As entrepreneurs we feel confused most of the time. We cannot admit it as we need to project certainty around us, to our families, to our employees, and to our clients. However we are often need to take decisions all the time without the resources and knowledge to fully understand a problem and its implications.
I strived for clarity, and sometime ago I even hired a consultant supposed to help entrepreneurs find clarity. That was not a great experience for me 🙂
Now, I understand clarity is important for me but it is very important also for my collaborators. How can they make a difference if I am not able to give them clear objectives and a way to measure success? Without that I risk to appear arbitrary and schizophrenic. Without clarity I would just respond to (perceived) threats and opportunities, going today in a direction, tomorrow in the next one. This is not the way to make progress.
In my quest for clarity, one thing I am trying is going through the book “The Advantage”, by Patrick Lencioni. The book aims to fix dysfunctional teams and one important aspect for doing that is bringing clarity. To do that the author suggests answering six questions. The first question is “Why do we exist” (as an organization). The answer to this question should stay true through the life of the organization, why the way to fulfill it could change as resources and conditions change.
My company, Strumenta, exists to make professionals work more efficiently, leveraging their expertise to achieve more than they do right now.
Now, this is a broad goal. It could include both helping professionals who are non-developers (for example providing them DSLs) and developers (for example helping moving from legacy platforms to more efficient ones). The goal encompassing both these two sub-goals mean that I would be satisfied if Strumenta can achieve either one and hopefully one day it could have the resources to achieve both. Given the resources and constraints we have as a small company we should pick one of these, but which one we pick would not depend on a matter of preference, but on a strategic evaluation of which one we could serve better at this stage. So far we have pursued both of them at the same time both because we wanted to assess the requests and our capabilities but also for the lack of clarity: we were not determined enough to bet on one, saying no to the clients requesting the other. And because of cowardice, of course.