My behavior the last week brings to mind the old line from Airplane I love so much – “I picked a bad week to quit sniffing glue.”
I was reading a post this morning over at Fred Wilson’s site about back seat driving . It really hit home. Fred has a weekly post entitled VC Cliche of the week. The entire series is a must read for entrepreneurs, angels, VC’s and even traders.
I have been back seat driving like crazy the last few weeks. I hate back seat drivers as an entrepreneur myself so what the hell am I thinking?
It is rhetorical – OBVIOUSLY NOT MUCH.
I have started up with a CEO in my portfolio, argued with readers, slept with employees (my wife :) )
For those that I have offended, instigated and upset, my apologies.
If I can make some pennance with all involved, I will get into the mistakes in detail to hopefully shed some more insight into my behavior. In the meantime…
TURN RIGHT YOU PUTZ! :)
I still love this point:
“You don’t know a lot about accounting so you don’t backseat drive your accountant. You hired a great designer, please don’t backseat drive here, either.”
From a nice Seth Godin post on managing designers
Thanks Fraser – good talking. Great link.
Seth really gets his points across and is a good read.
I always read his stuff.
Derek Scruggs has this comment on Fred ‘s post which is so right:
A truism I learned in sales training is that “a prospect will defend his bad decision to the death if you’re the one who pointsa it out to him.” Even if the unnamed investor is 100% right and the CEO 100% wrong, the psychological dynamic of telling someone they’re wrong often hurts the relationship. The ideal situation (as many wives know) is to get the CEO to come around to your way of thinking, but doing it in such a way that he thinks it was his idea to begin with.
http://www.askderekscruggs.com/
Howard, isn’t that one of the primary concepts in “How to win friends and influence people” as well?
(c’mon gadget picture posting thingy!)
hey Candice – if it helps – yes.
When is the crew coming to New Orleans
Don’t ask me, I’m just the bartender on that gig.