy. I decided to read it. It looked pretty good. Then I got to the section How We Use Your Information. How does SnapChat use the information? To provide services. To communicate with me. To monitor trends. And so on.

The final bullet point? Carry out any other purpose for which the information was collected.

In other words: SnapChat has no privacy policy, and places no limits on what they can (and presumably will) do with your information.

Google’s privacy policy is similar. It sounds really grand, but if you read it carefully, in critical areas it exempts Google from any actual restrain on behavior by including similar clauses to the SnapChat clause.

Please face it: Silicon Valley, that supposed bastion of libertarian respect for individual rights, is no such thing. It’s a collection of disingenuous, deceptive, liars who are happy to write multipage privacy policies for PR purposes, which have no teeth whatsoever.

Be very, very careful of anything you put on a computer you don’t own. And I’m sure that the license agreements we agree to when we buy our computers and install Windows or Mac OS X will contain similar escape clauses if they don’t already.

If a policy does not have genuine, real teeth (“Corporation agrees to pay $1,000 for every violation of our privacy policy”), then over time, all such policies that supposedly protect consumers will be eroded. It seems to be a natural law, and it makes me believe more and more in regulation. I would rather slow progress than have process come at the expense of the well-being of consumers. Business was invented to serve us, not the other way around.

Corporations seem to be nothing if not explicitly immoral. It is very sad to watch.

What’s your industry? The answer may surprise you.

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The way people define industries is really quite interesting. I’ve once again been asked to be a judge for the Harvard Business School New Venture Competition. They asked what industries I’m comfortable commenting on. It’s a surprisingly hard question to answer, because it’s quite unclear what an “industry” is. Here are a sample of a few things that people call industries:

  • B2C internet
  • B2B internet
  • Health Care
  • Medical Devices
  • Energy
  • Financial Services

What makes these an industry? Is it that all members of the same industry share the same markets? Is it that all members of the same industry share the same employee skill sets? Is it that all members of the same industry produce the same kind of products?

Every definition I’ve tried has glaring exceptions, which makes me wonder whether thinking in terms of “industries” really makes as much sense as I’ve always assumed.

Perhaps it makes more sense to think in terms of:

  • companies/products who serve a given market
  • companies/products that require certain kinds of distribution
  • companies/products that require certain specialized knowledge on the part of employees

What do you think?

Please work for free. Not.

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I’m sure you have never asked someone to work for free. But just in case you know someone who has—or if you’ve ever been asked—here’s the kind of thing you really should say.

Today I received this letter:

Hello Mr. Stever,

 

I am writing to you on behalf of XYZ, a non-profit, CSR project of ABC (a $4 billion conglomerate operating in 16 countries). … We bring together advisors and speakers from some of the top business schools in the world… we are committed to building local intellectual capital and leveraging a business model that ensures sustainability and relevant development opportunities to our present and future business leaders.

 

To begin a relationship, we would be interested in having you as one of the subject experts for our Webinars to conduct a live complimentary webinar on a topic of your choice, and also offer you to write exclusively on our blog<.

My response:

I find your request confusing. I am a professional, who has spent several hundred thousand dollars and several decades developing my expertise.

 

While I believe I might have valuable content to offer, the key word is “valuable.” You say that you are a project of a $4 billion conglomerate, yet your business procedure seems to be asking people such as myself to work for free. That doesn’t sound like partnership; that sounds like crass exploitation. You have the money to pay your vendors, you would just rather have them work for free.

 

That is not the kind of business practice I stand for or am interested in. If you are training entrepreneurs, it is a business practice you should object to as well—any entrepreneur who does not make sure they are well-paid for their product will quickly go out of business. I strongly suspect that neither you nor the CEO of your organization work for free. I can only follow your lead and decline your offer, in favor of clients and partners who believe in paying for the value I provide.

Venture Moments of Truth

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As ventures grow and develop, the challenges they present change. Often change is sudden rather than gradual. These sudden changes require a shift in the way the company and/or the top managers do business. These are times when coaching can be most valuable.

The one-room shop. In a one-room company, even if the room is a 60-person room, communication is informal and universal. Roles can be amorphous, with anyone pitching in to help with whatever needs doing.

The first hire. With your first employee, you become a manager. Decisions must now be made taking the employee into account. Confidentiality and access to information get raised as issues. Delegation, clear communication, evaluating, and motivating your employee become necessary skills.

The first firing. It happens. And it isn’t pleasant. It also sends a strong message to everyone who is left. With the first firing, everyone will realize—really realize—that you are the boss. Handling the dismissal, handling your reactions to the dismissal, and managing perceptions of the remaining employees become the challenges.

