Scaling your ideas

- Once you prove your idea and have approval to scale it, what's next? In a startup, this is often when professional management is brought in by the investors. Here's the thing, the people who come up with great ideas aren't always the ones who know how to scale it. Successful innovators are generally scrappy, under the radar, and continuous tinkerers. They're usually really curious and interested in trying new things and changing things up. They have a high tolerance for uncertainty and risk. Successful operators who are good at growing businesses have different skills and styles. Operators are organized, consistent, and like structure, they're managers. I have a friend who's a great builder, and she often tells me, "I don't get many ideas, "but when I do have one, I execute the heck out of it." She's not interested in the next new thing, she likes to stick to her knitting and get better and better at the things she does well. In many successful businesses, there are often partners at the top, the idea guy and the manager. Think Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs at Apple. Or Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook. One person is continually coming up with new ideas, the other helps weed out the good ones, and help them grow. So, which are you? They're both good, and both critical to success and innovation. But they're very different. You may have taken one of the many personality typing instruments at work, Myers-Briggs, 5 Dynamics, or StrengthsFinder, for example. These can be great for understanding your ideal work style, as well as that of those around you. If you're always coming up with scrappy creative new ideas, you're probably the idea guy. And in that case, you need to think about what you want to do after you get this idea off the ground. Do you want to nurture this idea and build it into a business? This phase entails a lot of process development, team building, and structural planning. Fun for some, deadly for others. In startups, the founders are often given non-managerial roles where they're able to continue to play with new ideas while experienced executives are brought in to staff the business and build the infrastructure. While sometimes, the founders are insulted by being pushed to the side, the investors are really just trying to maximize the success of the business. Founders usually own a big stake in the business regardless of their title, but when you're an intrapreneur inside a company owned by others, you don't have equity in your new idea, so you have to find other ways to leverage the success of your idea. What do you want? Maybe it's just being known as the visionary behind a big idea. Or maybe you want an opportunity to do it again and again, more time and resources to develop new ideas. Or maybe this leads to a promotion for you. If you've been generous with sharing credit and letting others have ownership, you will probably have many people supporting whatever it is you want to do next. In any case, it's important to know in advance if you want to be part of the scaling team. And if not, you should have some suggestions about what you want to do next.