My Favorite Thing about Company Presidents

Tonight I had a meeting with a president of an IT company named Shige. Originally, I met Shige while working as a cross-cultural consultant, and after really hitting it off, he asked me if we could continue to meet and talk regularly so he can continue to improve his English.

Over the course of our conversation, we ran the gambit on everything ranging from the existence of aliens, and the mysteriousness of water bears, to the future needs of humanity, (colonization projects for Mars, Venus, etc) and the logistical complexity of wedding planning. 

When our time was up, I was actually sad to see it finish because it was such an intellectually enriching conversation... And one that is relatively rare to come by. 

This however is something that I always look forward to when talking to people who build their own companies. A long time ago, I had read that while being a specialist is a great way to earn a good income, company presidents are usually generalists, with a high level of intellectual curiousity. This character trait leads them to develop wide bases of knowledge that allow them to manage the wide diversity of elements that go along with running a company (sales, managing, marketing, personnel, etc), adapt to new situations easily, and solve problems efficiently. 

In that regard, Shige is a perfect example of that. At any given time, he has at least 20 different hobbies (collecting wines, and rare tea cups, cooking pizzas, driving his Porsche, skiing, zen meditation, etc) and is constantly, constantly studying things. Although I haven't had the pleasure of personally getting to know too many really successful producer and directors, I have to wonder if you would see a similar trend in them, because producers face the same kind of challenges. (Hiring and managing a strong production crew, financing and creating budgets for films, figuring out how a film/project will monetize, be marketed, etc). 

To be sure, not everyone is that way. Some people gain success because they are extremely aggressive. Others because they are well connected, and still others because they had just the right blend of the aforementioned traits to push themselves forward. Success has no face in particular. 

At the same time though, if there are other producers/directors like that, I do hope to not just work with them... But to sit down and have a chat with them as well.