Entrepreneurs, teams and primordial joy
As a parent few things give me as much pleasure as watching my kids play nicely together, lookout for each other and generally enjoy one another’s company. You get a warm feeling inside when you see things you’ve created exist together in harmony.
I felt that lovely feeling today. It wasn’t however whilst watching my kids. It happened whilst watching two of my Shoply compadre’s working through a complex piece of functionality…together…in harmony.
They are both extremely talented engineers when working alone but when combined – magic happens. Watching them sit together and discuss, formulate and then execute a solution was a joy to behold.
Team members are pretty close to being family. Spending hours and hours together, sharing lives, joys and tribulations – shared vision and goals – shared successes, shared failures.
It was then that I realised that as an entrepreneur, your team and your children are very similar. Not in the sense of control or authority but in terms of they’re both something you’ve created from scratch, something you’ve built and moulded. You’ve tried to embue them with culture and values, you want them to bond, enjoy, respect and ultimately empower one another.
Just as with your kids, you want the best for your team, individually and collectively.
It makes perfect sense that the joy you feel when your team are working in peace and harmony is just as powerful as that of when your kids are.