I was reading an article on the three profiles of the people in any organization: the commandos who see the battle first because they parachute behind enemy lines, the infantry that holds ground, and the police that maintain stability, law, and order. And here’s an excerpt from that article:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Commandos<\/em> are people who love challenges and hate structure. They\u2019ll happily take on missions that other people think are crazy or impossible because doing things other people think are crazy or impossible is what turns them on. They get you your critical early beachhead by swimming in at midnight with a knife in their teeth and slitting throats till morning.
Infantry<\/em> are what most people are. Most people are not Rambo; crazy suicide missions don\u2019t turn them on. But at this point you have your foothold on the beach, so suicide missions are few; what you need now is lots of people to take that foothold and widen it into a big enough space to sustain yourself on indefinitely. This work is kind of a grind, so it doesn\u2019t appeal to the commandos, who start falling away looking for a new beach to storm. But it\u2019s critical for turning the company from a proof-of-concept into a real, going concern.
Eventually the fight for the beach ends, and the battle moves inland. But you still need to have some people there to maintain order, which is where the police<\/em> come in. Police are even more risk-averse than infantry; they\u2019re caretakers who see their job less as expanding the market the commandos and infantry have won then as making sure it doesn\u2019t fall apart. Commandos and infantry fight to win; police fight to not lose.<\/em>
All of these personality types are important at varying stages in a company\u2019s life, he writes, but the big challenge is making sure you have the right ones at the right stages, and that you manage the transitions between those stages well. A mostly-commandos startup that takes off but tries to still keep itself mostly commandos will choke on its own success. A larger company that still has growth opportunities but phases out its infantry in favor of police too early will miss those opportunities and get ground down by more aggressive competitors. A company that\u2019s grown as much as it can grow but resists bringing on police will run itself down launching futile new products that the market isn\u2019t asking for. Etc.<\/p>Robert X. Cringely<\/em> (Accidental Empires<\/em>)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nI love being a commando – starting up new things, fighting to achieve impossible tasks just to prove that you can do it and prove everyone else wrong. Challenge fuels me. However, I struggled when things became more structured and when things started moving slower. When the tons of red tape came into the picture, boy oh boy, I was suffocating… I had to leave because I wasn’t suitable for the role anymore, and I felt I wasn’t able to add more value than I already have…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am a commando through and through, see you behind enemy lines. For Honour and Glory!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was reading an article on the three profiles of the people in any organization: the commandos who see the battle first because they parachute behind enemy lines, the infantry that holds ground, and the police that maintain stability, law, and order. And here’s an excerpt from that article: Commandos are people who love challenges and …<\/p>\n