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Surround Yourself With Brilliant Diversity

© Lea Moore

Whether you are the president of a large corporation or the owner of a small business, the key to achieving the highest rate of success is to surround yourself with brilliant people from a variety of backgrounds and cultures, with a multitude of personality characteristics.

A very wise woman (my best contract and one of my best friends) said these very words, "Surround yourself with brilliance and you will succeed." The more I work with her, the more I find these words to be true. As I watch and learn I find myself more and more intrigued by her statement. Not only does she practice what she preaches, she also benefits from the practice.

From all walks of society, she has chosen the best people, with the most to offer in an intellectual situation. Even though she has chosen to stay small, with just a few people to run her office and a few others to assist when she needs help with things beyond the scope of her knowledge, those few people are intelligent, open-minded, and very good at what they do.

When a question is posed, each has a different answer and gives a different reason for their particular view of the situation. She gathers this data, processes it in her own unique way and comes up with final answer or solution based on the knowledge she receives from others.

In my years as a business owner, doing business with other small business owners, I have run across many people who have done just the opposite. They surround themselves with those who answer "yes" to everything and have no creativity of their own. This is done, as far as I can tell, out of pure vanity. No one wants to be told that the way they are doing things could be improved. But those type of people, the egomaniacs, are only hurting themselves.

We all have to remember our main reason for being in business. It is to make money. If our egos get in the way of our growth, we should really try to tame our egos.

Does it really make sense to hire a moderately intelligent sales person because you know they won't challenge your techniques, when you could hire an inexperienced, dynamic personality with an IQ of 140 who will bring out the best (and maybe even the worst) in you?

Of course, we always want to hire the best accountants, attorneys, information technologists, marketing representatives, advertising firms and so forth. But what about your secretary, your administrative assistant, the entry-level office personnel.