Adrie's Blog

The Box

I worked in a commercial role all my life, deal maker, CEO etc mostly in a very linear-thinking environment - the IT world - where one is either pro or con, 1 or 0. I can tell you that this has left its marks on me! :-)

In the first place, things were never easy - it could only be done one way, always costing much more then anticipated because everyone felt they had to keep 100 things in reserve to make sure, resulting in a price for the product that was ridiculously high and would never work in the market. Secondly - it always took 100 times longer to develop then you were led to believe initially, you know that line "it's almost there"? As a deal maker, you had to find a way to translate this all to the, somewhat impatiently, waiting customer. Not easy, I can tell you and on top of that you'd have to deal with the technical people who could never understand how you could actually even sell their brainchild given your lack of specific technical understanding and knowledge and were endlessly trying to give you demos you didn't have time for. All in all, enough tension between technical and sales, and sales and customer which you could only overcome by involving the technical people in the sales process and make them part-responsible for the product success.

The same is true for many lawyers - can you, can't you. I understand there are certain rules which you should bear in mind - but it always turns out that the lawyers with real talent for business, are those that know how to manage those rules rather then be managed by them - not breaking them, but using them to achieve their goals. A good lawyer is someone that understands the business objective behind the legal requirement. The same is true for financial people- it's all about interpretation, vision, knowing where a company came from and where it is headed so they can fuel the growth of the company rather then stunt it. I occasionally meet these really good legal and financial people and it makes you utter a sigh of relief. It is such a bonus to work with someone that gets your objectives and helps you reach your goals - which again underlines the fact that you should choose your advisors carefully.

What you often see with technically minded people, is that it has to fit in one box - whereas I am of the opinion that once you have defined a product or service, the box can be made to fit.

Doing business, irrespective of whether you are a technical, finance, legal or sales person is a matter of creativity, speed and passion which often is diagonally opposed to the way IT, financial and legal people think. The art of running your business is therefore to find those experts that can think along with you whilst keeping you on the straight and narrow road to success.