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Go live and work somewhere else.
We’ve seen even this simple act of setting the right goal turn around people’s careers.
One of the most transformative developments of the Internet Century is the ability to quantify almost any aspect of business.
“the plural of anecdote is data,”
Slides should not be used to run a meeting or argue a point. They should just contain the data, so that everyone has the same facts.
“Revenue solves all known problems.”)
Getting everyone to say yes in a meeting doesn’t mean you have agreement, it means you have a bunch of bobbleheads.
“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”
The job of the decision-maker, then, is to get the timing just right. Exhibit a bias for action, to cut off debate and analysis that is no longer valuable, and start moving the team to rally around the decision. But don’t be a slave to a sense of urgency. Maintain flexibility until the last possible moment.
codifying the who-does-what working process of the trio was very helpful.
the arrangement “works because we have tremendous trust and respect for each other and we generally think alike.”
One of the frustrating aspects of being a leader of smart creatives is how little power you actually have.
you have to analyze data and orchestrate consensus by encouraging debate and then knowing, through some divine skill, exactly the right time to cut off that debate and make the decision.
there is one thing that leaders can still control, and that is the company’s calendar.
When you have daily meetings, you spend less time in each meeting rehashing things that were discussed at the previous meeting,
the sheer drudgery of repeating the same argument every day helped spur the team to delve even deeper into the data
we got to the right answer through a rigorous, time-intensive process of considering all the details.
If you want to change people’s behavior, you need to touch their hearts, not just win the argument.
It’s rare for a good person to be completely, 100 percent wrong.
Public escalation is a valid option and should be encouraged, because if you don’t it will just happen anyway, only with a lot more rancor.
a well-run meeting is a great thing. It’s the most efficient way to present data and opinions, to debate issues, and yes, to actually make decisions.
Meetings should have a single decision-maker/owner.
Include someone more senior as the decision-maker.
The decision-maker should be hands on.
In those situations, it isn’t the lawyer’s job to cover every possible angle in detail; it’s his job to look into an unforeseeable future and provide educated, quick guidance to the business leaders making the decisions.
Leadership teams often underestimate how long it takes for revenue from a new product area to ramp up. That shiny new stuff can be much more interesting than the boring old core business stuff, but it’s the core stuff that pays the bills, and if you make a mistake there, you probably won’t be able to recover.
You have to focus on your core business. You have to love it.
The World’s Best Athletes Need Coaches, and You Don’t?
in the Internet Century you hire people to think.
The most effective leaders today don’t hoard information, they share it.
Leadership’s purpose is to optimize the flow of information throughout the company, all the time, every day.
We trust our employees with all sorts of vital information, and they honor that trust.
hands-off approach to leadership doesn’t cut it anymore. You need to know the details.
The forest always trumps the trees.
as a leader it is precisely the bad news that you most need to hear.
Good news will be just as good tomorrow, but bad news will be worse.
turns out that most rock stars have very little patience for people wasting their time and they make doing so a very unpleasant experience.
At Google, our themes include putting users first, thinking big, and not being afraid to fail. Also, we are all technology optimists: We believe technology and the Internet have the power to change the world for the better.
At least once per year, write a review of your own performance, then read it and see if you would work for you.
“got it and proceed.”
“I’m overwhelmed and don’t know when or if I’ll get to your note, so if you needed my feedback you’ll just have to wait in limbo a while longer. Plus I don’t like you.”
Be crisp in your ...
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Eric’s lowlights brought up issues ranging from revenue to competition to products, honestly and frankly, which always set the stage for an engaged board discussion.
with an emphasis on succinct, data-driven discussions.
trying to escape what was often called the Jobs “reality distortion field.”
Steve Jobs saw this future with great clarity. There is no better example of the impact a smart creative can have on the world than him.
He embodied a combination of technical depth, artistic and creative talent, and business savvy that allowed him to create computing products with which people actually fell in love.
how much personal style can influence company culture and about how that culture is directly tied to success.
eschew traditional market research and rely on our own abilities to figure out what consumers will want.
If your customers are asking for it, you aren’t being innovative when you give them what they want; you are just being responsive.
