Building something great

About two weeks, I began blogging about some of OpenView Venture Partners’ firm aspirations.

I’ve discussed impact, focus, true sense of urgency, and fact-based decision-making.

Today I am reflecting on our value of building something great, which aligns with the first point of our mission, which is to build great companies.

At a high level, this value sounds like a no-brainer, almost meaningless. Well, of course we all want to build something great.

But truly live and work by this value is a very different thing.

On any given task, any output, any project, any business strategy, whether you’re an expansion software company selling product, or a venture capital fund providing operational support and strategic consulting services, you have the choice of really nailing it, really producing something genuinely great, or just doing a good job (not to mention worse than a good job).

And to live by the value of building something great means you have to have the discipline, the focus, the attention to detail, the energy, and the drive to always make the choice to really nail it, and never settle.

And that’s just on a tactical level. To really build something great, you have to nail it at the strategic level as well, and that takes a tremendous amount of savvy in addition to the discipline and the focus.

Certainly, there’s plenty of literature on this topic. Perhaps one of the best known is Good to Great, by Jim Collins. In the book, Collins tries to zero in on the strategic and execution characteristics that separate good companies from great companies. 

When I mentioned to a friend I planned to blog on this topic, he pointed me to this web page, a letter from Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, a large and successful hedge fund. He calls it “excellence”, and cannot stress enough that being excellent takes precedence over all else, including making money.

Personally, I’ve gone back and forth between periods where I am truly focused on building something great all the time, and those when I’m settling for just good enough. My goal is to become more consistent, and that, I have found, starts with the mentality.

Once you have the right mentality, from that flows the focus, the discipline, and all else.