I liked this post listing Top 10 Pitfalls of Inexperienced Management Teams on BNET. I think author Steve Tobak nails several important points. My favorites:
1. Failing to say no to opportunities. The number one pitfall is taking on too much, starting too many projects, spreading resources too thin, and failing to focus on what’s most important: execution and growing the core business.
Absolutely true. And this pair of them, seemingly two sides of a single coin, also both very real (in my opinion):
4. Hiring other inexperienced executives. If you’re scratching your head and wondering how dumb is that?, you’re not alone. I can never figure out why entrepreneurs do this, but they do, and their boards, VCs and all, let them. It happens all the time. The result: the blind leading the blind.
5. Hiring executives just for their experience. All too often, entrepreneurs know they need to complement their relative inexperience with executives who’ve been around, so they hire people with big corporate backgrounds and overlook key qualities like how well they’ll do in a fast-paced, collaborative, entrepreneurial environment.
All 10 points are valid, but I wanted to highlight these three here. Although there are no general rules, these are important.
Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software and Bplans.com. Follow him on Twitter @Timberry.
