Nobody tells you that the rules for a founder are just different.
For example, here are two bits of advice I’ve had over the years: First up, ‘don’t take it personally’. Words that are almost drilled into you through childhood, through education and through the early stages of your career. And it’s important.
Secondly, ‘if someone screws you, screw them back harder’.
A bit more abrasive than the first piece of advice, and words shared by one Donald J Trump before he took high office.
They’re both just wrong for founders.
My career is largely based on analytical insight. I seek to understand business performance, how businesses can win, and then to develop a narrative to help chart a course to a better future.
I worked client side for 20+ years, largely doing this.
My career took me from London to New York, with international teams, and then back to the North West, heading up strategy for MBNA, the credit card people.
During the more junior stages of my career, I simply didn’t have the big picture for all of the business decisions I was helping to influence.
I could develop an informed point of view, and I could steer action, but the big picture politics were sometimes just not in my field of vision.
And so, recommendations that were not taken would be accompanied by ‘don’t take it personally’. And, reader, I didn’t.
Fast forward to completing an MBA at Manchester Business School (before the Alliance days). The course was heavily based around live consulting, and I remember our cohort having a very specific lecture with a single piece of central advice for our upcoming projects: ‘don’t take it personally’. And again, reader, I didn’t.
Now let’s flip to the words of Mr Trump. To be clear, I can’t abide the man. This was advice given to a small cohort of us during overseas study on my MBA at the Stern School of Business at NYU.
Donald Trump was a guest lecturer. He was odious. Amongst the many honestly awful words of advice and observations he shared, this notion of ‘screwing someone back harder’ stuck with me.
It echoes through his politics… and [gestures around at everything] look at where we are now.
Even at the time, as he gleefully shared stories of where he’d screwed over small businesses, I reflected that this advice was anathema to me.
So let me subvert these two points to create what I believe is sound advice for founders, and the bit that nobody tells you: ‘Do take it personally, and do build true partnerships’.
Here’s my observation. Working in the corporate world, you are constantly surrounded by politics. Taking it personally can lead to cataclysmic failure. It’s blood in the water, and the sharks are coming.
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As a founder – especially of a consulting business where our stock in trade is ‘advice’ – the calculus is just different. We must take it personally. We’re selling the fact that we will go the extra mile. We will push harder. We won’t settle.
I think it’s a truism for smaller businesses. You’re working on passion. You’re doing it because you want to succeed. That extra ounce of effort is a part of the very DNA. You want to push harder, because you want to nail it.
And it’s kind of the same with relationships. The threat of ‘screwing someone’ if you don’t get what you want is just plain wrong. We need to create partnerships; we need to forge common goals.
Taking these two things together, it’s simple. Founders need to show up. We need to exist in the discomfort and find solutions to messy problems. Owning this is where the magic lies.