Playing Company
Don’t mind the mangled hands…AI generated photos are still working themselves out. heh.
When I was 10 years old, I got my two younger brothers into a room and told them that we were going to start a company. We were going to call it BWG, Inc. (my initials, of course). All I needed were some business cards, memo pads, and to choose which of our bedrooms would be our HQ. We didn’t have a product or service to sell, but that wasn’t important to us yet. First and foremost, we needed to have meetings. So we grabbed our chalkboard-easel and huddled up in my room (since I was the CEO and all) and we were officially in business!
Surprisingly, BWG, Inc. didn’t last very long. We never created, offered, delivered or sold a thing. In fact, we never even tried… but why would we? We weren’t interested in being a company. We just wanted to play one.
Playing company is easy and fun because you can do things like make t-shirts, throw parties, and worry about which coffee machine you should get. Not that those aren’t important, but when you are playing company, you get to do all of that without worrying about things like conflict, revenue, or legal expenses. You get to view culture as paint rather than a patina. You get to establish attitudes and traditions without actual shared experiences and struggles that define them in the first place.
Becoming a real company is hard. In a real company, there are fights and failures. There are long nights and early mornings. Real companies have tough conversations. Often. Real companies measure things. Real companies fire people. Sometimes a lot of people. Real companies also do things like make t-shirts, throw parties, and buy great coffee machines. The difference is that real companies are keenly aware of how those things affect key metrics that need to exist for success. Real companies breed an organic culture from a constant and clear commitment to an ideal. They let culture grow from the shared experiences and traditions that resulted from a pursuit of that constant and clear commitment.
But, real companies also create things. They create jobs, careers, products, and services, and most of the time, they make people''s lives better. And they get to keep doing that. Real companies create hope — hope for the customers and hope for the employees.
As leaders of early stage companies that are growing rapidly, we would do well to make sure that we aren’t just playing company. As much as we all want to create and believe we have all the right people doing all the right things at the perfect times, we shouldn’t be afraid to be concerned if we don’t see the signs of a real company emerging. Having arguments and tough conversations, even failing completely, are signs that we are on our way to doing real, important things.
As entrepreneurialism continues to get Hollywoodized and as the cost to create a company plummets, more and more people are starting companies. Most of them fail. Sometimes they fail because of a great idea but poor execution. Sometimes they fail because it was the wrong place or time. But, sometimes they fail because the founders and early employees were so interested in playing company, they missed the opportunity to actually become one.
If things are going too smoothly for too long, have a closer look to make sure you aren’t playing company and you are doing the things to actually become one.
