Fred Wilson has been doing a very interesting series on Management Teams for the last several weeks on his blog. It is part of his MBA Monday series and this section was on building and maintaining the management team. They just did a wrap up post called The Management Team – Guest Post By Jerry Colonna – The Crucible of Leadership. It’s well written and gets to the heart of the matter of what makes the difference between good and great leaders and managers. So much easier to say than do. I feel like I’ve been through a Crucible and I hope that I’ll get an opportunity to see what I’ve learned about the topic and practice my leadership skills. Empowering people and getting things done are near and dear to my heart and apparently seem to align to my strengths according to Strength’s Finder 2.0.
Bottom line is that we are all different. We aren’t Steve Jobs or Bill Gates and we shouldn’t strive to be. We need to find that place where our passions, skills, and opportunity come together. constantly look inward and then work on it until something happens. We need to accept and stare our demons down as we can’t fight them because the more we do, the more they stick around to haunt us. Surrender to the demons and they will surrender to you or leave you be is what Colonna mentions in his post.
Time Is The Undeniable Constraint and if you find that rare person who has put so much into looking inward then as I said in my recent post on Leadership, Management and Unicorns, try to get a front row seat to see how they do it.
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: bill gates,
entrepreneurship,
steve jobs,
venture capital |
Tags: bill gates,
fred wilson,
jerry colonna,
leadership,
management team,
mba monday,
steve jobs,
strengths finder 2.0,
time management,
unicorns |
Comments Off on Management Teams, MBA Monday’s, The Crucible
This weekend I completely spaced on my daughter’s swim class. Her class has been at 10:00 for the last 4 months but because of a few unexpected things that happened on Saturday morning (e.g., our house cleaner who comes every two weeks called in sick so I had to quickly start changing beds/washing sheets & towels and my husband was gone for activities surrounding the founding of The Magellan School) my mind somehow shifted into thinking the class was at 10:30.
We showed up at 10:30, and I wondered where the other kids in her class were when my son pointed through the window and said ‘there they are!‘ It still hadn’t hit me that I had gotten the time wrong and I walked in and the parents said ‘there you are‘ and in slow motion I said ‘did I miss the class?‘ and they all nodded. I was in shock because I’ve never done that before. I apologized profusely. I asked the teacher if she could just get in for a little bit but she had to go to her next class. One of the guy teachers who was nearby said he’d give her a mini-lesson and thankfully he spent about 20 minutes with her in the water. I almost cried on the spot out of gratitude and not having to wallow in guilt while she cried about not being able to swim. My son waited as patiently as he could on the other side of the window given that I had originally told him he could play a game on my new iPhone for a little while during her class. The teacher was so kind to her and gave her piggy back rides while taking her under water. She laughed and smiled. He called her ‘sweet pea‘ and ‘sweetie pie‘ and if he wasn’t in the water, I would have given him a big hug for making/saving my day! You can’t buy that kind of marketing and in that one instant, I wanted to tell everyone how amazing Emler Swim School is!
Well, last month I forgot to pay the mortgage or shall I say I remembered too late. I’ve never done that either so we had to suck it up and pay a late fee much to my chagrin. I can’t recall ever paying a late fee although I’m sure it’s happened at least once on something.
Oh and I didn’t win my longed for trip to Tobago mostly because I didn’t have the time or wasn’t able to come up with the right strategy in a timely manner to make it happen. Looking back, I think if I had taken off a week from my day job to make sure I won this week vacation, I would have won. 🙂
UPDATE: After finishing this blog post, I went to a yoga class. I got there only to realize I forgot my yoga mat (for the first time ever!) at home despite going back into the house before I left to get it and a towel. I had to rent a mat and let’s just say a rental mat offers a sub par experience to your own purple mat. My right ankle hurts a little bit now.
So needless to say these are signs that I have too much going on…some of which I’ve blogged about and some of which I haven’t and probably won’t. I’ve started to look at the things I can give up in my life and I’ve given up a couple of things so far. I gave up co-writing the series for the UT Alumni magazine and just last week I took a leave of absence from my weekly Blog Mastermind call with some amazing folks who I mentioned in the GigaOm article I did on finding a business parter online. It was a tough decision but they were all supportive and told me I was welcome back at any time. I’ve also started to unsubscribe from blogs, newsletters, etc. that I haven’t been reading anyway. I’m taking a long hard look at my life and trying to figure out what I can give up without giving up anything I really want/need to do.
I may need to give up some things temporarily while I sort things out and find a way to integrate them back into my life once I deal with some of the other things going on in my life, but how does one do this without risking making the wrong decisions? Sigh.
I wonder if we had a crystal ball if any of us would still in fact be able to make the perfect decision. So far, I feel like I’ve been extremely lucky in the decisions I have made in my life and although I certainly wish I could change a few things, I don’t have any big regrets.
Have you given up something and felt relieved? Have you given up something and later wished you hadn’t because you weren’t able to go back to doing it again? Or as my friend Robb just asked “What is the biggest thing you have ever given up on?” and my answer was “Myself.” But I usually pull myself out of it pretty quickly when I repeatedly realize that I am my own worst critic and at times my own best cheerleader…
Author: Aruni |
Filed under: entrepreneurship,
parenting |
Tags: entrepreneurship,
giving things up,
time management,
tobago |
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