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January 11 - November 22, 2018
No matter how hard we work or how smart we are, our financial success is ultimately dependent on circumstances outside our control.
The Monk encourages us to make work pay, not just in cash, but in experience, satisfaction, and joy.
emboldened to focus on the lasting value they wished to create rather than on their exit strategy.
A “no” from a venture capitalist is as rare as the “no” of a Japanese salaryman.
explained that in a Brave New World startup, where there's no existing market, no incumbent competitors, and no economic model, you're literally inventing the business as you go along. It was absurd, I told him, to hold the team to the original plan. Look at the progress they had made on everything within their control, such as the quality of the organization and the status of the product. It was necessary to be vigilant and flexible in order to learn as the business progressed. These were the right indicia of success at this point, not the plan.
By any measure, except the original plan, this team was doing a great job.
“I doubt your plan will take you all the way. There are too many unknowns. You'll need people capable of navigating without street signs.
Anyone can sail with the wind to his back. Startups usually sail into a stiff wind, leaking like a sieve, in high seas, without food or water.
In fact, the Rocket Ship Model of startup investment has recently produced many of the most prominent Valley successes. But for every one of them, there are many potentially viable companies that might have eventually prospered if they had been incubated longer.
business isn't primarily a financial institution. It's a creative institution.
I watched all those people celebrate in the boardroom, while I checked signatures and filled up boxes with documents in some stuffy little closet across the hall. It struck me that no matter how interesting the clients or the case, my work as a lawyer was extremely narrow and routine. I decided at that point I wanted to do what they were doing—write the script, not collate the pages.
Passion pulls you toward something you cannot resist. Drive pushes you toward something you feel compelled or obligated to do. If you know nothing about yourself, you can't tell the difference. Once you gain a modicum of self-knowledge, you can express your passion. But it isn't just the desire to achieve some goal or payoff, and it's not about quotas or bonuses or cashing out. It's not about jumping through someone else's hoops. That's drive.
it's the romance, not the finance that makes business worth pursuing. You need something in Funerals.com that by itself will inspire you, and others with you, to prevail, no matter what adversity arises. In my experience, the promise or hope of money by itself won't do.
They did not waste any time speaking to me about exit strategies. Personalized television would be their legacy.
Sculley's Apple subordinated the company's big idea to the business model. That model was not the essence of Apple. It was simply that moment's best means of realizing value from the big idea. The business model can and should change over time, as the world changes. Ultimately, when the big idea was lost, the market and Apple's employees could no longer find a reason to support Apple's business. Their fanaticism faded to ambivalence.
Business conditions are forever changing. You need to reconsider your strategies and business models constantly and adjust them where necessary. 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. I always advise companies to define their business in terms of where it's going, what it's becoming, not simply where it is. Set the compass, then work hard to clear a path, knowing that you may meander as you stumble upon obstacles but will always keep heading toward the same
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Sure, business was about money. That's what makes it business. But first and foremost, to be successful, business is about people. It took me a while to learn that lesson.
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.
“When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.”
I started to pay attention. I made a break with my old legal habits. I began to apply Campbell's thinking to doing deals. 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. I started 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, instead of ignoring them or reactively opposing them in order to use them as bargaining chips later. My focus became less on just
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when we looked around the room at each other, the deal's downside hit us: it was unlikely we would ever work together again.
I later realized what a rare privilege it had been to work with this group of people, in a place of our own making that gave us the opportunity to reach and stretch, to have impact, and to be great. Building a $90-million-a-year, market-leading business was a hard thing to do. Claris gave us, as a team and as individuals, a platform for growing and a chance to build a legacy and a culture that would contain our DNA in its values for decades to come. You couldn't put a price on it, and I didn't realize that until our company was dead and buried.
Management is a methodical process; its purpose is to produce the desired results on time and on budget. It complements and supports but cannot do without leadership, in which character and vision combine to empower someone to venture into uncertainty. Leaders must suspend the disbelief of their constituents and move ahead even with very incomplete information.
I gave her the spiel I intended to deliver to the hiring committee. It focused on the underpinnings of the LucasArts business model, product strategy, and distribution arrangements. “That's all very insightful. Solid thinking,” Debbie commented when I finished. “But 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? They'll want to hear where you intend to take them as a company.”
I found that the art wasn't in getting the numbers to foot, or figuring out a clever way to move something down the assembly line. 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.
If you turn a visionary startup into an operating company too early, you throw out its birthright. It will never be as big, as grand, or as influential as it might otherwise be. 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.
Where there's a critical mass, there's money.
Ask yourself the question: What would make you willing to do Funerals.com for the rest of your life? Start from there.
For a long time, I certainly took full credit for my success. I became a lawyer, an expert in the rules that govern the game, worked at Apple in its heyday, and then helped build a highly successful startup at Claris. All that convinced me that I could determine my own fate. It was at GO that I finally realized there were forces at work far larger than anything I, or anyone else, could control. Riding the highs and lows long enough, never being able to see beyond the next peak or the next valley, makes one realize there is only one element in life under our control—our own excellence.
If you're brilliant, 15 to 20 percent of the risk is removed. If you work twenty-four hours a day, another 15 to 20 percent of the risk is removed. The remaining 60 to 70 percent of business risk will be completely out of your control.
What would you be willing to do for the rest of your life? What would it take to do it right now?
Time is the only resource that matters.
WHEN ALL IS SAID AND DONE, the journey is the reward. There is nothing else. Reaching the end is, well, the end. If the egg must fall three feet without a crack, simply extend the trip to four.
