Entrepreneurs, Passion and Execution

Today I went to the offices of one small IT start-ups on the island. They were in the process of setting up their offices and everything looked fresh and new and partly in boxes. I took a tour of the offices and we talked about the Maltese building industry where expectation management is very important (Malta works in the timezone of MFT – Malta Flexible Time).

What struck me after having been at the same company for six years (a dynamic and fast-growing one) is the energy and passion that goes into a start-up. People look fresh-faced, energetic and seem to have the belief they’re going to change the world or at least the part of the world where they operate. There’s that revolutionary vibe in the air. It’s energetic and contagious.

When you’ve seen a company grow from 50 people to a thousand in a few years, you notice a drastic change in company culture. Large hierarchies are created, the organization is restructured with each CEO, the turnover of people is fairly high and you get used to change, change, change, but even if you move with it – it can get tiresome.

Decision-making gets complicated, people smaller.

To thrive as a big company you really need to make sure the majority of employees tap into a culture, a passion, a set of values that rock their cores. Because no company can survive just as a money machine – can it?

No matter if you’re in a small, medium or big organization – make sure to keep your eyes open and alert and try to avoid the trap of being the nostalgic Grinch. If you keep your open mindset you might actually learn something or maybe the company might learn something from you(!).

I think the biggest change we’ll see in business is that corporations and individuals will get closer. We know that work is such a big part of you these days, you can’t let it just be a waste of your time.

I read a good thing about passion for work the other day. If you’ve been in business for x years, the passion has dwindled and you’re big motivation is that cheque that comes in your mailbox at the end of every month – but you don’t have a major plan for what else you can do or you’re not really sure you want to do something else – embrace execution.

How to embrace execution: Do the things you do as good as you can and take pride in that. Enjoy your life on the side, your family time, your hobbies, or your side business, but still try to learn how to be better at things every day. This will make everything more enjoyable and you can hopefully leave the office or (whatever setting you work in) every day feeling like you’ve learned something.

And I have an idea of how you can make that even more interesting: Set yourself a 30-day challenge to learn something new every day and document it. After the 30 days are done you sit down and you look at it and you ask yourself – am I going in the right direction? What have I learned that I want to delve deeper into and that can benefit my life even further? What was maybe possibly useless? List and evaluate every day and learning. You will get so much closer to figuring out yourself and what you want to do and what you can do to get there.

Challenging yourself and embracing execution can keep you from going crazy. And possibly make you into the person you’ve always dreamt you’d be.

/J.