“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it.”
- Flannery O’Connor, author
During autumn in the 1970s, you’d find Bill Campbell on the football field as the head coach of the Columbia University Lions. But he traded locker rooms for boardrooms and has become a legendary technology company adviser, serving on the board of directors for Apple Intuit and PayNearMe, while counseling everyone from Google’s Eric Schmidt to John Doerr of venture-capital firm Kleiner Perkins. Friends tell me Bill is so special because he calls it like he sees it with the straightforward approach of, well, a coach.
A great adviser listens, learns and reacts with blunt feedback to help entrepreneurs build the best playbook for winning in their industry. Putting together a great board of directors is a critical step for startups – the sooner young companies can assemble a team to help map out what would otherwise be unknown territory, the better. And while it’s great to have advisers from diverse backgrounds, they should all have at least one trait in common: Bill’s brutal honesty.
We need great coaches serving on our boards. Coaches don’t waste time on politics and fragile egos – they are decisive and react immediately to impact the outcome of the game. Entrepreneurs need to be willing players and acknowledge they don’t have all the answers. They need to seek input. They need to crave challenges. And they must have a balance of confidence, drive and self-awareness so they can accept that they can’t grow a startup on their own. Too often entrepreneurs view themselves as infallible and build weak boards, cementing their futures in mediocrity.
As legendary feminist Gloria Steinem said, “The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” “Yes”-men and “Yes”-women do not belong at the boardroom table. Entrepreneurs must be open to being pissed off by independent minds that are not afraid to speak up — even if they have a diametrically opposite opinion. These coach-like advisers push our imaginations. They challenge our views. And they do it because they want us to succeed.
It’s not always easy to hear the truth when you’re wrong, but it’s crucial to success in the fast-paced entrepreneurial world. Make sure you choose people whom you respect – and who respect you. You’ll be more willing to accept reality and swallow that pill if it comes from someone you trust. Along the way, you’ll realize that unvarnished feedback is one of your biggest assets, just as entrepreneurs appreciate and value investor and former Square COO Keith Rabois for asking tough questions and telling them things they don’t want to hear.
It’s also important to strike a balance as far as who sits on the board and to avoid limiting it to the standard composition of founders and venture capital investors. Diversification is valuable – gender, age, background, etc. – in creating an honest and balanced-sounding board. People from different sectors can offer a kaleidoscope of perspectives and add color to an otherwise grayscale operation. The range of contacts, wisdom and guidance you’ll absorb will be invaluable for weighing everything from key hires to team salary to stock option structures and business contract terms. And make sure you’re selecting people who will put in the time and effort it takes to nurture the company – and beware of those who put up a façade of sincerity while trying to get lots of your equity for doing minimal work.
While entrepreneurs want everyone to love their vision and follow their lead, the one group they should desperately want NOT to just love them is their board of directors – because success is most likely to come in the wake brutal honesty. I think Khaled Hosseini, author of “The Kite Runner,” put it best: “Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
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