Creating At Will Newsletter - March, 2006 - start-ups, career hunting, job is killing you

Under The Radar

STARTING START-UPS RIGHT

     “How one organizes a start-up company often proves more important than the product in determining whether the venture succeeds or fails.” “From my experience in helping to create technology companies, the right attitude, people, and actions make a bigger contribution than a novel idea to the success of these endeavors. Never underestimate the role of passion, the importance of management talent, and the significance of teaming with the right investors.”
     “Attitudes—Consider the contrast in behavior between large companies and small companies, which tend to develop innovative technologies differently.” In studies conducted, “Often, the market leader was the inventor of the radical innovation but refused to pioneer it, out of fear that it would cannibalize sales of the company’s existing products.”
     “Management teams—One false impression about entrepreneurship is that it is an individual behavior. What we have found is that entrepreneurial behavior succeeds more often when performed by teams.”
     “Passionate behavior—People who lack passion often use the first barrier they encounter as an excuse for failure. People who have high passion will do whatever it takes to overcome those barriers. What we can achieve in life depends on a number of things: how hard we work, how smart we work, how much leverage we have on the work we do, and how much courage we have in pursuing our goals. One method of motivating employees in large companies is to share credit for successes.”
     “Investors—Another key determinant of success for start-up companies is their venture capitalists and whether they can provide adequate access to more money downstream. New companies typically need more money than the entrepreneurs think, and they more often fail because they run out of money than because the technology [project idea], has problems. Companies that have investors with “deep pockets” will succeed more often.”

John T. Preston, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, has helped start new companies as an entrepreneur, venture investor, and director of technology development and licensing. For the complete article see The Industrial Physicist, Building success into a high-tech start-up http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-9/iss-3/p16.html.

Recent Career Trends

INSIDE–OUTSIDE CAREER HUNTING

      One approach to making changes is from the outside-in, looking outside yourself for clarity on your career choice, hoping that you’ll hear or see something that will resonate with you and guide you to what you should do. Many folks do their career hunting by listening to the opinions of others about what they should do, search want ads, send out lots of resumes, read tons of self-help books, go back to school, wander the career aisles at bookstores, etc.
     A more effective way to job search is to clarify your wants in advance — notice what you’re naturally drawn to, what your experience will support and what your finances will allow. Once you’ve done your inside-out homework and are fairly certain what you want to do, take more direct routes to research your career of choice. Interview others who do what interests you. Volunteer at the job itself in your spare time.
     An unplanned approach is analogous to playing slot machines — it may pay you, but randomly. Are you gambling with your career choices? Consider hiring a coach to help you focus, utilizing an inside-out approach so your action steps count. Here are some examples of both styles. See if you can spot what works:
     “By the time I graduated, I had already been through the search and negotiation process with two different internships. I think I went through about 10-12 good interviews before I was offered the right position.”
     “I'm happy to have a job, but it's not my ideal career path. I had my resume posted on Monster.com, and the employer found me. I really had no interest in the position, but it had been eight months since I graduated, and I still couldn't get a job. So I figured I better take what I can get.”
     “So for two years before I graduated, I was on campus nearly every day, meeting teachers, principals, students, etc. When it came time to graduate, I had a job right away.”
     “…I feel as if I've been job hunting for years. I am looking to pursue a career in public relations and am hoping to secure an internship position with a professional sports team.”

Anonymous examples excerpted from graduate students at http://www.quintcareers.com

Career Life Symmetry

5 TIPS TO DEFY ROUTINE

You’ve reached a place where nearly everything has become all too familiar. It’s not just your 10:30 a.m. trip to the coffeemaker or the blue slacks you usually wear on Tuesdays, but even bigger decisions feel redundant. Your working partners come to you for your feedback and you feel you’ve had similar discussions as recent as last week. You need new thinking tools to defy routine. Here’s a list of 5 suggestions to help you break out of tired thinking, find new ways to approach your tasks and challenge the ordinary:

Develop a stronger taste for something you feel neutral about. For example, choose to visit a modern art museum if normally this isn’t your preferred art type. Now, get curious. Ask yourself, “What makes it art? What is its value? What provoked this artist to create this piece? What excited them to design this? What thinking originated this work and passion brought it about? How can you apply that approach in your work?

Organize a small group discussion on a topic you know a lot about. Intentionally choose participants with diverse views. Facilitate with open questions. Be quiet and hear the opposing views. Listen and learn.

Physically engage in a sport or activity you don’t know how to do. How do you go about learning this? Do you ask others? Do you try repeatedly until you get tired and want to give up? Do you automatically assume you’re not cut out for it? Is it hard or can it also be fun and challenging? Be joyfully persistent to turn the completely unfamiliar into a self-respected achievement.

Find something you’ve told yourself you don’t like. Make this a challenge, and not just eating turnips when you know it’s not your favorite. For example, it could be writing (of any kind) when you’ve told yourself you’re not a writer or initiating a project with others, when you’ve told yourself you work better alone. In this process, challenge every negative judgment and focus on the new learning and experience.

Re-discover a project you are content working on. Ask yourself how does this continue to make you happy and keep your interest? What makes you yearn to return to it? What elements of this can you bring to work?

Also, see this month’s book resources.

Driving onto a new freeway onramp near home recently, I was aware that it was the first time I had entered the freeway at that location. Even though it was a small thing, it was fun to do something for the first time. This gave me the idea for defying routine as talked about in the Career-Life Symmetry section. If we see more things in life as first starts then we’re more likely to be interested and rarely bored. My father-in-law is someone who is inspiring in his 80’s, as he is constantly curious about people, places and things.
Similarly, John Preston’s excerpt about first starts for entrepreneurs hopefully offers some short tip perspectives on how to start out one’s business with the right components in place.

Whether you are an entrepreneur or corporate employee, what first starts can you make that will infuse your environment with some new blood and improve an area you’d like to change?

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