An Army of 1

Before you have a product, before you have a consumer segment, before you have a name; you must have an understanding of who you are and your limitations.

Most people believe that entrepreneurs generally make terrible CEOs, and this is born out oftentimes by the entrepreneur being unable to relinquish power over parts of the business as they scale out a company and grow.

The best advice I can ever give someone is to take stock of their skill set, and focus all energy into your competitive strengths while leveraging employees, partners, or outsourcing to drive areas you are not an expert in.

Whether you’re a mid-level manager or someone looking to start-up a company pinpoint the tasks that can be farmed out early on in your business plan and look for capable reliable resources you can utilize. Remember that the key to being a successful manager is delegating, and whether you manage people or a product this holds true.

For the Entrepreneur: If you’re starting business things like incorporating, filing a patent, trademarking, building your own server, maintaining your domain can be a stumbling block. Look at your capabilities can you by yourself do any of these tasks effectively, understanding that your failures in these areas can doom your fledgling business? I can from my own experience attest to the difficulty of do-it-yourself patenting.

For the Business Professional: In my career I’ve found it’s not enough to know the product I work with, it’s not enough to be able to identify emerging trends, run analytics, and  price effectively; no in addition to all that the presentation to executives has to shine. Being color blind and not much of an artist this poses a problem for me. By storyboarding my presentations, delivering key relevant content, and delegating to a creative professional I’ve been able to drive compelling winning executive work. Ask yourself who in an organization can you align with to deliver the best result? What metrics measure your success? What resources can you use to both your and their benefit? How can you get key stakeholders on board?

Takeaway: There’s only 24 hours in a day and unless you want to work every one of them you better know how to identify and use resources for your betterment.