entrepreneurs and managers

I was reading this about Twitter CEO stepping down and assuming a different responsibility and how that is a sign of self-awareness. It is always possible to put an incredible morality spin on things which might be more banal and elevate the situation to some moral plateau which it may not deserve. But taking the whole article at face value, couple of observations –


– Organizations grow and lose its childish innocence and mature. Being mature means adapting to a whole lot of situations which did not really matter when you were a child and building stories to support the public face. Something that began with simple idea as “like ice cream, not essential, but fun” in Twitter’s case could be now portrayed as the new information super highway with endless possibilities. Organizations keeps growing and morphing, but still staying true to original values could be admirable.

– As with this story and the one about Facebook founder recently, there is hint of playing hardball at some point in time to get upper hand – the underlying theme seems to be that to be successful in business, you have to cut corners somewhere, maybe all friends will not remain so etc. But that’s what is disappointing – there may not be entrepreneurs with clean hands. Like the other day some friends were discussing about managers being good at lying, that it is one of the basic qualities – thing is it is managers themselves describing their ilk.

– Lastly – like the peter principle, people rise to the level of their incompetence. Realizing and changing paths before that needs a strong self awareness. Or a term I learned recently – becoming a “hamster” – reaching the comfortable niche, being happy where they are and not contributing significantly. I guess realizing your strengths and weaknesses and your passion earlier in career might help to avoid getting to a position of your incompetence or to get washed up into some groove where you get satisfied.

random

Sometimes I think I read too much – how much of it can I remember, how much of it can be turned to something useful or practical, is all of it a waste of time? Ironically I read something in NYT that we are sum of all we read/hear/experience so a book that you read and totally forgot about must have done some change in the “wiring”, but is that wishful thinking? How do you decide that okay, this is interesting and something I need to do going forward and it becomes part of you as a person? 

What one could learn from Steve Jobs – passion for creation, attention to detail, making design “insanely great”, delighting the customer (while there is still criticism of not listening to the customer, rather “proposing to them” – but often it is true also that customer’s don’t know what they want), attention to detail, having the long view (vision), inspiring others (or selling the idea to employees, customers, investors), presenting (simplifying, perfecting the message, practice) and maintaining control (while being called control freak, being able to control is not easy).


One specific aspect though. Many people say due to his perfectionist and controlling nature, he was a tough boss to work for. I have worked with a manager like that once. Regardless of the pressure, it could be the best learning experience also. Always looking to improve, pursuing excellence in every step, thinking of customer and uncompromising on execution – that could be tough order, but it is better than working for someone who will accept the middle path, who doesn’t have anything to tell you during appraisals other than the comment you have put in self-appraisal and who cannot think about what could make something even better. They have to get into details to tell you what is wrong, they have to tell you bluntly what needs to be improved, they will be controlling, the arguments can be painful – it comes with the package. But if you realize that all of those arguments and interaction is only aimed at making something better for customer, then it will make it a worthwhile experience.

I hope he has created “clones” of himself within Apple who will carry on and continue to create great stuff.What one could learn from Steve Jobs – passion for creation, attention to detail, making design “insanely great”, delighting the customer (while there is still criticism of not listening to the customer, rather “proposing to them” – but often it is true also that customer’s don’t know what they want), attention to detail, having the long view (vision), inspiring others (or selling the idea to employees, customers, investors), presenting (simplifying, perfecting the message, practice) and maintaining control (while being called control freak, being able to control is not easy).


One specific aspect though. Many people say due to his perfectionist and controlling nature, he was a tough boss to work for. I have worked with a manager like that once. Regardless of the pressure, it could be the best learning experience also. Always looking to improve, pursuing excellence in every step, thinking of customer and uncompromising on execution – that could be tough order, but it is better than working for someone who will accept the middle path, who doesn’t have anything to tell you during appraisals other than the comment you have put in self-appraisal and who cannot think about what could make something even better. They have to get into details to tell you what is wrong, they have to tell you bluntly what needs to be improved, they will be controlling, the arguments can be painful – it comes with the package. But if you realize that all of those arguments and interaction is only aimed at making something better for customer, then it will make it a worthwhile experience.

I hope he has created “clones” of himself within Apple who will carry on and continue to create great stuff.

talent is overrated?

Of late I have seen a lot of articles on the talent myth recently – Peter Orzag in NYT and Malcolm Gladwell is convinced about it. Common premise of these is that hard work and practice is behind many successes and an overnight success is in fact someone who worked years perfecting the craft to reach that point.


Then saw this about Zuckerberg and I had read his profile in New Yorker. Here the argument is successful people were at right place at right time and they capitalized on it, sometimes by playing hardball. Commenter in NYT argues that Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and even Einstein is successful not by originality, but by building on what others have done. 

My take –

Innovations all need not be original ideas and in fact tracing originality of many ideas might be difficult anyway. Connecting things in a way that others did not imagine can be a great innovation. Also things which are very successful often are simple as well which makes it seem so obvious to people. But being so obvious and simple is the reason why it was successful in the first place.

Many successful people often cite luck as a big factor, but they did enough to create their own luck, to reach the right place at the right time. Hard work and practice is definitely the way, Talent helps a lot. I used to like the Accenture ad which showed Tiger Woods (so anything we believe could be proven wrong) swinging and the measurement says 50% attitude and 50% aptitude.