As the world awaits for confirmation of the new White House appointments, be sure to have your own business secure with the right mixture and complimentary people.

It is said that left and right brained people are from different planets, or at least have different areas of expertise.

Admittedly there is no science to support this, in fact it “flies in the face of decades of research about brain organisation and the functional roles of the two brain hemispheres” as said by Jeffrey Anderson, a leading scientist from the University of Utah.

In popular culture, however, the idea is that the left side of the brain is associated more with logic and rationality and the right side controls creativity and emotion.

Which category you fit into will be driven by your inherent personality and the circumstances you are operating in rather than your brain.

If we go with the popular culture idea then I am certainly a right-brained person and like Alice in Wonderland, can “believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast”. The trouble is I am quick to lose interest in the implementation and the details, but can’t then understand why the idea hasn’t been implemented the following day.

To counter this I need an opposite number (oppo). Someone to pick up my ideas, shake out the insurmountably crazy ones and start to work on the more manageable, but still mainly crazy ones!

My oppo is our MD Poonam Kaur, who is not afraid to challenge me on both my ideas and timescales. While these may not be the easiest of meetings and conversations, without a voice of reason we could have fallen very far down the rabbit hole.

All small businesses and start-ups need great ideas. Often the entrepreneurs we work with have excellent ideas, they are passionate and want to throw everything at their new business venture. However, they lack the technical know-how and financial skills necessary, for example: understanding profit and loss to make sure they can pay staff and the importance of good HR are just a few of the regular skills gaps we come across.

Having a great and creative idea that you know will have an impact on your sector is wonderful, but if you can’t back it up with good ‘back-office’ skill and governance it isn’t going to make the impact you are after.

If you accept that you lack those skills and don’t have the time (or more likely the inclination) to upskill yourself then getting an oppo is just common sense. An oppo can provide the skills and knowledge you don’t have, but more importantly they can ground you and keep you focused. Once they are on board with your ‘crazy plan’ they will work just as hard as you to keep fuelling your fire and making sure you have enough power to keep going.

It's the team effort that matters. Without the ideas, your business gets stale and, as an entrepreneur, you become bored and unfulfilled. However, without the operational support the business becomes distracted and the entrepreneur disillusioned.

Building a successful business requires you to have an engaged and committed team, where open debate is encouraged and a no blame culture embedded. This needs trust and respect as it’s these two skills that galvanise these two personality types, who are often poles apart in views and working methods.

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