Ducks In A Row: Avoiding Dumb
by Miki Saxon
John Greathouse is a VC at Rincon Venture Partners and he offers up some great advice about celebrating successes, both large and small.
I pretty much agree with all his ideas.
What I don’t agree with is that they are primarily for use in what he calls AdVentures (internet startups) and not in Big Dumb Companies (BDCs), which, he says, use newsletters.
While BDCs may indeed use newsletters, although due to expense I’m pretty sure they are mostly digital now, you don’t have to be a net startup to implement tweaked versions of Greathouse’s ideas in your organization—you just need people.
First, let’s restate the acronym and make it SSMLDC for Startup, Small, Medium, Large Dumb Company (yes, there are startup DCs), the key word is dumb, so we’ll call them DCs for short.
Some DCs don’t value their people (which make them happy hunting grounds for recruiters), while others just don’t show it.
But the real problem is one of individual managers, since they have the option of appreciating and caring whether those above them do or not.
No one says you have to manage like your boss or her boss or the company’s big boss.
I have seen many managers who are anything from a few degrees to 180 off from their company’s stated and/or de facto approach.
The good ones leave DCs for good companies and the bad ones leave for DCs.
If your goal is to be a great manager in any environment take the ideas that Greatehouse describes and tweak them to fit your group—whether you’re a VP or a team leader
After all, just because you work for a dumb jerk (DJ) doesn’t mean you have to be one.
Image credit: Fickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zedbee/103147140/
