Hello All: At Wasabi Ventures, we have been advising a new portfolio company about over analyzing their data and becoming paralyzed (we wrote a blog entry about it). I was wondering what techniques do any of you entrepreneurs use to lean towards action instead of stagnation?
You would not want your ant to turn into an elephant but rather into an hippopotamus. The very best thing to keep a big company nimble is to not have traditional management structures. Companies get slow and crappy because employees get restricted in some way. Making 'little bosses' (for instance; people who have no business being above anyone in the hierarchical structure but get promoted there anyway because they are already so long with the company), creating reward structures based on performance which does not actually only reward performance but also clever elbowing, burning people for every mistake they make. The last point is a nice US thing which is not really well understood (here) in Europe; firing someone for an offense does not only create a sluggish structure (no-one wants to take the blame); it also does not encourage healthy working relationships (without backstabbing, accelerated darwinism etc). You company sounds interesting; send me a PM if you want; we can chat some more.