The family business course was an enjoyable experience and was the class which made me think most this semester. Its format of a roundtable discussion on the reading of Bennis sometimes verged on a debate on ethics and culture as they pertain to leadership constantly and I feel wiser for it. While my core belifes were not swayed it did give me more context into how others view leadership and their supporting reasons for it. I also gained insight further insight into my own approach to leadership in thinking about the topic and finally understand the distinction between mangers and leaders.
My participation in CUNY IVE was much like what I think my experience in starting an entreprenurial endeavor would have been and I am thankful for learning the lessons in this low cost environmental. As I started the semester I thought I could strike it out on my own, near single-handedly creating an idea, quickly finding myself insufficent, I sought a team. Which was Ronnie and the real-estate endeavor, I quickly found the team dissolving from a lack of passion and communication and finally found a niche for myself in the lazy Place as Eugene’s’ marking guy. I enjoyed Eugene’s leadership style which was willing to accept any level of feedback and see if ideas could be incorporated into the Lazy Place idea. During the second deliverable when we were discussing models for the Lazy Place we discussed turning the lazy place into an online platform for connecting people with apartments with people who would scedule reoccuring naps, much in the same way that airbnb.com does it however after much discussion we found this model impractable for even if it works then our competitor airbnb would just copy the model and out execute us, which reverted lazy place back to its inital viable idea of a brick and mortar store. Juan was great with his analytical thinking and ability to drum up accurate numbers for what it would realistically cost to start the lazy place. Overall Juan and Eugene are individuals I find I could really partner with and do business with and incidentally I took great amusement in how much of a night owl Eugene is as most of our think-tank sessions started at 1am.
How I Incorporate this experience into how I view leadership is that if I try to start a venture on my own without first identifying a team, it will most likely fail. Further when identifying partners I should do more due dilligance on their motivation for the idea that they are presuing to avoid a partnerhsiip which would be dissolved later due to a misalignment of desired outcomes. I believe if I had followed these steps I would have partnered with Eugene from the begining as he had the most fleshed out idea with the greatest passion for actually achieving it.
