Corporate vs. Startup: #2 Trust « THE DREAM IN ACTION

March 11, 2010
Posted by Ryan Graves

Corporate vs. Startup: #2 Trust

I’ve been thinking about how my new startup adventure is going to be different than my role with GE and a few things have risen to the surface. So, I’ve decided to do a series of posts on those topics. You’ll be able to follow the series under the tag ‘corpvsstartup’ here.

When I joined GE at the very end of 2007 I had expectations of what opportunities the job would provide. I had just finished reading US News & World Report about how GE had the absolute best training opportunities in the country and it was the best place to start a business career. Since I had interest in technology, I joined the Information Management training program to follow the path of Jack Welch. There was an ‘unofficial’ promise that if I was the top of my class at the 1-year point I would be able to work abroad, there was the off program salary that was very appealing, there was the job titles, and the opportunity to work directly for a CIO. With wide eyes and butterflies in my stomach, I worked my ass of for these opportunities.

At the one year point, I was the top of my class; no chance to work abroad. At the 18 month point I hadn’t yet worked directly for a CIO. At the very end of the program, salaries had dropped “because of the economy”. In the corporate world there are systems, and people must operate within those systems. The people are only able to give you what the system will allow them to give you. It’s not their fault if something that was promised isn’t delivered.

While this sounds like I have serious distaste for my experience at GE, I really don’t. I loved it and learned more than I can tell in a hundred blog posts. My distaste isn’t at all with GE, it’s with the corporate system. It’s with the lack of accountability or even ability to deliver what you promise. The origins of my distaste grow from the inability to trust the system, and thus the people in it. I learned that…

In corporate there isn’t trust in the system, so you can’t trust the people.

Before joining UberCab, I read this post by @altgate and I’m so glad I did. He did a wonderful job of getting my head into the startup mind state. The transition from GE (uber corporate) to startup (UberCab) is a drastic one and having some idea of what to expect is helpful, but understanding that not knowing what to expect is the reality. One of his gems was:

Calibrate your expectations. – Unlike mature organizations with an HR department, formal recruiting programs and on-the-job training, your startup probably doesn’t have any of these. The recruitment process will seem jerky, but that’s probably because the people you are interviewing with just pulled an all-nighter preparing an investor pitch, writing some code or otherwise doing something that, in their ideal world, you would have been helping them with. Mature companies can afford to have people dedicated to recruiting but you won’t find that in most early stage startups so it’s best to reset your expectations now before you get disillusioned.

Also read about expecting the unexpected & getting to know the team.

Dharmesh Shah of HubSpot says about recruiting that you need to “make sure someone on the team will go to bat for the person when things are shaky.” In joining this team I felt that the people recruiting me would go to bat for me when/if/as things get tough. Because I trust that they will it gives me all the confidence in the world to deliver. And, there is not system stopping them from doing that.

I think there is a powerful result from trusting the people around you. I completely trust my family and something special happens when we’re together because of it. The level of comfort allows for you to forget about the cover my back mentality and focus on what’s really important. The mission (i.e. next release, mock-ups, code, release party). I’ve learned that…

In startups there is no system so you have to trust the people.

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Posted Under Entrepreneurship People & Leadership ubercab

Emeri Gent [Em]

Today verbosity is one V word I really do love. It is an original and passionate voice and not a PR or an edited voice, though I don't have it as V word in my "MVP Grid" Twitter account (noted below) though, now I think about it, maybe I should :-)

http://twitter.com/emerigent/lists/memberships

What I do know is that Steve Jobs is one dewd who has it absolutely pinpoint perfectly right when he said it all in 15 minutes at his now very famous commencement address - but it is always worth listening, it has an eternal quality :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1R-jKKp3NA

If I said "a surfer is smarter surfing not farming, a farmer is smarter farming not surfing, then both can teach each other." I would be a really big tweet. If I want aphorisms today I either might visit Nicholas Taleb's twitter account or I consult Marshall McLuhan's writings (and McLuhan was also so inspirational and cryptically verbose - ironically I understand his writings in a way the linear minded do not).

I also did my tweetin time when I used to write under the name of "Mark Zorro" when I was writing at blogger.

http://www.markzorro.blogspot.com

When I look back now, I find Ev Williams founded blogger and Ev Williams co-founded Twitter - Steve said "you can't connect the dots looking forwards, you can only connect the dots backwards", how did I possibly know that tweeting was the way to go when I was writing at blogger? More to the point, it is premature for me to connect my dots - my online journey is very much still work-in-progress.

http://twitter.com/MarkZorro/lists/memberships

One day you are going to be able to connect the dots backwards and you will probably realize the same truth Jobs has. Until that day remember what Steve Jobs said, not as much what I said - for we learn best by watching people who have already climbed the mountain.

Of course I could have written this like "Mark Zorro" (rear view history) but today I much prefer to write like "Emeri Gent" (emergent future). Again all the best, now I am off to find me another Disqus account where I will think out aloud - but in all the Disqus pages I visit, there is only a few who represents the dream in action. I will raise my virtual glass to you with one more toast to your future success my good friend.

