Rick,
This is an interesting point. I recently worked for an entrepreneur who
was close to manic depressive - One day we did X and the next day Y. His
business has grown but no where near how it might if he had to consider
someone else's viewpoint. Often, a business started by one person remains
a cottage industry - the entrepreneur simply wants to be his own boss.
The experience you describe doesn't fit my definition of "committee"
because each of you were not involved in every decision and required to
reach consensus. To my thinking, you were part of a management team or
board and seem to have functioned in it as most boards do in an
organization.
Thanks for giving me another perspective.
?FWIW? [Host's Note: FWIW = "For What It's Worth" ...Rick]
At 11:58 PM 10/15/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Most of my career has been as a high-tech entrepreneur (I arrived in the
>org learning world in 1991). In my most successful venture, we had seven
>founders; in the launch and over a fifteen year period, every one of us
>had very critical contributions to make. We noted on several occasions
>that we didn't think we could have done it with a very much smaller core
>team. As to visions, in our case it was not one person's vision and the
>rest of the team gathered in support.
>
>This also matches my experience with others who have start companies...
>I think you really do need a large enough founding group to have
>meaningful diversity in the team. Especially in the startup phase, but
>also later, I worry that the single leader (with a following team) will
>have a tragic blind spot.
>
>Now, FWIW, in my company mentioned above, we didn't always *work* as a
>tight team, doing things together. Many of our most significant things
>were done by one or two of us. I think the team vs. individual dimension
>is more subtle.
--Ann Reilly areilly@amfam.com
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>