Am I still recommending being democratic in business?
A few people have asked now that the book is out: do I still recommend being as democratic in business?
First, for the Ecommerce Gladiator venture, I was not supposed to be the leader. I was working toward bringing leaders together—mainly the CEO of the business (the hustler) with the investors.
But my answer to the question is no. It seems there needs to be one leader who makes the final call on major decisions. The difficult part is deciding what counts as a major decision. In the startup phase, most things are major and move fast. Once a company has developed, decisions should happen at the department level, with budgets and targets.
If I were to start the project again and launch Ecommerce Gladiator 2.0, I would have multiple teams. There was only one team, and they looked at me as the leader. Multiple teams would have reduced confusion about my role and made it clearer that each team was expected to operate independently, with my management and oversight.