I'm seeing a flood of "Top 10" lists for 2008 and predictions for 2009. I find them interesting and valuable. I learn a ton - maybe more, however, from my own mistakes and mistakes of others. I want to share my Top 5 mistakes with you so that you can avoid making them, or at least think twice before you move to action that might be costly. I would be very grateful, as would our readers, if you did the same. I think learning through mistakes is often more effective than learning through success but none of us can afford to make 100 mistakes in 2009 so let's learn from each other and share the costly mistakes, and ultimately the powerful benefits.
Be bold - be courageous - tell us what to avoid, or just share your comments with us.
Cheers and Best Wishes for a Kick Ass 2009!
In no particular order:
1. I made some bad travel decisions
Though it's never easy to determine how to most effectively spend one's time, I could have avoided a couple of trips that had a low probability of a meaningful ROI. Sometimes it makes more sense to run the probabilities and opportunity costs, multiply the "gut" factor and determine the probability for a high Return on Investment; than to just go for it. I could have saved a bunch of carbon, gotten more sleep, and taken care of more people that deserved my time and attention if I had run the numbers. That said, just going for it often does pay off so I'm likely to make this same mistake in 2009. Next time I consider flying across the planet, I'll ask a couple more people what they think.
2. I spent too much time with potential investors
I could have redirected 200 hours of investor related activity toward spending with my customers. Our customers and employees ARE Leverage Software, our investors are not. We are grateful for our fabulous investors, but our customers and employees deserve more of my time than do existing or potential investors. If you are a potential investor reading this, you best have a REALLY good pitch planned for me, otherwise, I'll see you in 2010 if at all.
3. One bad hire
I am really pleased with the growth of Leverage Software and our hiring decisions. We continued to add great talent to the team in 2008 and will continue to do so in 2009. That said, I made one hiring decision that went against my gut. It didn't work out. Fortunately, we recognized it quickly and terminated the relationship several months ago and within only a few months of the hire. The two learnings here are 1) listen to your gut - chemistry is everything and 2) if you make a bad hiring decision then address and resolve it fast. Bad hires can cause huge cultural problems.
4. Not spending enough time with those I should have
In general, I didn't spend enough time with people that I should have. The reason for this is that I spent too much time with people I shouldn't have. For 2009, I'm going to try to make better decisions about my time allocation. If anyone has any suggestions for the readership, please let us know. For example, I'm planning to attend
TED, SXSW and other conferences in 2009. Should I be spending my time at CES instead, or avoid conferences altogether and spend that time with customers, partners, prospects and employees? In some cases, I can and do meet with customers, partners and potential customers and partners at these events - so that seems reasonable. At TED, however, this typically is not the case and it is a significant investment of time and energy. I can't imagine missing TED, but maybe it's not the best use of my time (I think it is, by the way). These are decisions that I find difficult to make. How do you decide? Perhaps we should all conference through Twitter?
5. Cobblers shoes
We did not take enough time in 2008 to completely launch our customer community. We fully launched our
employee community and partially launched our
customer and partner community but it is not yet fully interactive. We are committed to launching fully in Q1. We now have the appropriate resources in place to manage the project and we certainly have an outstanding
client base whom have asked for it and have patiently awaited the launch. I commit to delivering this to you in Q1. We want your feedback, your recommendations, and to see you collaborate with your peers - we're looking forward to harnessing your enthusiasm and ideas in a more efficient way!
I hope that this "Top 5 (lessons learned)" saves you some time and money. Feel free to share. I want to hear your lessons learned.
Cheers,
Mike
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