The first customer. The market is now aware of you. You have your first chance to collect real customer feedback. The length and cost of the sales cycle becomes apparent. Your cash flow requirements become more knowable, and the strategy/tactics need to respond. And for the first time, you have to deliver on your promises.

The first lost sale. You have to grapple with whether your product should be changed to meet the market, or whether you just had a bad fit between your product and that one prospect. You may find yourself dealing with how to react appropriately, and how not to take this personally.

The two-room shop. Communication that happened through proximity and casual conversation suddenly stops happening. For the first time, you must explicitly identify communication paths and determine how they will operate. Things that have always worked in the past may not work any longer. You’ll grapple with identifying solutions and separating accountability of the system from accountability of the people.

The first fight. There comes a time when, despite the best of intentions, the founders disagree. Really disagree. This is a time to examine the relationship, and make sure you have a structure for working through conflict.

Money runs out. When the money almost runs out, the venture capitalists and other funding sources may hold your feet to the fire, just because they can. You will encounter issues around negotiating, personal balance, and separating your identity from the business to create as objective an action plan as possible.

Cash flow positive. Survival no longer depends on every cash decision! You can invest surplus in longer term projects. Cultures which have been compromised to save money now have the option of improving their business practices. “Spend as little as possible” was your old imperative. Now, you need a way to decide how to use the surplus cash. Culturally, you have an opportunity to increase integrity in how business is conducted.

Once you have cash, how you pick and choose opportunities to pursue becomes less dependent on pleasing outsiders. You are self-funding and have the option of slowing growth to avoid the need for new outside capital.

The Chaos Point. When the company gets too big for one person to keep on top of everything, chaos can ensue. Organization structure becomes necessary, and managers must shift from getting things done to creating an organization in which others can get things done. Delegation, willingness to give up control, learning to guide and create culture, setting compensation systems, building meaningful feedback systems, and hiring all become critical capabilities.

Outside money. With outside money, you are truly accountable to others. Board meetings take preparation, and the outside money may bring restrictions and new constraints. The personal challenges include balancing your own vision and plans with those of the outsiders. Changes in strategic direction may become dependent on outside approval.

The second Chaos Point. Somewhere between 70 and 100 employees, real business systems become necessary. The numbers just get too big: too many job applicants in the pipeline, too many projects to track, too many purchasing requests, etc. Few employees have the business process analysis skills to put systems in place. Those few who have the skills become overwhelmed as everything important is given to them: “Just this once? You’re the only person who gets things done around here.” Building business systems and training underlings in building systems becomes imperative.

Multiple product lines. Once you move to multiple product lines, issues start to arise around your company’s identity: what do you stand for? Who do you serve? If one line is more profitable than the other, are the managers or salespeople paid differently? Are you a single brand? Multiple brands? Issues of focus, resource allocation, balancing the culture, and accountability become important.

Acquisition. When you’re acquired, the challenges revolve around keeping good people, merging your identity, culture, and product lines with your new parent, and defining roles and career paths that work in the new entity.

IPO: the finish line? As rumors of an IPO begin to spread, comparisons start. Who has how much? Whose options are worth what? Will we be as rich as our friends at e-commerce.com? Suddenly, you are legally required to keep a lot confidential from your employees. Issues of fairness, ethics, trust, and reporting requirements arise within the company. The issues are huge: six-figure tax planning, psychological preparations to become rich (it’s not as easy a transition as most people think), learning to make decisions from a large asset base, examining how priorities change, understanding how to manage friends and family, dealing with the public speaking and stress of a road show, and keeping the company together while all this is happening.

Life goes on…publicly. Whoops. The company iPod and you just realized an IPO is just the beginning, not the end. Early employees, who hold much of the company’s intelligence in their heads, become rich enough to leave. The motivation of “someday we’ll be public” is no longer available. Outside pressure to “manage for quarterly results” begins. Preserving the knowledge and skill base of the company while achieving the forecast numbers become two of the biggest challenges. On a personal level, growth opportunities include learning to manage increased analyst scrutiny and formulating your next set of goals and aspirations.

An executive coach can help during many of the “moments of truth.” When growth is happening so quickly, employees (including founders!) may not have the time to grow into their roles; their roles are changing too fast, and they’re too busy building the business. When roles shift, or unquestioned assumptions and rules suddenly stop working, an executive or advisor can help you through what’s needed structurally, motivationally, or personally-to bring things back on track.