The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living

by Randy Komisar

I hadn't considered that she might be at odds with Lenny's lifeless mission or that their original idea might have been more compassionate

The chance to work on a big idea is a powerful reason for people to be passionate and committed. The big idea is the glue that connects with their passion and binds them to the mission of an organization. For people to be great, to accomplish the impossible, they need inspiration more than financial incentive.

Finding something in Funerals.com to care about was.

Sculley's Apple subordinated the company's big idea to the business model.

The business model can and should change over time, as the world changes.

Apple's employees could no longer find a reason to support Apple's business. Their fanaticism faded to ambivalence.

Was he selling the business model rather than the big idea—whatever it was—that had attracted Allison and him to Funerals.com in the beginning?

But the big idea that your company pursues is the touchstone for these refinements.

Ditching the big idea in order to deal with business exigencies leaves you without a compass.

define their business in terms of where it's going, what it's becoming, n...

Set the compass, then work hard to ...

Sure, business was about money. That's what makes it business.

But first and foremost, to be successful, business is about people.

The focus was always on the value you could deliver to your customers, employees, partners, and shareholders—

In that order!

Bill had an underlying faith that if we focused on the people issues, worked hard, and did a great job, the business would take care of itself.

He had a highly intuitive sense of people. He could inspire them to be better than they already were and to work together as a whole to create something greater than the sum of the individual parts.

My job was to find intersections of interest between the negotiating parties—not differences, but commonalities—and to build them into a solid relationship and transaction.

zeroing in immediately on those requirements of the other party that were consistent with my requirements, and I threw my energy into bringing them into the deal,

My focus became less on just satisfying myself and my company and more on satisfying the other party as well.

BUSINESS, I told Lenny and Allison, is about nothing if not people.

First, the people you serve, your market. Then the team you build, your employees. Finally, your many business partners and associates.

From the muck she must assemble the core team, the product or service, and the market direction—all around a coherent vision. She must also raise the money and secure crucial early customers and partners.

The second CEO is “the Bloodhound.” He must sniff out a trail—find the market and prove the business. He needs to build an operating team and establish a market beachhead.

How are these different?

The third CEO is “the Husky.” She must lead the team, pulling an operating company that grows heavier by the day with people and public company responsibilities.

He still doesn't seem to have a good way of coming to grips with this opportunity. Not sure he knows where to go with it.

Lack of vision...better, faster, cheaper risk...

the best learned through trial and error that investing in a passionate group of smart people, with a big idea for a big market, provided the greatest odds for success.

But this was a startup. It would take an inspirational leader to rally a team and supporters to build

something worthwhile.

Management and leadership are related but not identical.

Think level 3 vs. Level 5 leadership described by Jim collins

Management is a methodical process; its purpose is to produce the desired results on time and on budget.

complements and supports

leadership, in which character and vision combine to empower someone to ve...

VP of Business Operations.

I kept everything tuned: creating the plan, raising the money, doing the deals, and running the numbers. In short, I executed.

they're looking for the CEO. They're looking for the leader. What's your vision? What's the big idea? How will you get people excited?

to lead and motivate, to create a vision that could attract and inspire talent and partners.

No CEO's job is all vision, though, and my job at LucasArts included considerable management efforts.

With vision, you need the tactics to execute that vision. The tactics bring the organization and its people into alignment with the vision.

I struggled to build consensus at every step, but I knew that ultimately I had to earn everyone's confidence through results.

I found that the art wasn't in getting the numbers to foot,

It was in getting somebody else to do that and to do it better than I could ever do; in encouraging people to exceed their own expectations; in inspiring people to be great; and in getting them to do it all together, in harmony. That was the high art.

This is a leader, level 5 leader...set the vision, motivate the people, coordinate tactics, and build something sustainable by putting the right people in the right places with the right responsibilities

This was a quintessential “Brave New World” company.

WebTV's business model was still largely undefined. No one knew how

it would finally ma...

Steve was always able to sell a higher valuation than I thought possible and bring in critical partners.

Not necessarily good thing. Need to ground in reality, hugher valuation is good and getting key people involved is even better. Seems alarming amount raised without business model. How was he testing the assumptions of the business? In retrospect, TiVo was revolutionary but rapidly became obsolete with streaming. What happened during thag period of the company?

If Steve had ceded his visionary leadership to an operating manager early on, Microsoft probably would never have bought WebTV.

Raises the question, when does a ceo need to shift from leadership with vision to operational management? With the right vp of operations or COO, can a ceo continue to think bigger while launching the first or second platform technology rather than deferring operations for vision? Consider how much he had to raise as a consequence of thinking bigger, growing faster, without thinking about operations...

the moral of the story of Steve Perlman and WebTV is the need to emphasize visionary leadership over management acumen

in the formative stage of a startup.

It will be much harder, perhaps impossible, to expand the vision later, when performance is being measured quarter to quarter against operating plans, because then there's too much at stake.

What would make you willing to do Funerals.com for the rest of your life? Start from there.

Why was he doing this? What was important to him, and what did he care about? Who was he, and how could he express that in his business?