I worked for 2 years in a small fast-growing consulting firm whose value for me was more about gaining professional experience, developing my primarily soft skills and exploring the world of business, so I want to share some lessons / observations that I learned there.
LESSON 1. "Everything passes and this too shall pass "(c) King Solomon. We tend to exaggerate the threats of a crisis and emerging problems and underestimate our own optimism and problem-solving abilities. A year ago, our company began to experience a blockage of projects that did not allow us to accept new ones, which is generally unacceptable for any business. At the moment of realizing and discussing this crisis, it seemed to me that we were on the brink of an abyss and there was no way we could be saved. But my boss developed a plan for overcoming the crisis, made some non-obvious useful managerial decisions, found a couple of people to help me and ... the blockage dissipated. I was surprised by this turn of events and now I understand that the first reaction to the crisis may be wrong. I still don’t know how to take control of these emotions and look optimistically at the problems that have arisen (but now I know that this is how it should be done), probably my own lived experience and optimism are very important here (that's by the way another agrument for long living).
LESSON 2. I worked in a fast-growing company, so it was interesting to observe the traits of our co-founders, thanks to which our business grew in the face of ever-tougher competition in the market. Here are my main observations:
- they learn and quite a lot - from various courses on management and studying articles from fellow entrepreneurs to books on psychology and studying the theories from behavioral economics. In fact, it is clear for me that most of the decisions they make are based on some their general ideas about how business, the world, people work. This surprised me, since I did not expect such penetration of the academy world into very applied things. But once again I was convinced that the right attitudes and understanding of the world (which I understand as awareness) help to build not only person's life or whole society, but also business, although, nevertheless, I would not make the intellectuality of the founders their main feature;
- they are very result-oriented. For example, when making a mistake in working with some client, instead of arguing about their causes, they immediately switch their attention to what can be done now to achieve at least some result. That is, they try to keep the result in mind, realizing that in the end they are paid for it. And after that they do awareness sessions;
- they are quite fast. Sometimes they can set seemingly unrealistic deadlines for completing a task, but often these deadlines become doable which is surprising (altought Steve Jobs also did it with Steve Wozniak);
- they constantly push their ideas, sometimes "on faith". That is why some of their plans are not implemented or deadlines are not met. But it seems that such leaps of faith are very important for the development of new markets of business, because it requires risk and, in essence, faith (since it is rational "the timing should be longer", and "this thing will not take off at all." Therefore, along with good intelligence, you need to combine and optimistically irrationally driven approach, which not everyone succeeds because of the obvious contradiction of these two characteristics - but Musk, for example, succeeds and that's how his genius reveals;
- they know how to make difficult decisions like fire an employee, close a branch, suddenly open an office in Dubai, etc. One of the founders once told me that good entrepreneurs come out of the military or doctors or military doctors, because that both in the army and in the hospital you have to make decisions all the time, and sometimes very difficult ones. Making decisions is not easy, as we are constantly striving to choose the best, carefully weighing all the options. Choosing the speed of decisions over their thorough quality is a pretty important skill indeed, especially in today's world.
LESSON 3. I have worked in consulting with various, usually successful startups. Therefore, I was able to communicate and study many of the founders / top managers of these startups and make some observations:
- they are all different, really - someone is super strict and responsible, someone is always positive, someone likes to chat, someone speaks clearly on the case, someone does not understand their entire business, someone knows every detail in it, someone is wildly old school, someone is a fashionable startupman. In general, everyone is really different in character, knowledge, psychology, but what unites them?
- they are optimists or I would say optimistically naive - their product is the best, the market will grow one way or another, their team is the best, etc. - optimism seems to me the only thing that unites them 100%, which is generally logical - if you don’t believe in your product, why develop it? this, by the way, does not prevent them from remaining sober in questions about their market opportunities;
- they are doers, that is, they are also result-oriented - it is important for them to get progress, and they perceive problems as “what needs to be done to get to the other path and reach the goal”;
- this is not a psychological observation, but important - they have been working in the industry for a long time and have expertise in it. In general, stories about young Zuckerbergs are more of a myth. Almost always, before the project is launched, its founders have some kind of base, even Facebook was not the first startup for Mark...
LESSON 4. I worked with my own team, therefore all employees I would divide it into 3 groups:
- people who love their work and constantly keep it in the zone of their interests (meanings) - it is obvious that these are the most pleasant people and, most importantly, loyal, but there are few of them in my practice;
- people who are professionally versed in the tasks set, but not burning with them - it is important for them to leave work on time, competitive wages, an adequate team and all that - they, by the way, do their job no worse than "burning ones", but it is much more difficult to keep them, and that's it the majority of them, which is not bad, not good, as is;
- people who do not have a professional approach to business and do not want to approach things in this way, constantly looking for ways to evade work - there are also those, in companies with a high threshold for entering them very few (as first type which is probably interconnected), but in any case they will most likely have to be fired.
LESSON 5. I had to go through several career steps (from trainee to manager) and my most significant observation on this subject is that any up level is associated with discomfort and fear (“I don’t know how to deal with it”, “I’m scared”, “It requires more time resources”, etc.). Many people talk about this a la any points of growth associated with overcoming discomfort, and it seems to be true. It is obvious that at some stage it is possible and I think it is necessary to stop at some point, here I mean rather invented fears and inability that prevent us from achieving our professional goals or reduce our ambitions. And this topic seems to be very important and relevant, at least for me.
So, these lessons / ideas can be viewed as obvious but I think that any obvious or common sense thing should be checked via thinking about it. Yes, majority of these common sense things is true but sometimes thinking about the obvious you can find the non-obvious (this is how Einstein explained the reasons for his discovery of the law of relativity). So, that was my observations about business side of the world of startups and corporate jobs as well.