Good to Great
Malcolm Gladwell has the same problem as any of the other 100's of authors of those shitty "How to win!" business books. It's not that what he's saying is not true, it's that you don't get the whole picture, because actually giving you the whole picture would take a whole lot more time to research and wouldn't be half as entertaining. The best example are the "Good to Great" series of books that espouse what companies should to be successful, neglecting to mention that the majority of the companies held up as examples from the previous book have somehow spectacularly failed. The books…
> Support them getting help, respect that we're all human and frail and subject to fall, but don't let them keep their fucking job. Yup I agree. It'd be up to the board whether he remains as CEO or not. I find his statement interesting and worthy of support because I've never had a boss who would admit when he made a major mistake, much less say he's seeking help for it. I think the chances of Uber improving with a new CEO are small. It'll just be someone from the same culture. If Travis really intends to seek outside help then that may do something to change the culture there. I don't…
Something like this appeared in Good to Great. In a study of CEOs who lead their companies to significant improvement that lasted after the CEO stepped down, they found a common personality characteristic. The best CEOs constantly were watching for problems, took responsibility (aka fault) for everything that went wrong, credited everything good to others, and then anything that could not be credited to someone they said was luck. This is a useful attitude. As news goes up the corporate ladder, it inevitably is colored in the most positive possible light.…
This is a common practice among sales organization here in British Columbia, as it was championed by Jimmy Pattison. He started in car sales, and now owns billions in assets here in BC. Having worked in sales, I understand the logic behind it. I disagree with it, but I understand it. The mantra seems to be "when you have great sales, you can commit many sins". Not exactly the best motivator for an ethical institution. An alternative, and more effective sales methodology IMHO, is Jim Collin's "Good to Great" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_to_Great You may agree or disagree with my…
"Pay attention to price early" rings true. Everything else in the article seemed very anecdotal or cherry-picked. This is what makes case studies about product success so difficult. With so many factors involved, any bold proclamation like "Price before product" is bound to have enough prominent counterexamples to render it useless in application. Studies like this always remind me of Jim Collins' "Good to Great" controversy where several of the heralded companies went bankrupt a few years after the book was published. Setting a good price before releasing a product is a lot easier said…
Traction is absolutely the most powerful asset for raising money. You will find once you've closed that your investors keep pushing for traction at the cost of everything else including revenue and burn rate. This is because, from their perspective, they want you to create a market for your stock. Which is now also their stock. They want you to do this the same way you created a market when they wanted to buy. With traction. There are several target markets for your stock. Future angel and VC investors. The public markets through an IPO. An acquisition. Traction is good at creating…
Good To Great - https://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/0... DOM Enlightenment - https://www.amazon.com/DOM-Scripting-Design-JavaScript-Docum... Definitive XML Schema - https://www.amazon.com/Definitive-XML-Schema-Charles-Goldfar... I am a better developer because of building my thinking about software around a deeper appreciation of data structures setting goals by focusing on personal considerations of ethics. Books that have improved me but not my career: Principles - https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Ray-Dalio-audiobook/dp/B07... Lots and lots of fiction.
All this has happened before, and will happen again. Here's my personal favourite, from when Mozilla dropped MNG support: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18574#c672 I remember being upset that MNG was removed. I never used it, but I might have! Maybe! And an extra 300kb or so isn't really that much, is it? And you can just drop it in instead of libPNG, there probably won't be any security or compatibility problems, and if there are they'll be easy to fix, right? I'm sure the other browsers will support it soon. Hard to be the bad guy, I guess, but you guys are doing the right…
In 2001, this analyst declared "The game is effectively over", strongly advising his readers not to buy AAPL. Here is what happened to people who ignored that advice: http://j.mp/iVrc6o Presumably because Circuit City was one of Jim Collin's "Good to Great" companies, this same analyst was telling people to buy Circuit City. I'd show you that graph but for some reason I can't find it. Here's an approximation: http://j.mp/mj77CD Message board geeks get a pass for doubting Apple in 2001, sure. But stock market analysts who give ludicrously bad advice deserve all the chowder Gruber can dump…
I strongly recommend the following: Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap and Others Don't The Goal: A process of Continuous Improvement Team of Teams Strategy that Works: Bridging the Stategy to Execution Gap There isn't a single book that will teach you everything you need to know, but these 5 books taken together will cover nearly everything. The points I suggest paying the most attention to are level 5 leadership, the hedgehog concept, the flywheel concept, Kaizen style continuous improvement, how to organize groups of teams to avoid micromanaging, and how to work with a…