Wither the News? (Plus a Bonus Book Short)
It’s unusual that I blog about a book before I’ve actually finished it, but this one is too timely to pass up given today’s news about newspapers. The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture, by Andrew Keen, at least the first 1/2 of it, is a pretty intense rant about how the Internet’s trend towards democratizing media and content production has a double dirty underbelly:
poor quality — “an endless digital forest of mediocrity,”
no checks and balances — “mainstream journalists and newspapers have the organization, financial muscle, and and credibility to gain access to sources and report the truth…professional journalists can go to jail for telling the truth” (or, I’d add, for libel)
So what’s today’s news about newspapers? Another massive circulation drop — 3.6% in the last six months. Newspaper readership across the country is at its lowest level since 1946, when the population was only 141 million, or less than half what it is today. The digital revolution is well underway. Print newspapers are declining asymptotically to zero.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m an Internet guy, and I love the democratization of media for many reasons. I also think it will ultimately force old media companies to be more efficient as individual institutions and as an industry in order to survive (not to mention more environmentally friendly). But Keen has good thoughts about quality and quantity that are interesting counterpoints to the revolution. I hope at least some newspapers survive, change their models and their cost structures, and start competing on content quality. The thought that everyone in the world will get their news ONLY from citizen journalists is scary.
I’m curious to see how the rest of the book turns out. I’ll reblog if it’s radically different from the themes expressed here.
Update (having finished the book now): Keen puts the mud in curmudgeon. He doesn’t appear to have a good word to say about the Internet, and he allows his very good points about journalistic integrity and content quality and our ability to discern the truth to get washed up in a rant against online gambling, porn, and piracy. Even some of his rant points are valid, but saying, for example, that Craigslist is problematic to society because it only employs 22 people and is hugely profitable while destroying jobs and revenue at newspapers just comes across as missing some critical thinking and basically just pissing in the wind. His final section on Solutions is less blustry and has a couple good examples and points to offer, but it’s a case of too little, too late for my liking.
Book Short: Wither the Team
I keep expecting one of his books to be repetitive or boring, but Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team held my interest all the way through, as did his others. It builds nicely on the last one I read, Death by Meeting (post, link).
I’d say that over the 9 1/2 years we’ve been in business at Return Path, we’ve systematically improved the quality of our management team. Sometimes that’s because we’ve added or changed people, but mostly it’s because we’ve been deliberate about improving the way in which we work together. This particular book has a nice framework for spotting troubles on a team, and it both reassured me that we have done a nice job stamping out at least three of the dysfunctions in the model and fired me up that we still have some work to do to completely stamp out the final two (we’ve identified them and made progress, but we’re not quite there yet.
The dysfunctions make much more sense in context, but they are (in descending order of importance):
- Absence of trust
- Fear of conflict (everyone plays politically nice)
- Lack of commitment (decisions don’t stick)
- Avoidance of accountability
- Inattention to results (individual ego vs. team success)
For those who are wondering, the two we’re still working on at the exec team level here are conflict and commitment. And the two are related. If you don’t produce engaged discussion about an issue and allow everyone to air their opinions, they will invariably be less bought into a decision (especially one they don’t agree with). But we’re getting there and will continue to work aggressively on it until we’ve rooted it out.
There’s one other interesting takeaway from the book that’s not part of the framework directly, which is that an executive has to be first and foremost a member of his/her team of peers, not the head of his/her department. That’s how successful teams get built. AND (this is key) this must trickle down in the organization as well. Everyone who manages a team of group heads or managers needs to make those people function well as a team first, then as managers of their own groups second.
At any rate, another quick gem of a book. I’m kind of sorry there’s only one left in the series.
So far the series includes:
I have one or two more to go, which I’ll tackle in due course and am looking forward to.
Book Short: What’s Your Meeting Routine?
Patrick Lencioni’s Death by Meeting is, as Brad advertised, a great read, and much in line with his other books (running list at the end of the post). His books are just like candy. If only all business books were this short and easy to read.
