All about the 'tude

Attitude. That's what gets things done. Yes, it is a staple of every inspirational speaker or motivational totchke shelves, but there's a reason for it - some people need reminding.

In a previous post, I've opined on the startup balance between resources, timeline and deliverables and the constant challenge it raises, especially in the early stages when your dreams and deliverables overpower your resources. And I held forth on how to make those compromises. But, as I'm now involved in an almost daily balance reset, I've realized that there's one important component that determines how successful you're going to be, and that is Attitude (a big 'A' in a good way).

For many of us, especially those who tend to let the left brain be big boss (the right does little more than visualize pin stripes, cigar and some power girth), we tend to get all analytical about it. That goes double for the techies. Don't get me wrong. I'm not advocating an emo-meltdown, channeling fear, despair or anger. But you need to shake up the can-do attitude and pass it round for a good whiff before you get into the fray.

For instance. We have another user trial coming up. We have a list of must-have features. What we don't have is enough engineer-time to get those taken care of - in the 'normal' manner. And our framework makes it counter-productive to try to get contract help, at least in this time frame. Yes, there are constraints. But, as I heard Marissa Mayer of Google so succinctly put it in one of her talks: creativity likes constraints. It is so much more effective to address your problems with the attitude of 'Whoo! An opportunity to show how I can make things happen!' instead of '*&!# this is going to blow up'. It's not being new-agey to say the way you feel impacts the way you think which affects the outcome.

Build the attitude, build the startup (and be a hero?). This is one of those things that should go into your culture. Leadership by example is required of course, but it may need a little more nurturing. A workshop if you can spring for it. Or maybe those totchkes?