Although I enjoyed my internship, if I were to
become the CEO almost everything would change. This is mostly because both my
personality and leadership style are different than any of the current company
owners. As I've gone through the process of blogging about my experience, it's
become clear that the startup environment is not exactly right for me, or at
least not for my first job. Although the freedom and creativity of
entrepreneurial environments seem to fit into almost any workplace culture,
problems arise when these trends are abused.
In
a world where I am CEO of VentureSHOT, I would impose a bit more structure
to the day-to-day proceedings. I would create an online filing system that
every employee understood and adhered to. Additionally, I would hold more all-company meetings. At least once a week everyone would come together to discuss
current projects and how they were progressing towards goals. As the company
grows, teams would also have small group meetings to get to a finer level of
detail and ensure that everyones work was accounted for.
In
short, I have found that I am a little too type-A to work in a startup
environment run by highly creative people. I’ve learned that structure is
something that I need at work in numerous ways, and that I don’t accomplish as much
without it. I believe I’m not alone, and that even a slight increase in organization
would really help the employees at VentureSHOT.
I had a similar experience this summer when working for Selftising. Quite often, I would lose direction because there was a lack of contact and meetings with my boss. When I wrote my CEO blog, I shared somewhat similar suggestions. From my experience, it appears that the company owners of startups can not rely on one startup given the chances of success for startups as a whole. Unfortunately for interns such as ourselves, this quite often leads to less interactions between interns and their respective boss. For me, this meant that my boss was involved with multiple companies in order to achieve a desirable income. Despite this lack of company structure, I hope that you enjoyed your time during your internship.
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