This fable isn’t quite what I thought it was going to be at the outset – it’s not about too many meetings, which is what I’ve always called “death by meeting.” It’s about staff meetings that bore you to death. With a great story around them featuring characters named Casey and Will (my two oldest kids’ names, which had me chuckling the whole time), Lencioni describes a great framework for splitting up your staff meetings into four different types of meetings: the daily stand-up, the weekly tactical, the monthly strategic, and the quarterly offsite.
There’s definitely something to the framework. We have over the years done all four types of meetings, though we never had all four in our rotation at once as that felt like overkill. But I think at a minimum, any 2 get the job done much better than a single format recurring meeting. As long as you figure out how to separate status updates from more strategic conversations, you’re directionally in good shape. We have almost entirely eliminated or automated status update meetings at this point at my staff level.
The book has some other good stuff in it, though, about the role of conflict in staff meetings, which I’ll save for your own read of the book!
So far the series includes:
- The Three Signs of a Miserable Job (post, link)
- The Five Temptations of a CEO (post, link
)
- The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive (post, link)
I have two more to go, which I’ll tackle in due course and am looking forward to.
Startup CEO “Bibliography”
A couple people who read Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business asked me if I would publish a list of all the other business books I refer to over the course of the book. Here it is — I guess in some respects an all-time favorite list for me of business books.
And here’s the list of books in Brad Feld’s Startup Revolution series other than Startup CEO:
Book Short: On The Same Page
Being on the same page with your team, or your whole company for that matter, is a key to success in business. The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, by Patrick Lencioni, espouses this notion and boils down the role of the CEO to four points:
- Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team
- Create organizational clarity
- Overcommunicate organizational clarity
- Reinforce organizational clarity through human systems
Those four points sound as boring as bread, but the book is anything but. The book’s style is easy and breezy — business fiction. One of the most poignant moments for me was when the book’s “other CEO” (the one that doesn’t “get it”) reflects that he “didn’t go into business to referee executive team meetings and delivery employee orientation…he loved strategy and competition.” Being a CEO is a dynamic job that changes tremendously as the organization grows. This book is a great handbook for anyone transitioning out of the startup phase, or for anyone managing a larger organization.
I haven’t read the author’s other books (this is one in a series), but I will soon!
The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business is Patrick Lencioni’s newest book. Unlike most or all of his other books (see the end of this post for the listing), this one is not a fable, although his writing style remains very quick and accessible.
I liked this book a lot. First, the beginning section is a bit of a recap of his Five Dysfunctions of a Team which I think was his best book. And the ending section is a recap of his Death by Meeting, another really good one. The middle sections of the book are just a great reminder of the basic building blocks of creating and communicating strategy and values – about driving alignment.
But the premise, as the subtitle indicates, is that maintaining organizational health is the most important thing you can do as a leader. I tell our team at Return Path all the time that our culture is a competitive advantage in many ways, some quantifiable, and others a little less tangible.
A telling point in the book is when Lencioni is relaying a conversation he had with the CEO of a client company who does run a healthy organization – he asked, “Why in the world don’t your competitors do any of this?” And the client responded, “You know, I honestly believe they think it’s beneath them.” Lencioni goes on to say, “In spite of its undeniable power, so many leaders struggle to embrace organizational health because they quietly believe they are too sophisticated, too busy, or too analytical to bother with it.” And there you have it. More examples of why “the soft stuff” is mission critical.
Lencioni’s “Recipe for Organizational Health” (the outline of the book):
– Build a Cohesive Leadership Team
– Create Clarity
– Overcommunicate Clarity
– Reinforce Clarity
And his recipe for creating a tight set of “mission/vision/values” (the middle of the book):
1. Why do we exist?
2. How do we behave?
3. What do we do?
4. How will we succeed?
5. What is most important, right now?
6. Who must do what?
While there are lots of other good frameworks for doing all of this, Lencioni’s models and books are great, simple reminders of one of the CEO’s most important leadership functions. We’re recrafting our own mission and values statements at the moment at Return Path, and we’re doing it using this 6-Question framework instead of the classic “Mission/Vision/Values” framework popularized a few years back by Harvard Business Review.
