Check your ego
As a person lacking formal business training, Carpenter had to reach outside his circle to gain the skills he needed to run
his company.
“It’s really hard to only have people inside your organization
talk about all your strategies,” Carpenter says.
“That’s a good place to start, but you really do need some
people who are not your employees. Employees are obviously
excellent and part of the whole process, but they sometimes
do have a hard time saying exactly what they think.”
Over time, as you and your employees get to know each
other, it becomes easier to have open and honest conversations.
“But it’s still good to get an outsider’s view because then they
are filtering it through their experience with the dozens or hundreds of companies they have been involved with,” Carpenter
says.
He uses a group called The Alliance, which is affiliated with
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. It brings
together leaders of midsized companies to talk about the different skills needed to grow and manage a business.
“About every three years, you kind of go through the same
topics, which is pretty good because you forget about them,”
Carpenter says. “That’s been valuable, and there are business
owners in that group who have been peers and people I talk
to.”
That step of reaching out to others and admitting that you
can’t do it all on your own is a difficult one to take for many
CEOs.
“You have to get over the ego part of thinking that you should
be able to figure this out,” Carpenter says. “That’s the in-the-head thing: ‘I don’t know how to do this.’ That’s really big for
most people. You are really good at your product. But you have
to recognize, ‘I’m not good at this, and I can’t just innately wing
this.’”
It also helps to have a confidant that isn’t afraid to tell you
when he or she thinks you are making a mistake.
Carpenter’s wife, Nancy, filled that role for him in the early
years.
“We were able to talk about the company and make plans,”
Carpenter says. “I would get a little wild and crazy with my
ideas, and she would be a great person to bring me back down
to earth. It can be very lonely trying to start and grow a company if you don’t have somebody close to, to talk about it.”
