Who We Are, What We Are Doing II

When Dick first mentioned the blog to me we both were not sure what to expect. To start making sense of the project I made the following list, my first cut at issues I expect to find.

1. Why start a company
* Be own boss
* Have idea that must be moved on quickly
* Monetary upside
* Doubts/fears/apprehensions as well as dreams/plans/expectations

2. Spending my money/paying the bills
* Difference between overspending department budget and not having enough money to pay the bills/make payroll
* Cash flow issues (cash flow kills companies)
* Company expenses become personal issues

3. Not my department
* Doing jobs you were never trained for (decorating an office say, or accounts receivable)
* The engineers report to you now; they are not just another department to complain about

4. I have to decide what?
* The entire “buck stops here” issue
* The no-doubt humorous (in retrospect) stories of decisions you had to make (color of uniform buttons, office layout or typeface used on brochure)

5. How do I know what is going on?
* What metrics to use? How to measure success?
* Building a reporting system: can’t miss MIS (Management Information Systems)

6. Global strategies, local tactics
* Marrying local tactics to global strategy
* Creating a global “corporate culture”
* Should be lots of good stuff here

7. What time is it? Where am I?
* The joys (sic) of travel
* Should be lots of good stuff here

8. Killing a favorite idea/delegating a favorite job
* The inner turmoil of realizing a favorite idea won’t work
* There will soon be jobs Dick likes to do that are the first he will have to delegate: how Dick will end up doing the “shit” jobs

9. I am “become company” (from the Will Smith movie)
* How entrepreneurs end up sacrificing self goals and subsuming personal issues (family, health) to the needs of the company
* How the company becomes as precious as a child you raise

There will be changes, some new categories, some dropped and all altered as time and events make their inevitable effects upon plans. For as Moltke the Elder, Chief of Staff for the Prussian Army for 30 years wrote,

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.

So these are early days yet in Acme, and in this blog. Time and events, or as the logic teacher in me thinks of it, cause and effect, haven't had a chance to alter much to date. Hell, I haven't even explained the company name yet. So ...

As Dick wants to maintain confidentiality for now, but I have to call the dang company something, I went back into "boomer" past and, voila, we have the Acme Pewter Tuning Fork Corp., or Acme for short. That done, it still remains to be seen whether Dick and Acme are the Roadrunner or Wily E. Coyote. Beep Beep