A seed contains the full definition of a plant even though the environment determines exactly how the plant looks once it is finally grown. A company without a similar plan to work from is not going to germinate. A company that tries to grow in the wrong soil will never live to spread seeds of its own.
A seed that tries to grow to an exact shape will not fit its environment and so will place itself in harm’s way and suffer or die. A plant will generally grow towards the light, sending roots out to find sustenance and following contours of walls and other blockages. A company needs to be flexible in the same way, following its strategy and principals whilst fitting harmoniously into its environment and adjusting its tactics to fit the environment.
A seed has programmed into it an understanding of a particular type of environment. If you put a desert seed in a jungle or a jungle seed into the desert it will not find what it needs to survive. Put any seed into the wrong type of environment and the seed will not flourish and may very well die. As a budding entrepreneur you do not have understanding programmed into you, but you have the advantage that with time and effort you can achieve understanding of any environment. Providing you know the environment you are going into and have researched the market you will have the knowledge to grow your company.
This is a book about understanding. Starting a company is not just about knowing things it is about understanding what you are doing, why you are doing it, what you should be doing and how you can do it in the way that suits you and your company best.
During the first days, weeks and months of getting going there is often so much to do that you have no time to think about things like these. If this book gives you nothing else, let it at least give you the motivation to take time, and to understand. Understanding what you are doing, and why, will make you more efficient and give you more time to do things right. Spending time undoing the wrong things that you have done, due to having no time to think, will waste much more time than you risk by spending time on understanding things thoroughly from the start. Once you understand what you are doing it is important to continue to take breaks regularly. There has been significant amounts of research that all shows that you will get more done if you take five or ten minutes off in every hour. You will also find that this leads to better decisions. While I am on the subject of research I should take the chance to mention that research tells us that we can’t multi task. Of course this is not an absolute. We can walk and chew gum at the same time, and Moston what you do is probably done while you are breathing. What you shouldn’t try to do is to pay attention to more than one thing at a time. If you do you will make mistakes and do a poor job.