The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

by Ben Horowitz

Be careful with “he said, she said” Once your organization grows to a significant size, members of your team will from time to time complain about each other. Sometimes this criticism will be extremely aggressive. Be careful about how you listen and the message that it sends. Simply by hearing them out without defending the employee in question, you will send the message that you agree. If people in the company think that you agree that one of your executives is less than stellar, that information will spread quickly and without qualification. As a result, people will stop listening to the executive in question and the executive will soon become ineffective. There are two distinct types of complaints that you will receive: 1. Complaints about an executive’s behavior 2. Complaints about an executive’s competency or performance Generally, the best way to handle the first type of complaint is to get the complaining executive and the targeted executive in the room together and have them explain themselves. Usually, simply having this meeting will resolve the conflict and correct the behavior and improve the relationship (if it was actually broken). Do not attempt to address behavioral issues without both executives in the room. Doing so will invite manipulation and politics. Complaints of the second type are both more rare and more complex. If one of your executives summons the courage to complain about the competency of one of their peers, then there is a good chance that eit...