Is Being Dictatorial Helping or Hurting Your Business?

There are a lot of thoughts and practices on how you should lead your business. If you have watched our Bad Boss series last year you know Matt has some thoughts on this. Watch this video to see Matt’s thoughts on what being dictatorial will do to your business.

There are tons of people out on social media giving business advice. Some of it is good advice, but most of it isn’t good. In this series watch CapForge’s owner react to different advice videos. He’s an expert in all things business and has 20+ years of experience under his belt. Some of the things he reacts to might even surprise you!

Video Transcript: 

Business Advice Video:

To get a business from zero to 10 million, you essentially have to be very, very dictatorial. You tell people what you want. People will tell you this isn’t going to work. You ignore comments, you ignore feedback, and you do what the hell you want and you force your business into success. This is my experience. Why? Why do you need to be dictatorial? You have no time. You take high level of risk. There is no, there’s no time for discussion. Generally, what you’re trying to do hasn’t been done before. There’s no data to back up what you’re thinking. 

Matt’s Review: 

Yeah, I don’t agree with that at all. You can have a vision and you can work to execute it, but you don’t have to be dictatorial. There’s time for discussion. You’re not, the thing’s not on fire. You don’t have a ticking clock that allows for no discussion or feedback. It doesn’t make sense to say there’s no way to predict outcomes, you just have to keep rolling the dice with risk and risk everything over and over again to get there. That may have been his experience, but that doesn’t certainly mean it’s the only way to do it or even the best way to do it. And I think when you are like that, you’re likely to turn a lot of people off, including talented people who would be a great asset to your business. But they don’t wanna work with somebody who just yells at them to do what I say, and don’t question me, and don’t try to provide any feedback, even if you have 20 years of experience in this, and I have none. Yeah, sometimes people come along and say, “Hey, I don’t think that’s gonna work”, or “I don’t think you’re gonna be as successful as you think.” And you don’t want that to get you down. But it’s also foolish to just completely ignore good advice from experienced people. So you have to kind of weigh who you’re hearing it from and what their motivation is and what their background is, right? People who just generally say, “Oh, I don’t think that’s gonna work”, but have no idea what they’re talking about. Sure, don’t spend a lot of time focusing on that information. But if you’re trying to break into the manufacturing industry and you’re talking to somebody who has 25 years of manufacturing experience that’s very similar to what you’re trying to do and they’re offering you suggestions, you’d be stupid not to listen and at least hear what they have to say and see how much of it applies and what you can take away from it. So I think this is a case of somebody who’s done well, and they’re now saying, well, this is the way to do it. Well, you may have gotten very lucky, but 99 other people tried what you tried and totally flamed out and failed. So the fact that it worked for you doesn’t mean it’s good advice, it just means you were exceptional and lucky in what you’ve tried. And I think anytime you say you’re gonna be dictatorial as your leadership style, your management style, then you’re much more likely to fail, burn people out, have bad relationships, have people quit, make your life much harder than it needs to be than if you can have a more proactive and positive management style and still end up getting to the same place.