Opinions expressed by entrepreneurs’ colleagues are their very own.
In my company, Jotform, our internship program is a serious business.
When a latest class of interns signs with us, they spend their first week during training, accelerating them, who we are, what we do and how we do it. Then we mix them with experienced staff and lead to work on our own projects. Before they leave our offices to return to class, we planted seeds to make them successful employees.
Working with interns is a proposal without time and resources. But it is also an investment. Some of our greatest employees were trainees; The outstanding employees we knew about can learn and grow on larger roles.
Sometimes it may well be easier to employ candidates with the experience we are looking for. For me, this is a great example of short -term thinking, a way of thinking that may seriously harm your organization in the long run. By cultivating young employees, we not only lower your expenses on recruitment of prestige, which can, but does not have to know; We also develop the talents of someone we already know that we wish in our team.
Too often, nevertheless, leaders go with an easier option; The one that sounds the most engaging now. This is why it’s a mistake.
Focus on sustainable height
If your organization, like mine, is built around the software as a service (SAAS), building a base of subscribers requires a lot of time – and many satisfied customers – to achieve sustainable development. This is one of the threats related to the adoption of external investments – it causes the illusion of success without actual organic growth.
The caution of the story about the biggest in my head is Theranos, doomed to the blood -sentenced to the blood, which was priced at $ 9 billion. Theranos was summarized by Hype, but ultimately the technology in which the company was theoretically built, didn’t even exist. Ultimately, Theranos evaporated a giant cloud of allegations of fraud and even a long prison sentence for the founder, Elizabeth Holmes.
Theranos is an extreme case of VC financing, which has not amazed, but shows what can occur to the founder under extraordinary pressure, to quickly give results, in addition to crushes the success that VC financing can create.
Instead of accepting external financing, I’m in favor of bootstrapping. It is less effective, clear, but also promotes a real, balanced growth, enables innovation and builds immunity. Most importantly, you have the freedom to act on your individual timeline, collect user reviews and focus on developing a product that basically works.
Watch out for the way of thinking about a shortage
Short -term thinking does not come only from the desire to immediately satisfy. It can even come in fear.
In particular, The Billcity Mindset, the idea developed by Princeton University Psychology and Public Affairs Professor Eldar Shafir and Harvard University Economist Sendhil Mullainathan, explains how having limited resources -Sid it time, capital, etc.-says our mental bandwidth, creating a tunnel effect that only allows space to focus on short-term goals.
“Every psychologist understands that we have a very limited cognitive space and bandwidth,” Shafir explained. “When you focus on one thing, there is only less mind to devote yourself to other things.”
The founders, especially in the early days of establishing a company, are continuously exposed to deficiency development. After all, who really feels as if he had enough resources? But the consequences of a shortage cave might be serious: short -term thinking not only suppresses creativity, but can lead to a tug of knees, poorly thought -out decisions that you just wouldn’t make if you thought clearly.
Do not let the way of thinking about deficiency turn into a self -fulfilling prophecy. Instead, practice cultivating a lot of thinking. An ideal place to start is focusing not on what you do not have, but on what you do. If you are the founder of Bootstrapped, you have the largest of all resources: time. Give yourself a luxury to check out various ideas and not beating if they do not work as you count. The best ideas come from experiments.
Also do not forget that the change is incremental, so do not assume that you may view your way of thinking in one day. Choose one area where you are feeling that the way of thinking about deficiency stops you and start with it.
Imagine the future
Short -term thinking is an easy trap when the future seems so theoretical. Maybe you like pizza – you actually know that this is not great for your health. But when the possibility of having fun with it today was presented, your future self has a way to abrasion from the view.
Scientists have found that individuals who have the opportunity to see and empathize in the future have the quality of “self -sufficiency”. In other words, if you’ll be able to see your future self as clearly as the current self, it is more likely that you just make decisions that are helpful in the long term.
So how do you make the future less abstract? Try to perform self -control. You can do this by imagining sitting with the future and asking where they’d advise your present me to focus their time and attention. What do you wish to achieve in 10 years? In 20 years? In 50 years? By identifying these long -term goals, you’ll be able to start planning properly in the present.
It is easy to fall into the trap of short -term thinking. But by focusing on sustainable development, practicing the way of thinking about abundance and making the future as tangible as the present, you’ll be able to make decisions that may serve you in the long run and ensure your organization’s growth for many years.