Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Ambiguity:

Marc Andreesson’s post “Guide to Career Planning” offers some solid advice on dealing with ambiguity in your business

“In my opinion, it's now critically important to get into the real world and really challenge yourself -- expose yourself to risk -- put yourself in situations where you will succeed or fail by your own decisions and actions, and where that success or failure will be highly visible.

…If you're going to be a high achiever, you're going to be in lots of situations where you're going to be quickly making decisions in the presence of incomplete or incorrect information, under intense time pressure, and often under intense political pressure. You're going to screw up -- frequently -- and the screwups will have serious consequences, and you'll feel incredibly stupid every time. It can't faze you -- you have to be able to just get right back up and keep on going.

That may be the most valuable skill you can ever learn. Make sure you start learning it early.”

The single best indicator of success in entrepreneurship is the ability to deal comfortably with ambiguity. Restaurants are a daily exercise in ambiguity!