I spent the morning trying to organize and make sense of various materials that Huggy Rao and I have been gathering about scaling. I came across a most interesting post on "Learnings from 2011" that was apparently written by Xenios Thrasyvoulou, CEO of European-based start-up called Peopleperhour.com, which enables you to hire people "remotely, for small projects or a few hours a week."
The post was quite interesting, well-crafted and introspective. But the advice at the end stopped me in my tracks:
“Life is too short to waste it with people who don’t get it, whatever “it” may be for you, so make sure you surround yourself with people who do”
This is such good advice because human attitudes and behaviors are so infectious. If you are surrounded with a bunch of smart, graceful, caring, and action-oriented people, all that goodness will rub-off on you; and if you are surrounded with a bunch of people with the opposite attributes, that will infect you too. This is why who you choose to hang out with, hire, fire, spend time with, and avoid has so much influence on everything from acting like an asshole, to building a creative organization, to scaling-ip excellence, to living a happy life.
Yet, implementing this philosophy in real life isn't easy. I would love to hear some ideas about how people make it happen.