In every company there are disagreements. It wouldn’t be healthy to employ people who agree with you on everything. You need people who not only come up with their own ideas, but who question yours.

It’s good to draw your talent from different pools: people who have different experiences and approaches to issues. Sometimes they can show you an angle you haven’t considered, and as a CEO you have to be prepared to say, “you know, you may have a point.”

In this instance, however, I’m sure that I’m absolutely in the right. I don’t care what my fellow board members and marketing department say. They’re wrong, I’m right.

There is absolutely no way I should be sitting here writing a blog about winning an Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

Blowing my own trumpet 

It’s really good to get it out there, they say. Read the citation. It talks about our passion for innovative technologies, pioneering new approaches, how we help marketing departments operate more efficiently. We can’t bury that under the carpet.

No, I tell them. It sounds like I’m blowing my own trumpet, and people don’t like that. And we should listen to the people.

Then I get the long faces. Can’t you just slip it in somewhere – mention it in passing?

How do you mention something like that in passing? Spent a joyous weekend painting the shed and polishing my Entrepreneur of the Year Award.

But it’s not about you. It’s the company, the people who work with you. Think how good they feel knowing that Inspired Thinking Group’s achievements are being recognised.

And there they have me a little bit. That damned new angle. Because they’re right, of course. The nice people who award these things like to pick out individuals, as if everything good about a company comes from one person.

Entrepreneur of the Year award

But every CEO knows that’s not the case. Yes, you can set the course of the ship, but without top quality engineers stoking the engines, skilled navigators adjusting the course to steer you through the turbulence, and team players across the vessel striving in a common cause, no amount of good ideas are going to come to anything. Enterprise doesn’t stand alone.

So the truth is, the people who work for ITG have just won me an Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and publicly thanking them for all their hard work and dedication does, after all, seem a pretty reasonable topic for a blog.

Until next time…

Simon Ward.

About Simon Ward

Simon Ward ITG – Simon is the founder and CEO of pioneering technology-led marketing company, Inspired Thinking Group (ITG). ITG delivers best-in-class marketing software, procurement and studio services to dozens of blue-chip clients, including Audi, M&S, KFC, PUMA and Heineken.

Simon Ward SP Group – Prior to ITG, Simon founded SP Digital in 1998, and in 1999 bought SP Print to form SP Group, creating innovative marketing and point of sale displays for some of the world’s best-known retailers, including M&S, Sainsbury’s, Holland & Barrett and Calvin Klein