Identify what you don’t know and ask for help

While enjoying some needed down time with my family in Colorado this week, I took the opportunity to reflect on 2009 and begin to answer the question “what are the two or three things that I need to focus on in 2010 that best leverage my skills to deliver high impact results to our Growth Stage portfolio companies and Growth Capital Fund?”

The three things I identified are:

1. delivering exceptional customer service/experience
2. building highly effective management teams
3. building highly effective boards

Given that OpenView Venture Partners has developed strategic value-add skills around sales and marketing, organizational and operational effectiveness, and product development, I first had to identify my strengths and weaknesses and how best to compliment these skills. I recognize that as an investor and board director that I can’t be all things to all people. You have to identify what you don’t know and ask for help. Hopefully, the humility of it all will make me a better person in the long run. 

Yesterday, I ran across a good article in Business Week’s Entrepreneur’s Journal entitled “To Recruit the Best, Admit Weaknesses” written by Andy Dunn, co-founder and CEO of online pants retailer Bonobos.

One of the things that Andy points out in his article is to first recognize that your meaningful weaknesses will become an obstacle to growth. The company is better off hiring those weaknesses, which means a need to hire people better then he and then give them equity and power. Once he accepted this principle, it gave him the humility he needed to inspire key recruits to join. In their eyes, he saw not only excitement for the equity they offered, but the earnest belief that they would be entrusted to do their jobs with his counsel, if they sought it, but without unwanted meddling. By accepting and acknowledging his own weaknesses, Andy was able to prove the naysayers wrong and hire winners from both worlds. He now begins his conversations with potential recruits with a sentence that always brings a smile: I am not good at what you do, and I need your help.

My partner and mentor, Scott Maxwell, constantly reminds me of this and it’s time that I heed his advice since I’ve been preaching this to CEOs of our portfolio companies for a couple years now.

Here’s to eating some humble pie and a prosperous New Year!