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

by Ben Horowitz

The first problem is that everybody learns to be a CEO by being a CEO. No training as a manager, general manager, or in any other job actually prepares you to run a company. The only thing that prepares you to run a company is running a company.

you will face a broad set of things that you don’t know how to do that require skills you don’t have. Nevertheless, everybody will expect you to know how to do them, because, well, you are the CEO.

At a certain size, your company will do things that are so bad that you never imagined that you’d be associated with that kind of incompetence. Seeing people fritter away money, waste each other’s time, and do sloppy work can make you feel bad.

And to rub salt into the wound and make matters worse, it’s your fault.

Ideally, the CEO will be urgent yet not insane. She will move aggressively and decisively without feeling emotionally culpable.

If you don’t like choosing between horrible and cataclysmic, don’t become CEO.

Focus on the road, not the wall.

Focus on where you are going rather than on what you hope to avoid.

People who watch you judge you on what you do, not how you feel.”

In my experience as CEO, I found that the most important decisions tested my courage far more than my intelligence.

Knowledge of technology, prior decisions, culture, personnel, and more tends to be far more difficult to acquire than the skills required to manage a larger organization.

Where a One might be perfectly comfortable spending one day a week reading, studying, and thinking, doing so would make a Two very nervous, because it would not feel like work to them.

A Two would get antsy at the thought of all the processes that might be improved, people who might be held accountable to achieving the standard, or sales calls that could be made while he was wasting time just thinking about strategy.

Twos, by contrast, can become highly agitated about such things and sometimes overcomplicate the decision-making process in order to provide a false feeling of thoroughness about the choice.

Often Two executives act as Ones for their functions, but Twos as members of the executive team. For example, the head of sales might easily make all the decisions that are local to the sales organization but prefer to take direction with respect to the overall company plans. This is the best kind of multilayer leadership possible, because directions are clear and decisions are made rapidly with precision.

So what makes people want to follow a leader? We look for three key traits: The ability to articulate the vision The right kind of ambition The ability to achieve the vision

Can the leader articulate a vision that’s interesting, dynamic, and compelling? More important, can the leader do this when things fall apart?

Truly great leaders create an environment where the employees feel that the CEO cares more about the employees than she cares about herself. In this kind of environment, an amazing thing happens: A huge number of employees believe it’s their company and behave accordingly.

The final leg of our leadership stool is competence, pure and simple.

Peacetime CEO sets big, hairy, audacious goals. Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand.

Be aware that management books tend to be written by management consultants who study successful companies during their times of peace.

It’s important that you give people feedback because you want them to succeed and not because you want them to fail. If you really want someone to succeed, then make her feel it.

Let people know what you think. If you like someone’s comment, give her the feedback. If you disagree, give her the feedback. Say what you think. Express yourself.