While the right design is essential, it is only half the battle. It is equally important to put the right people in each of those positions.
Remember that most people will pretend to operate in your interest while operating in their own.
I believe that the ability to objectively self-assess, including one’s own weaknesses, is the most influential factor in whether a person succeeds, and that a healthy organization is one in which people compete not so much against each other as against the ways in which their lower-level selves get in the way.
Most of life’s greatest opportunities come out of moments of struggle; it’s up to you to make the most of these tests of creativity and character.
To me, the greatest success you can have as the person in charge is to orchestrate others to do things well without you. A.
As much as I love and have benefited from artificial intelligence, I believe that only people can discover such things and then program computers to do them. That’s why I believe that the right people, working with each other and with computers, are the key to success.
Getting a lot of attention for being successful is a bad position to be in.
The best behaviors one can hope for come from leaders who can weigh the benefits of cooperation, and who have long enough time frames that they can see how the gifts they give this year may bring them benefits in the future.
To be principled means to consistently operate with principles that can be clearly explained. Unfortunately, most people can’t do that. And it’s very rare for people to write their principles down and share them.
While in the past I would encounter problems, figure out their causes, and design my own ways to get around them, others who think differently than I do will make different diagnoses and designs. My job as mentor was to help them be successful at that.
A culture and its people are symbiotic – the culture attracts certain kinds of people and the people in turn either reinforce or evolve the culture based on their values and what they’re like. If you choose the right people with the right values and remain in sync with them, you will play beautiful jazz together. If you choose the wrong people, you will all go over the waterfall together.
Know what types of mistakes are acceptable and what types are unacceptable, and don’t allow the people who work for you to make the unacceptable ones.
Train, guardrail, or remove people; don’t rehabilitate them.
Embrace Reality and Deal with It.
Don’t have anything to do with closed-minded people. Being open-minded is much more important than being bright or smart.
Don’t let fears of what others think of you stand in your way. You must be willing to do things in the unique ways you think are best.
Understand that a great manager is essentially an organizational engineer.
If you’ve learned anything from this book I hope it’s that everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and everyone has an important role to play in life. Nature made everything and everyone for a purpose. The courage that’s needed the most isn’t the kind that drives you to prevail over others, but the kind that allows you to be true to your truest self, no matter what other people want you to be.
Since life brings both ups and downs, struggling well doesn’t just make your ups better; it makes your downs less bad.
People who run companies are faced with important choices every day. How they make those choices determines the character of the company, the quality of its relationships, and the outcomes it produces.