Find passion. I typically open an interview and ask someone to tell me about themselves. What defines them? And I would not limit it to the workplace.
That is where someone would say, ‘I run 50 to 60 miles a week.’ I would love the way an interview like that would open because somebody would talk about the fact that they run, they run on the street, they use an odometer, they connect to the Web, they compare their running paths with other people’s running paths. They talk about the importance of mind, body, spirit,so their passion then bridges over to a work-related scenario.
I would also ask somebody to talk about a work experience that was explosive for them that really worked. Get them to talk about something that they have done that was extremely exciting.
If I watch people to struggle to find that, then that might not be the right kind of person to work at my company.
Find innovation. In defining the company, I look to continued innovation, not just innovation in the first idea but that you always have an innovative process. As you get your first product off of the ground, how do you get your second-curve strategy in place so you’re always reinventing yourself?
There’s some things that we talk about in terms of style of company. You can be an innovator, or you can be a fast follower, or you can be the low-cost provider. One of the things I find is companies sometimes don’t know how to identify what they’re going to be good at.
If you’re going to be the low-cost provider, then you need to focus in on your process engineering. How are you going to take this idea to marketplace with the least amount of expense associated with it because your margins are going to be slimmer? If you’re an innovative company, then you have to focus in on ‘OK, how do we keep being innovative.’ You can’t just have one idea and then stand back.
Most companies do the same thing every day and hope that they just keep growing. I think reinventing your product and or your service that you offer is something that is hard, especially when you begin to get profitable and you think you’re invincible. What I’ve found is with any initiative within a company it needs an owner. I would typically assign someone to break our product or reinvent some aspect of our product.
Innovation is either going to happen or not happen within your company. So assigning an owner and identifying the new trends and how do your products and services fit in with those trends and actually getting out there with new products that can really help your customers, I think is a really important initiative.
How to reach Taylor’s companies: Eons Inc., (617) 337-9400 or www.eons.com;Tributes Inc., www.tributes.com; Eons BOOM Media, www.eonsboommedia.com; Meetcha, www.meetcha.com
