I am passionate about providing effective business and people solutions. It drives me crazy to watch organizations invest time and money on well-intentioned approaches that do not actually solve business or people challenges.
So, I was intrigued when a friend, who also happens to be a technologist and business leader, said:
You should work with leadership teams of VC funded start-ups. They need help navigating the shift to scaling. You know about scaling, building teams and you excel at working with innovative business leaders and technologists.
He is absolutely right; I have the skills. During my 20-years at Intel Corporation, I worked with executives and technologists to scale organizations in manufacturing, R&D, product development, finance, and human resource organizations. I helped build leadership teams for start-ups, large organizations going through massive transformation, and stable organizations that needed to evolve slowly and methodically. I implemented business processes that allowed organizations to stay aligned and quickly accomplish amazing goals. I learned so much about what didn’t work and more importantly, what did work.
My question was whether there was a need. So I did my research.
- The high failure rate of start-ups, even when they got VC funding to scale, surprised me.
- The fact that so much research pointed to the importance of the leadership team having the skills and expertise in scaling an organization made me hopeful. Those skills can be learned.
- The scarcity of simple, solutions designed specifically for start-up leadership teams to scale puzzled me.
Need + skills = opportunity.
As interesting as all that is, there are a lot of opportunities out there. Why did I choose this one?
- Because start-ups and small businesses are the engines of economic growth. The world my children will live in depends on the creativity and success of today’s start-ups.
- Because I love working with leadership teams to build organizations. Every time I see a team and organization accomplish an audacious goal, there is a moment of pure joy.
- Because I am at my best when I am working with innovative leaders who are driven to change the status quo.