It’s about helping others be prepared to possibly step into your shoes – giving them access to your own decision making, identifying the skills they need to develop and helping them improve, and, as I’ve had to do, sometimes being honest with them about why they’re not ready for the next step up. -The Ride of a Lifetime, p.67 Continue reading Good leadership isn’t about being indispensable.
As a leader, you should want those around you to be eager to rise up and take on more responsibility, as long as dreaming about the job they want doesn’t distract them from the job they have. You can’t let ambition get too far ahead of opportunity. I’ve seen a lot of people who had their sights set on a particular job or project, bu the opportunity to get there was so slim. They grew impatient with where they were and so their ambition became counterproductive. The employee should make himself one of the people, through attitude, energy and focus, … Continue reading What’s the best way to nurture ambition?
This is a copy of the blog post by Frank Slootman. As the former CEO of both Data Domain and ServiceNow, two successful tech companies in recent years, I am often confronted with questions: what did you guys do? What is the secret sauce? How did you do it? We never thought of ourselves as that different. We certainly didn’t think we had stumbled on a silver bullet. Did we just get incredibly lucky twice in a row? With hindsight and reflection, there are observations worth making that may benefit others. Bottom line: There is room up in organizations to … Continue reading Amp It Up!
Let’s say one of your younger employee is about to be promoted instead of more experienced employees. Take him on the side, offer him the promotion. And tell him that the others have vouched for him when you asked them their opinion. You can even say that the night prior to this, they sent you an email saying “Are you moving on this promotion?” -Shaan Puri Continue reading If you are about to promote someone
The goal of maximizing is a great source of dissatisfaction. Because it is a daunting task to look for the best. And even once you made a decision, you are still questioning your decision, maybe there was a better option somewhere. The opposite is satisficing. Where you will settle for something that is good enough and not worry about the possibility that there might something better elsewhere. In our world with an increasing number of choices, the need to gather information is rapidly overwhelming. According to Nobel Prize-winning economist Herbert Simon, when all the costs (time, money and anguish) are … Continue reading Satisficer vs Maximizer, a key to happiness
Instead of asking, when will XYZ be done? To which everyone is uncomfortable answering. Too short and I will run out of time. Too long and the boss will be unhappy. Ask instead: At what date would we be shocked if XYZ had not happened yet? What is the soonest we would be surprised to start seeing tangible results from XYZ? -I can’t remember the source but it was from a guest on MFM Continue reading How to get a proper Timeframe from employees.
This post is copy and paste from Shaan Puri’s post This post is all about the in’s and out’s of how I approached finding my operator for the fund and why it’s so important. Blush, use these frameworks and strategies to find your own operator or reverse engineer it to land your dream gig…. Why do i care about this? Because when you have a good operator, it feels like magic. You wake up and every day the business is getting better. All the stuff you hated to do or sucked at doing – this person is actually good at. … Continue reading Recruit a good operator
This is a copy and paste from this blog post of Stewart Butterfield. Build Something People Want We know that we have built something which is genuinely useful: almost any team which adopts Slack as their central application for communication would be significantly better off than they were before. That means we have something people want. However, almost all of them have no idea that they want Slack. How could they? They’ve never heard of it. And only a vanishingly small number will have imagined it on their own. They think they want something different (if they think they want … Continue reading We don’t sell saddles here.
If you need to leave a desert island. Most probably you don’t know where to go. You don’t see the mainland. But if you build a boat and start sailing, you have more chances of finding the right direction. It will be much easier to change directions once you have a boat and naviguate than to build one. -Shaan Puri Continue reading Motion, not direction
In one kind of way he can teach me. Everyone has something in which he/she is better than you. Be respectful and humble towards everyone. -Dale Carnegie Continue reading Every man is my superior in a way.
Roadmap to Billions 