From one good heart to an even finer and kinder one . . .

[Em]

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Ryan Graves

Emeri-

Verbose but thoughtful response that I dearly appreciate! This thought
really hits home...

"You don't even need to prove to yourself that you are up to this challenge.
You have already revealed the calling within you when you came up with "The
Dream in Action", now, just like Yvon Chouinard you simply need to focus on
the dream, the flow, the ocean and then allow the "dream in action" to flow
through every challenge, to navigate and defeat every difficulty."

I really do need to focus. It's sometimes my biggest struggle but I
appreciate your thoughts and the inspiration they provide through this
journey.

Cheers my friend.
RG

Ryan, I am going to have the audacity to talk about Ryan Graves in the context of the surfer and GE, rather than about me (usually everything is about me because [Em] as a creation is the emergent reverse of [Me]).

As I see it you have already given yourself the greatest gift you could have found as a head start for your new venture. That gift is that you are "a dream in action". That whatever you do from this point forward represents the true north compass point that you have already put into motion here.

The discontinuity in that dream in action as I view it isn't the dream but the "versus". I view a dream in action as a flow and for sure a surfer dewd on the wave is in flow, but here is the critical point - the picture which counts is the moment the surfer is one with the ocean.

The picture you lead with in Corporate vs Startup is a challenge with the ocean - but a dream in action is an ocean of opportunity. In that regard I see no difference in the spirit you reveal here than the spirit I read about when I picked up a copy of Yvon Chouinard's :Let My People Surf"

Yvon Chouinard Video from UCTV
http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=1...

When I look at your picture you use on your Twitter page and here, this is a man who has his arms wide open to the world, this is the Yvon Chouinard form of expression that means "I am a free spirit and I embrace life with absolute vitality".

The surfer holding a board looking at the waves isn't you. You have already expressed who you are by the words "The Dream in Action". Like Yvon Chouinard's statement "Let My People Go Surfing" it is the dream in action that is important.

The Vs. makes this is about a challenge, a confrontation with the unknown, but to embrace a dream in action means embracing uncertainty. You do not need to prove to yourself that you are capable, nor in my humble opinion do you need to compare this dream with any known reality as it was in the past - the dream in action is already in progress, it is already conceived and your adventure and action orientated photographs spell out exactly who you are - which to me is a man who is fully capable of encompassing that outward energy into the world.

You don't even need to prove to yourself that you are up to this challenge. You have already revealed the calling within you when you came up with "The Dream in Action", now, just like Yvon Chouinard you simply need to focus on the dream, the flow, the ocean and then allow the "dream in action" to flow through every challenge, to navigate and defeat every difficulty.

For all the time I have visited here, I love coming here because of your magnificent energy, that contagious and positively infecting spirit of doing. Of course there are risks for any surfer of life, but the risk is mitigated because the attention is focused on being one with the ocean, to respect the power of the natural force that one is riding with (and not against).

As Tony Robbins said in his most famous quotes, that the past does not equal the future. A dream is never in the past, it is always a forward looking perspective, and a dream in action is not a wish, it is an adventure. Everything that you have written, each photograph you have curated screams out rather than speaks to the "Ryan Graves" within you.

When it becomes a corporate versus startup, one is only shutting an old door and one foot is stuck in the past and the other in the future. Do you see this?

I would never advocate the burn the boats kind of thinking because a dream in action is never destructive, it is never a daydream or a mere wish, it is an intent that is truth itself because whatever the source of that dream was, it is revealing itself.

Now it is simply your choice to what extent this that you have already revealed is going to flow into the singular challenge ahead of you. There is so much more in all of us that we begin to doubt at the very hour that the dream is really beginning to swing into motion. Such doubts are absolutely normal, such questions are necessary but not to test the waters but having trust that you will know what to do when you do not know what to do.

People talk about how others inspire them, but these are merely words, these are merely excuses, a hiding from identifying with the current of one's own existence and the currency of the gift and value we are going to make as our contribution to life.

I do not know if I have exceeded my bounds in writing this, because writing this helps me also in an immense way. I am very mindful that I am writing about Ryan Graves here though, or at least the one I have comprehended from visiting here before and getting a sense of who you are.

I do not know who you are, how can I, for most of us don't have a sense of who we are ourselves - but a part of the gift that comes with the dream in action is that in doing one discovers what they can enable, one's mind becomes a resource to question and uncover all that needs to be known for the dream in action to duly succeed.

It is not that you are alone with a surf board looking at the waves. It is that you have your arms wide open, welcoming the spirit of the future. This I see in Yvon Chouinard. This I see in you and as much as I personally fear it, this is what I see in myself.

Good luck with this new adventure Ryan, but in terms of the dream in action, this adventure began long before I came as a recent traveler (rather than witness) to see it how it is shaping itself to surf . . .

agreed. thanks.

taylorgraves

I had to comment if only to say, that pictures is AWESOME.

THE DREAM IN ACTION

By Ryan Graves

Corporate vs. Startup: #2 Trust