Running a business is far more complicated than I imagined. Managing The Blue Line was complicated because I did not foresee most of the problems we encountered along the way. These problems included: the absence of a team member, liabilities and insurance, and miscommunication. Even though this list seems rather lengthy, these are just a few of the problems we encountered during our Real Business Experience.
Our team started struggling after the loss of our CEO. Our CEO left for personal reasons and this really hurt our team because we were leaderless. Without a established CEO as our leader, we scrambled to recover during our proof of concept. His absence set us back during this time because he provided the leadership and he was a liasion to the outsiders of our business. We did recover from his absence and were still able to make ends meet by the end of the semester.
In addition to the loss of our CEO, we also discovered liability issues that were involved in our business. In order to operate our business, we had to sign numerous waivers and other forms of legal documents. This was unforseen by our group, thus we had to scramble to accomplish that task as well. As with the last hurdle, we did overcome this at the eleventh hour and were able to succeed.
Lastly, we also experienced miscommunication during our business. There were many times when a person from one department would not fully convey the message and confusion would ensue. Due to this, we had many weeks were nothing was accomplished since the departments did not express themselves well enough. Even though this seems like a massive problem, we did overcome the hurdle. To overcome this hurdle, we developed a more indirect chain of command. Since this was implemented, we expereienced a more satisfactory form of communication since each department was able to freely communicate with the other.
In conclusion, my Real Business Experience was tumultuous yet successful. This experience tested my limits with all of the adversity, yet we were still able to pull through with full funding from the funding comittee. If there was one key idea I learned from my Real Business Experience, it would be that running a business is very complicated.