About the Author: William Fisher, a partner at Treetop Ventures in Omaha, is a regular guest contributor to Silicon Prairie News. In his series, View from the FishBowl, Fisher calls on his experience as a business executive and technology investor to lend his advice to entrepreneurs in the Silicon Prairie.
Fisher has served as a director for several prominent public companies and private firms, and he currently serves on the boards of Prism Technologies, Lodo Software and FTNI. To read his full bio, including a listing of companies he has been involved with, visit treetopventures.com.
Contact Fisher at fish@treetopventures.com.
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This is something I have shared a number of times over the years with entrepreneurs (and others) that find themselves in the position of leadership. It may be that you report to a board or maybe just a traditional reporting role in a business. (At the end of the day, everyone has a boss in one form or another). My mentor at FDR (First Data) told me this one day when I was wrestling with a situation that was going to have me sideways with my boss and possibly the CFO (I ran the Government Services business for FDR at the time). It has stuck with me since that time.
He said…
Fish, you can run the business the way I want you to run the business and if it doesn’t work, we will fire you.
You can run it the way the CFO wants you to run the business and if it doesn’t work, we will fire you.
Or, you can run it the way you think you should run it and if it doesn’t work, we will fire you.
However, and this is the key part…you will benefit more over the long run and be more assured in your decisions if you run it the way you want to run it.
No one can put themselves in someone else’s shoes and think/act like they do; it just won’t work.
I didn’t take it to mean that I was to ignore input. I didn’t take it to mean that I should go against the grain. It wasn’t clear to me at the time but in later years I saw different people try to run their job the way their boss wanted it and witnessed their inability to think for themselves when the chips are down. They procrastinate; they want their boss to tell them what to do. They never learn until it is too late that doing it the boss’s way doesn’t really provide any protection nor does it develop their decision making processes; they are living on borrowed time. (Here is the harder part to swallow…if you aren’t any good at running businesses, it is better to find out now rather than later. It doesn’t mean you aren’t going to be successful; it just means that you are going to need to find someone who can make those decisions when they need to be made).
I appreciated the input. It has helped me make decisions in the past. Hope it helps you.
