Let the Journey Begin

Welcome to the True North CFO blog. This is intended as a repository of probably disconnected observations about things that I (Joselin) have read, seen, heard, and just conjured in my brain about the journey of building a business. While my experience and passion are for small businesses, I believe that large, multi-billion dollar organizations face the same challenges, just with a lot more zeros.

As someone told me, every business started as a dream. The founder starts the journey with some vision of the direction that journey will travel, and then builds a team to start off toward the original North Star. Then the market and people and technology and climate and the world ... all change, and the organization has to respond. The response can be graceful or it can be clumsy, but it either responds or takes what happens.

I'm interested in what are those impetuses to change. Do they change the path or do they change the dream, or do they change both? And who makes the decision today? Does the organization incorporate the changes, or does it just ping pong through one disruption to the next? And who is the "they" that is making decisions? Are they still aligned with that original dream? If not, how and why did they change?

It is not surprising that I use the imagery of a path and use words like journey and trip and climb. I believe that we are all on a journey and some of the most interesting parts of the journey are the obstacles we face and the ways that we adjust to them.

So that's what I want to do - compile the things I've heard and think out loud about the ways that people and organizations respond to blocks or curves or forks in the road. If you are interested, please join me!

(If you want to read some stories of my personal journey, take a look at my old blog Journey Not Destination)