Day in the Life of a Center Director

Hello friends, I’ve become a ‘Center Director’. You may not know this, but the ‘Center Director’ is the hottest position anyone can have today. Since places named [00 Innovation Centers] have popped up, more and more people have business cards with the letters ‘Center Director’ inscribed on it. I find the title ‘Center Director’ appealing, more so than ‘President’ or ‘CEO’.

“What exactly does a ‘Center Director’ do?” I’m asked this question all the time. So I looked back on my average day, from the time I come to work until the minute I leave the office.

Our incubation center is the work place of over 130 people, who work in forty teams, which is no small number. Actually, it’s an enormous number. My job is to help the forty teams mature without any growing pains during their one year tenure at our center. I help the teams refine their business models, provide insight into various activities such as marketing and investments, and connect teams with necessary experts. You’re still not sure what my job is? It may look elaborate on paper, but we all know that I can’t help any team “grow”. So what I do is go around each team to see if they need any help.

I’ll give you a more detailed example of my average day. I went to work in the morning and had a meeting with Team A. They needed to make a presentation to raise funding from external investors so they wanted me to see if their presentation would work. I listened to the enthusiastic presentation made by the CEO of Team A then griped about how they should develop a better opener or otherwise they would never get the investor’s attention. I told them they should change their opening this way and that, and they seemed to appreciate my suggestion. I then had a meeting with Team B. I also met Team C on my way to Team B. I remembered that they had met with a venture capital firm last week for investments, so I stopped for a second and asked them how things went. They said that the venture capital seemed to show interest and had said they would call Team C back, but Team C was uncertain if their interest was genuine. I thought it would be a good idea to call the venture capital, so I added it to the to-do list on my smartphone app. I need to leave myself reminders nowadays, otherwise I forget.

The meeting with Team B was somewhat unpleasant. The purpose of the meeting was to talk about new strategies, since Team B was seeing a steep fall in their overall results, as was witnessed by a decrease in the number of daily visitors and traffic to their website contents. The room was stuffy and murky, as if someone had activated a dry ice effect machine and fogged up the entire place. Fortunately, they were able to successfully pinpoint the trouble areas and discuss the direction they should take to lead their business to the right path. Now, only if they can find a way to hire talented people who will stay with them for a long time.

I then had lunch with Team D. Team D was at a vital moment where they had to pivot their business strategy, so I set up a meeting with an experienced CEO of a consulting company. The consultant had a lot of experience in a wide array of industries, and was able to identify and clarify Team D’s problems. The CEO of Team D made an expression that candidly displayed his gratitude and relief, which in turn made me happy.

I started the afternoon off with an internal meeting on Center operations. We made plans for the networking event scheduled for the following month and talked about hiring speakers. My to-do list is stacked so high, it’s about to touch the ceiling.

I finally made time to go to my desk. I was about to read my emails and reply to some of them when Team E dropped by for a consultation. They said how they had dropped their initial business item and had selected a totally different one, which did not sit well with me. Although I had vowed to say only encouraging words, I unconsciously spewed out some negative opinions, which I shouldn’t have.

However, Team E wasn’t that bad. A while back, Team F fell apart and left the Center. The feeling of emptiness is indescribable.

Out of all this chaos, I heard news from Team G that they had been accepted to the accelerator program they had longed so much to join. At least I can say my day ended with some happy news.

I’ve been rambling on, haven’t’ I? To make a long story short, the day of a Center Director is very much like the day of a mom who has many mouths to feed on an extremely limited budget. She has to pay for her eldest child’s tuition, set aside money for her second child’s school uniform, take her third child to the doctor’s office, buy her fourth child new sneakers while consoling her bawling fifth and youngest kid. However, no matter how hard the day is, I probably share the same sentiments of a mom who can’t erase the smile that creeps up on her face when she sees her children’s sleeping cherubic faces. Although it’s impossible to compare my feeling’s to a mother’s love for her child, I also find happiness with just the thought of the teams in my incubation center excel. That’s what I do these days. And this concludes my whining gibberish, which was originally intended to be a simple hello.

Source text : https://steemit.com/start-up/@easysun/2ivjas
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