disclaimer: i am writing this post as a personal note. i am hardly an expert on this matter.
we can start from the essential question “what is the meaning of (business) life?”.
if your answer is “to make something big and cool” then you should continue reading.
the next question is “how?”.
i learned through a lot of trial and error, anyone can make big and cool things if they have following skills:
1) ability to work in a team, to participate with others in finding a solution to a problem
this is not as easy as it sounds.
to make anything worth making and sharing, you need a lot of smart people around you.
people who know how to do things you do not know.
so you really need to be good to work with them.
by work with them, i mean REALLY work with them.
not them working for you, or you working for them.
2) ability to maintain focus of the team
now that you have your team, you need to share the focus.
nothing is lost faster than a shared vision (aka focus).
on day one everybody agrees on an abstract goal.
on day ten you need to deal with X number of fractions.
result: 90% of energy is spent on bring back the strayed sheep back to the flock.
if you can not get everybody to visualize the goal and necessary steps to reach it,
you will not get far.
3) understand which emotions are good, and which are bad
would we be better of if we did not have emotions?
surely no.
emotions are 99% of what we are.
they are the fuel for our rockets.
but just like the fuel in a rocket, if they are not channeled – god help us.
there is a fine line between motivating passion and punishing anger.
being able to be aware your emotions and control them when they need control is a huge plus.
4) do not forget that people are most important
anyone who spends 3 days in a row, alone, at home, on a computer,
will most likely loose touch with people and start believing that all they need is a computer.
practice interacting with people on every day basis.
business is word which describes human relationships.
5) positive attitude of learning
fact 1: stupid people get pissed off.
fact 2: smart people learn from everything.
fact 3: i get very pissed off most of the time. clearly i am stupid. i know this.
the moments when i was able to be calm and learn from things that used to piss me off, i benefited.
you can maybe get away with being pissed off, then calming down, digesting, and learning later.
but if you can skip all those steps and go directly to learning – it is better.
these are cliches.
hope they help.