Well, that’s a mouthful. Let me break it down. Ideas Matter Less Than Execution Execution Matters Less Than Timing Timing Matters Less Than Luck There’s a persistent myth about entrepreneurs as heroes – the people with the brilliant ideas and Eureka moments that bring companies to life and create success. I’ve never believed in that myth, or at least not in its universality, as I’ve always valued both ideation and execution in terms of business building. But as I was thinking about that construct more the other day, it occurred to me that there’s actually a hierarchy of the two, and not just of the two, but of timing and luck as well. The best businesses — the runaway successes…
Category
Leadership
The Illusion and (Mis)uses of Certainty
September’s Harvard Business Review had a really thought-provoking article for me called How Certainty Transforms Persuasion. Seth Godin wrote a blog post around the same time called The Illusion of Control. The two together make for an interesting think about using information to shape behavior as leaders. I’ve often been accused of delivering too many mixed messages to the company at all-hands meetings, so I enjoyed the think, though not in the way I expected to. Let’s start with Seth’s thesis, which is easier to get through. Essentially he says that nothing is certain, at best we can influence events, we’re never actually in control of situations…but that we think we are: When the illusion of control collides with the reality of…
You Have To Be All In, Until You’re Not
One of the things I’ve learned over the years is that as the organization scales, you have to be all-in, until you’re not. What the heck does that mean? It means that, other than confiding your indecision to a very small number of trusted advisors on a given issue, indecision is poison to the people around you and to the organization in general. So even if you’re thinking of doing something new or different or making a tough call on something, you generally need to project confidence until you’ve made the call. One example of this is around a decision to fire someone on the team, especially a senior executive. Public indecision about this reminds me of years ago when…
The Playbook
As Return Path gets older, we are having more and more alums go on to be successful senior executives at other companies – some in our space, some not. It’s a great thing, and something I’m really proud of. I was wondering the other day if there’s effectively some kind of “RP Playbook” that these people have taken with them. Here’s what I learned from asking five of them. People-related practices are all prominent as part of the Playbook, not surprising for a People First company. Our Peer Recognition program, which is almost as old as the company and has evolved over time, was on almost everyone’s list. Open Vacation is also part of the mix, as was a focus…
The Joy of Coaching
I was the head coach of my two older kids’ little league team this past spring. The whole thing was a little bit of an accident – I vaguely volunteered for something and ended up in charge. The commitment was a little daunting, but I was ok with it since the season was only a couple months long, it was both Casey and Wilson, and both kids, especially Wilson, are really into baseball. Other than helping out a bit here and there, I’d never coached a sports team before. What started off as an unclear assignment ended up as one of the most fun and fulfilling things I’ve done in years. I loved every minute of it, looked forward to…
ReturnShip Program, Part II
Today marks the graduation for the six women who participated in our inaugural ReturnShip program, which I wrote about here and which was written up at least twice, in Harvard Business Review and in the San Francisco Chronicle. The ReturnShip was a 14-week paid internship program designed for women who have been out of the workforce for more than 1 year to re-enter and build credible and relevant experience, and to feed our funnel of prospective employees. While there are still a couple things in the air, my guess is that at least three, and as many as five, of the program’s six participants, will continue their work at Return Path, either full time, part time, or as a contractor….
PTJD
Post Traumatic Job Disorder. As we have been scaling up Return Path, we have been increasingly hiring senior people in from the outside. We believe in promoting from within and do it all the time, but sometimes you need an experienced leader who has operated at or ahead of the scale you’re at. Someone with deep functional expertise and a “been there, done that” playbook. When you get a hire like this right, it’s amazing how much that kind of person gets done, how quickly. One of the pitfalls of those hires, though, is cultural fit. Many of the larger organizations in the world don’t have the kind of supportive, employee-centric cultures that we have here, or that startups tend…
The 2×4
The 2×4 I took a Freshman Seminar in my first semester at Princeton in 1988 with a world-renowned professor of classical literature, Bob Hollander. My good friend and next-door neighbor Peggy was in the seminar with me. It was a small group — maybe a dozen of us — meeting for three hours each week for a roundtable with Professor Hollander, and then writing the occasional paper. Peggy and I both thought we were pretty smart. We had both been high school salutatorians from good private schools and had both gotten into Princeton, right? Then the first paper came due, and we were both a bit cavalier about it. We wrote them in full and delivered them on time, but…
Physical Therapist or Chiropractor?
Physical Therapist or Chiropractor? I was talking to a good friend the other day who is an executive coach. He was telling me that his clients are all over the map in terms of role (CEO or functional senior exec), need (small issue to large issue), company size and stage. But most important, he noted that his clients have different ways of learning, and that he has to tailor his coaching style to the client. I had two main takeaways from this interaction. First, he had a particularly memorable way of phrasing the differences in client learning styles that inform his approach. Some of his clients, he noted, need a physical therapist. They need someone to work with them every…
How to Manage Your Career
I gave a presentation to a few hundred Return Path employees in January at an all-hands conference we did called “How to Manager Your Career.” The presentation has three sections — The Three Phases of a Career, How to Get Promoted, and How to Wow Your Manager. While it’s not as good without the voiceover and interactivity, I thought I’d post it here…see the presentation on Slideshare. As I said to my audience, if there’s one thing to take away from the topic, it’s this: Managing your career is up to one, and only one person – you. It doesn’t matter how great a corporate culture you have, or how supportive your manager is. You’re the only person who cares…
The Gift of Feedback, Part IV
The Gift of Feedback, Part IV I wrote a few weeks ago about my live 360 – the first time I’ve ever been in the room for my own review discussion. I now have a development plan drafted coming out of the session, and having cycled it through the contributors to the review, I’m ready to go with it. As I did in 2008, 2009, and 2011, I’m posting it here publicly. This time around, there are three development items: Continue to spend enough time in-market. In particular, look for opportunities to spend more time with direct clients. There was a lot of discussion about this at my review. One director suggested I should spend at least 20% of my…