Entrepreneurs vs. arm chair quarterbacks
I was sitting on the plane the other day next to a mid level marketing manager at Microsoft. This person was pretty proud of the fact that they read all the blogs to keep up with what is going on within the Seattle start-up community. I was given all manner of explanations as to why Redfin will never work and why Pluggd needs to add more differentiation to their product offering. As I listened, this conversation made me think about a broader phenomenon…
When you start companies, there will always be a lot of people who don’t want to see you succeed.
While they’ll rarely say it out loud, these will be former co-workers and other “pundits” who are secretly jealous by the very decision you’ve made. As I thought more about corporate America, I remembered what the game used to be like for me. 50% of your expended energy is invested on internal politics. The other 50% is spent trying to actually make a measurable and noticeable impact on anything. It seems funny to me now, but looking back I remembered all the actions and behaviors of most everyone. They spend a lot of time doing “work” and then spend a lot more time shopping around the results of their “work” to try to convince someone more important than them (e.g. upper management) how useful and important their work product is. They have to spend time and energy doing this hand waving because in reality, the work most people do within larger companies really isn’t that impactful to the overall business anyway.
My smartest of friends who work for large companies don’t kid themselves. They know that a lot of the trips they take and things they do are as much boondoggles as they are useful. Or, they know that they can’t really get done as much as they like but they are hamstrung by the big paycheck and nice perks. I can relate to that. It’s not an easy thing to walk away from and in most cases it isn’t a good idea to do so!
But the arm chair quarterbacks will be the ones who get under your skin. They are drawing paychecks from a company somebody else started. They have never raised money against their own ideas. The have never put themselves out for others to put under the microscope. They will never be need to be judged against their true abilities because their faults are hidden within the infrastructure of something much larger than they are. So, entrepreneurs I hope you pat yourselves on the back today. You live and die on how you do. That earns you the right to say whatever the hell you want about things because now you don’t have to appear politically correct in meetings so you’ll get that holiday bonus or that promotion. You are not perfect and the armchair quarterbacks will be sure and remind you of that fact. But you have courage in spades because what you do is too scary for most people to try.
comments
6 Responses to “Entrepreneurs vs. arm chair quarterbacks”
Leave a Reply
[…] A great post by Curious Office. I couldn’t agree with them more. Arm Chair QB vs Entrepreneurs. […]
Spot on, Kelly. Extending the thought: even if the entrepreneur finds himself/herself back in an organization started by someone else, the entrepreneurial DNA is still there, and it’s easy to see. That person usually becomes the change agent in the organization, unless their ideas are rejected and then they are usually chased out.
Marketing is a constant activity, whether you are marketing a startup company or marketing your own skills and achievements inside a larger organization in order to land a promotion or bonus. In the end, I’m not much offended by that kind of personal marketing, so long as its not at the 50% level you mentioned. Something like 5% is more appropriate. That kind of self-promotion is helpful to me in this information-overload world if someone takes the time to remind me of their performance. Then, I’ll be the judge and make decisions. Of course, as someone who shared risks with you, Kelly, and taken other career risks as well, I can’t help but measure the self-promoter against that standard - did they take any appreciable risks and succeed. Starting up a company is scary, but people take other career risks all the time. The arm chair quarterbacks take no risks whatsoever, and its easy to be a critic when your neck, credibility or life savings aren’t on the line. No risk, no reward. Risk takers, change agents - I’ll hire and promote them every day of the week and twice on Sundays.
[…] gone through it. Today, I was lucky enough to run into this great post from CuriousOffice comparing Entrepreneurs vs. arm chair quarterbacks. Here’ s a highlight: (But I encourage you to read the whole blog post, it’s concise […]
Bravo!
Entrepreneurs vs. Arm Chair Quarterbacks…
With that said, the thing that I can’t stand is exactly what Kelly Smith from Curious Office beautifully describes in his blog entry, Entrepreneurs vs. arm chair quarterbacks….
i’m going to scratch that last paragraph into my shinbone with a rusty tuna can lid and read it everytime i encounter someone whose linear processing is bereft of any creativity or balls.