Should you be going after the next award?

In 2009, Sunny Bindra wrote an article aptly titled: Did Your CEO Win an Award, You should Start Worrying. At the time, I was working in a tech company that had won a major entrepreneurship award, and the article did its rounds in the company, bypassing the CEO of course.Sunny could have been sitting in our open plan office when writing the article, because the dangers he pointed out were playing themselves out right before our eyes.

Years later, the tech sector has grown so much, that every few months we have a competition looking to reward the most innovative or successful businesses with funding, recognition, some media airtime and in some cases technical support. To give credit where it’s due, these competitions have played a big role in encouraging innovation in the tech sector, but I wonder if they’re discouraging the culture of building sustainable businesses by rewarding entrepreneurs too early. From past experience and observation, I can’t help but be ambivalent towards these competitions and awards.

I won’t throw out the baby with the bathwater by proposing that tech competitions shouldn’t be held, they have their place in motivating business owners, but there are certain aspects of the whole awarding mentality that doesn’t quite augur well with what I believe it takes to build a business that will last:

Rewarding Too Early?

It’s debatable at what point a business should be rewarded. Should a business get evaluated for an award after the first sale? On distributing a dividend? On the 1,000th customer? Should businesses be awarded at all? It all depends with the sector, but I feel a business owner should be rewarded when he/she hits a major business milestone. While conceptualizing a great business and writing some code for it is great, the proof is in the execution and customer buy in. I feel that our tech businesses are rewarded too early, and this compromises their ability to grow into great businesses.

Though this TED Video by Derek Sivers is debatable, he does make a valid point: The more we talk about our ambitions, the less we’re likely to achieve them. The more we win awards and contests, the more we feel validated by talking about things we will do, that there’s little motivation to actually execute. This could maybe explain all those great tech businesses we read about in the papers, but on talking to the entrepreneur face to face, there’s little content.

How can the tech community prevent this from happening? In my opinion young businesses should be awarded technical and strategic support instead of monetary rewards and publicity. This of course isn’t as glamorous, but we need to give these entrepreneurs what they truly need.

Where should an entrepreneur focus?

In his article, Sunny Bindra says:

“Lastly, the paradox of poor performance coming after an award is about something very simple: focus. The lauded CEO tends to become a public figure much in demand. He will be called to international conferences, will be roped into all sorts of positions in important committees, and will join a few outside boards. His opinion will be sought on everything. He will be press-ganged onto task forces and talk a lot on TV. He may even take time off to write a self-congratulatory autobiography. The time he spends at his own company, focused on his own organisation’s mission, will naturally diminish.”

To a large extent, I have seen this playing out on the local scene. A small start up wins an award, gets featured on all the major blogs (and we retweet the features), and in no time, the CEO (I use that term loosely) is a superstar. They’re doing newspaper interviews (which we all retweet), attending conferences, and dedicating very little time to the business.

In some cases, the CEO becomes a career contestant in every business contest after that, having tasted the lure of free cash winnings and the sweetness of being a celebrity.

With that comes the focus issue Sunny raised. In the early stages, the business needs the entrepreneur more than ever, what will happen if said entrepreneur is always at a conference speaking about “his experiences” or pitching at business contests?

I don’t have any bright answers on how we can mitigate this, it’s food for thought for the entrepreneur preparing his pitch for the next contest, or the CEO who will tomorrow attend a conference to speak of things that are not as if they are (Romans 4:17 🙂 ). There’s a place for faith, and in business, this is after you’ve executed, not before.