CEO Swagger

There’s no question about the need for talent on your team when building any kind of business. But talent is not the end all be all. The truth in business, especially a start-up, is that a team needs chemistry. Beyond the talent that everyone brings to the table, there is a lot of hard work and sacrifice that needs to be made in order to make a business work. There are long hours, good and bad days, conflicting opinions about strategy, and critical moments when miscommunication can set your project back weeks (or months) at a time.

What I’ve learned is that you need both talent and leadership when you are building your team. You need leaders to move your dream forward. You need people who are willing to come on board because they believe in the vision you have put forth and are not just bandwagon businessmen hitching a ride on a cool new idea. But you also need the talent. Hall of Fame Notre Dame Football coach Lou Holtz once said, “You can lose a championship with great players, but you can’t win one without some.” However, it is critical that you understand the order in which you need these people.

There’s a saying I heard years ago that states, “In the end, all the ‘A’ students wind up working for the ‘C’ students and the ‘B’ students end up working for the government.” I was in college at the time so it made me feel better about my grades. But more relevant to this post is that this holds true because while ‘A’ students can get the job done, ‘C’ students sometimes do a better job at defining the job that needs to get done and not get caught in the details.

‘C’ students take risk (as indicated by how close they are to not passing the class). In business, you need partners who are willing to take some risk. Most of us don’t realize this, but the nature of making a decision is taking a risk. Decisions are made on limited information and it takes wisdom and instinct to make up for the rest. If you had all of the information possible, it would not be a decision . . . it would be a foregone conclusion.

At the onset of your venture, you need people who are creative, resourceful, flexible and are not embarrassed about making mistakes. Don’t get me wrong, you need talented people, ‘A’ students, who can execute once a decision has been made. But I’ve learned that when you get the right people leading your organization, that kind of talent is easy to attract.

Reflect on these two facts:

• More than 50% of all CEOs of Fortune 500 companies had a C or C- average in college
• More than 50% of all millionaire entrepreneurs never finished college

This is not to belittle school or academic intelligence. This is just a perspective on business. ‘A’ students are very important to your business as they are with anyone else’s. But if you ever doubt the practicality of this message, go to any career fair anywhere in the country and notice the thousands of ‘A’ students clamoring to go to work for college dropouts such as Bill Gate, Michael Dell, Larry Ellison, Donald Newhouse, Barbara Cox Anthony and the list goes on.

It goes without saying that not all ‘A’ or ‘C’ students are created equal. This is just a caution to entrepreneurs of adding smart people too soon. Smart people are more likely to be completers and not creators. The harder part, of course, is finding the right ‘C’ students. Good luck.

Category : Leadership, Simple Advice