This is part-2 of my series on the Entrepreneurial Sprit, where I present the characteristics of the perceived struggle driving the success of today’s internet entrepreneurs.

The Effective Executive

In part-1, I suggested that one of the many keys to the success of software company Balsamiq, was the methodical preparation of its CEO Giacomo ‘Peldi’ Guilizzoni. Luck requires preparedness and his preparation not only included 10,000 hours of professional programming practice, but the acquisition of management and leadership skills while still working for Adobe. During his presentation at the 2010 Better Software Conference in Florence Italy, it was easy to see how these new skills coupled with his innate charisma and humbleness might have served him well as an effective leader and first employee of his new venture.

Peter Drucker taught us the following traits of the effective executive:

1. Executives have to know where their time is being spent.
2. They must focus on outward contributions: on results rather than work.
3. Build on strengths first, and then give attention to areas of weakness.
4. Concentrate on the few major areas where superior performance will produce outstanding results
5. Make effective decisions.

Browsing through Peldi’s online presentations and interviews, you’ll see references to the  precise timeline of events and key milestones in the life of his company.  You will also detect his conviction when deciding what NOT to focus on, especially during the early days when risk of failure was high.  Examples like these are in line with the traits described above.  Knowing your strengths and where you excel, for example, provides a start to effective decisions making.  It will also provide the knowledge that helps you find those things you enjoy doing.

So how can you go about discovering your strengths?

Emotional Intelligence

As Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman so eloquently state in their book, First, Break All the Rules, the equation of competence includes the set of talents, skills and knowledge one possesses.  Surely a successful leader will have learned to grow his competence, but this can only be effective in the context of the intimate understanding he has of his own strengths.

To begin understanding your own strengths, it’s helpful to think about how others perceive you.  How were you praised or criticized in previous performance reviews? What suggestion for improvement were you given?  In a previously stressful situation, how did you react?  Answers to these questions will provide the clues you need to get started.  I also recommend reading through the panorama of talents, as well as completing Gallup’s StrengthsFinder assessment.

Identifying and acting on your strengths allows you to engage in a symbiotic and efficient system of effective preparation, which leads to the right opportunities, which in turn leads to more effective preparation and so on. This is how you amplify your strengths.

We are all Executives

A key point I’d like to introduce here is that the concept of effective executive not only applies to entrepreneurs, but to all knowledge workers, from generalists to specialists, across the organizational hierarchy, programmers included.   We live in a world where our success as knowledge workers, as well as the success of our team and organization, no matter it’s size, depends on an ability decide and execute ‘the right thing’.

Getting Back to Luck

Allow me to be overly simplistic for a moment.  We all agree you have to be lucky to succeed as an entrepreneur.  So if luck is the product of opportunity and preparedness, and preparedness involves the 10,000 hours of practice mentioned by Gladwell,  the understanding of strengths, skills and knowledge suggested by Buckingham and Coffman then how is one supposed to create the right opportunities?

Click here to continue to part-3.