Dean Michael Berris

Last night while having a great Japanese dinner with a few of my co-founders of the company we talked a little about maturity and having balls to take on roles that we have not been in. Basically I mentioned that I thought I wasn't mature enough yet to take on management roles and that I wasn't comfortable leaving my niche (high performance computing) yet. I thought about listing a few of my criteria to determine whether I (or someone else) is mature enough or just has the balls (there's a difference) to take on responsibility:

• Composure -- you need to be able to function whether you're in a high pressure situation or whether you're on the daily grind. Some people call it poise and you can only have this if you're comfortable in what you're doing and have internalized what your role is. If you can really say your personal mission is to be the best 'insert-your-role-here' and that you have the balls to take that on your shoulders and still deliver only then can you start having composure.
• Humility and Modesty -- if you're not willing to take on criticism from other people or at least take constructive criticism, you lack maturity. As character traits these are essential not only for being a good person but also if you intend to be an executive or a leader. Being in a position of authority usually corrupts your vision -- staying humble and modest are the tools you use to prevent that corruption from happening.
• Initiative -- some people (and I am one of them) see great opportunity to contribute but taking responsibility is one of the things that scare them (including me). It's not the fear of failure that's scaring me, but that thought of maybe others might want to take on that role too. So instead of taking it on with initiative, I pass it off to others who might want to be in that position too. That's pretty much the pattern for me since I was a child growing in the shadow of other leaders. Without that initiative to take on the responsibility of being in a certain role and a recognition of your own strengths and weaknesses, you are not mature yet.
• Vision -- I think I have this, but I think it's not enough. Vision is the capacity to see clearly what the destination is and be able to decide with conviction and without compromise what the steps to take are. Vision also requires that you be able to recognize that you're not on the right track and given that you have composure, humility, and initiative be able to say that things should change. What I lack is that decisiveness -- I still have some tunnel vision when it comes to things that I want to accomplish; being able to objectively say "wrong way" is something I still have to develop. Without this, you are not mature.

Posted via email from Dean Berris' Brain Dump