By Trevor Blake

Last time I looked, there were 19,200 book titles available for purchase at Amazon under the category “Organizational Behavior.” I checked out a few of the top sellers and found a familiar pattern. Not one is written by an author who actually founded, built, and managed his or her own enterprise. The authors are academics or management consultants. Their information may be useful, but I wish more books were written by people who have gone through the experience of building a positive work environment while also juggling trying to satisfy shareholder and customer expectations.I dont consider myself an expert on organizational behavior, but I have built several successful companies from scratch, two of which sold for over $100 million each. Whenever I get together with the various investors, contractors, and personnel to reminisce about those achievements, I am struck by how nostalgic they become. To a person, they describe their involvement in the companies as being the best experiences of their lives. Some investors even went public with those endorsements.As humans our tendency is usually to over-complicate things. I have known some management consultants who would turn the making of a ham sandwich into a PhD thesis and we would all starve to death in the pursuit of perfection. In business, perfection is not the main aim.

via The Holy Trinity Of Startup Success: Purpose, Culture, Reward | Fast Company.