When I started my entrepreneur’s journey a few years ago, I quickly realized that it’s a people-powered effort. A group of people have a good idea and try to make something out of nothing.
That happened for me when I joined ChainLink Technologies back in the late 90’s. We were creating, innovating and putting together some really killer stuff that blew the minds of the people who used it.
Then as we got bigger we started giving ourselves “Titles” and as new people came on they were indoctrinated into “How things work around here.” We started thinking of ourselves as “WHAT” we were, rather than the WHO that began at our roots.
Fortunately, like most stories of my life, this one has a happy ending – ChainLink became Kintana, which got acquired by Mercury (for almost $300 Million) and is now a key component of HP’s system management software suite. The legacy of what we created lives on.
Additionally, I’ve since moved on, but not without learning an important lesson.
Titles are meaningless, it’s all about the person… and when you need help, you need to call on people, not titles.
On the web I’m probably best known for copywriting, product launches, and taking the TIME out of marketing your internet business… Offline, I head a global IT organization for a large manufacturing company.
If you go by my business card, you’ll see I’m a “Chief Information Officer”… A nice, fancy title fer sure.
The funny thing is, if you know me at all you’ll know I’m the most “unlikely executive”. As soon as I get home the monkey suit comes and the t-shirt, shorts and flip-flops go on.
Many of our neighbors, and even my wife sometimes, don’t understand what I do… AND THAT’S FINE!
They have some vague idea of what a “computer guy” does, but nothing concrete. They don’t see me waking up at 2:30am to answer a call from the UK about a server being down, and they don’t see my inbox fill up during the day with the numerous “problems” that crop up throughout the day in a large computing environment.
Hopefully they see the happy dad who comes home, changes his clothes, and goes out front to play with the kids…
Life is a balance.
It’s not WHAT you are, it’s WHO.
