Tom Tancredi

Outnumbered about 7 Billion to 1.....

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Archives for February 2013

Be Better, Do Better – and what that really means.

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Dom and I have a company that grew 100% last year. This year, we’re looking at it growing around 50%, on the conservative side. This rapid growth is happening in ALL directions – costs, revenue, personnel, space, and presence. It’s tremendous. It’s what any business owner would want to happen. Dom and I are unbelievably lucky and grateful.

But the pressures are enormous. My underlying conceit is that if the company grows 100%, the people in it need to growth 100%. It’s a lot to ask –  who can honestly say that they are able to grow 100% each year? What does that really mean? What if someone just – oh, I don’t know – grows 50%? Is that good enough?

That’s a logical fallacy that I fell into for the past year. Me = my company. My success = my company’s success. My health = company’s health. Living like that will drive a heart attack eventually.

DOM & TOM’s company motto is “Do Good, Be Good”. The internal manta for me was a variation – “Be Better, Do Better.” I took that to mean that I needed to be a better manager, a better leader, and a more-morale creature. And the pressure just increased because of it. And then, after thorough discussions with Julie and my friends, the reality is that I just need be a well-rested, stable me. No matter what the capitalists say, continued rapid growth is neither sustainable nor always desirable.

The challenge we all face that the person we are today is creating the person we need to be tomorrow. I’ve never met Future Tom, but I hope I’m doing the things today to make sure he’s ready for tomorrow’s challenges. I also hope he’s happy, well-rested, likes his tea, and takes time with the things that makes him happy rather than anxious. That’s the source of being better and really doing good.

 

 

 

Form a confederacy of colleagues

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While in London, I met an interesting character in charge of a LARGE corporation’s digital production division.

Quick bio: Developer in his early 20’s, in charge of pivoting a legacy team into new technology, without any support or guidance on how to make a new business model (which was theoretical) work.

He’s been doing a tremendous job, day-to-day. He has a good internal team working on the problems, ancillary divisions – from Marketing to Sales to Pre-production –  are all pitching in, and he’s putting in the hours to do his homework on the industry. He’s flying out to conferences and attending the local ones held by industry leaders.

Once this character met all the smart people in his competing companies, he found out two things

1.) They were just as young as him

2.) They knew just as much as he did, more or less

So he did the smartest thing ever: He started a “happy hour” at a local pub; industry-specialists only.

In ye olden times, this was considered “networking”.  Networking is a great activity and like all great things in life, they’re eventually tainted by schmoozers. This did not happen for our hero in London. This man formed what became a concert of colleagues and friends. They spent weeks knocking back pints and trying to figure out massive problems. They weren’t looking for gigs or swapping stories, they were debating and thinking. This variety of people, many who our hero did not know, became friends and through the course of debating matters and making discoveries, they pulled others into their circle and formed alliances, and mentors entered the mix, and it became a powerful confederacy of industry experts.

It worked out well. It’s working out well. They’re meeting, every week, and solving problems in London.

I want to do this in NYC, and I think I’m going to push for a good happy-hour location in the late spring. Moreover, if you’re young and just starting the scene, I’d recommend doing this ASAP.  Anyone got a place they suggest? Thinking General Assemb.ly but that might be too packed at this stage. A little too much noise and not enough signal.