The full book series roundup as far as OnlyOnce has gotten so far is:
Book Short: Bringing it on Home
Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable About Destroying the Barriers That Turn Colleagues Into Competitors wasn’t Patrick Lencion’s best book, but it wasn’t bad, either. I think all six of his books are well worth a read (list at the bottom of the post). And in fact, they really belong in two categories.
The Three Signs of a Miserable Job (post, link), The Five Temptations of a CEO (post, link), and The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive (post, link) are all related around the topic of management.
Death by Meeting (post, link), The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (post, link), and Silos, Politics and Turf Wars, on the other hand, are all related around the topic of leading a team and healthy team dynamics. This latest book, which is the last of his six books for me, rounds out this topic nicely, in a fun “novel” format as is the case with his other books.
The book hammers home the theme of an executive team needing to first be a team and then second be a collection of group heads as a means of breaking down barriers that exist inside organizations. It also lays out a framework for creating high-level alignment inside a team. The framework may or may not be perfect — we are using a different one at Return Path (the Balanced Scorecard) that accomplishes most of the same things — but for those companies who don’t have one, it’s as good as any.
The most compelling point in the book, though is the point that teams often make the most progress, change the most, and do their best work when their backs are up against a wall. And the point Lencioni makes here is — “why wait for a crisis?”
At any rate, another good, quick book, and absolutely worth reading along with the others, particularly along with the other two closely related ones. I’m definitely sorry to be done with the series. We may try the “field guide” companion to The Five Dysfunctions and see how the practical exercises work out.
The full series roundup is:
Book Short: Vulnerability Applied to Leadership
Getting Naked: A Business Fable About Shedding The Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty (book, Kindle), is Patrick Lencion’s latest fable-on-the-go book, and it’s as good a read as all of his books (see list of the ones I’ve read and reviewed at the end of the post).
The book talks about the power of vulnerability as a character trait for those who provide service to clients in that they are rewarded with levels of client loyalty and intimacy. Besides cringing as I remembered my own personal experience as an overpaid and underqualified 21 year old analyst at how ridiculous some aspects of the management consulting industry are…the book really made me think. The challenge to the conventional wisdom of “never letting ‘em see you sweat” (we *think* vulnerability will hurt success, we *confuse* competence with ego, etc.) is powerful. And although vulnerability is often uncomfortable, I believe Lencioni is 100% right – and more than he thinks.
First, the basic premise of the book is that consultants have three fears they need to overcome to achieve nirvana – those fears and the mitigation tactics are:
- Fear of losing the business: mitigate by always consulting instead of selling, giving away the business, telling the kind truth, and directly addressing elephants in the room
- Fear of being embarrassed: mitigate by asking dumb questions, making dumb suggestions, and celebrating your mistakes
- Fear of feeling inferior: mitigate by taking a bullet for the client, making everything about the client, honoring the client’s work, and doing your share of the dirty work
But to my point about Lencioni being more right than he thinks…I’d like to extend the premise around vulnerability as a key to success beyond the world of consulting and client service into the world of leadership. Think about some of the language above applied to leading an organization or a team:
- Telling the kind truth and directly addressing elephants in the room: If you’re not going to do this, who is? There is no place at the top of an organization or team for conflict avoidance
- Asking dumb questions: How else do you learn what’s going on in your organization? How else can you get people talking instead of listening?
- Making dumb suggestions: I’d refer to this more as “bringing an outside/higher level perspective to the dialog.” You never know when one of your seemingly dumb suggestions will connect the dots for your team in a way that they haven’t done yet on their own (e.g., the suggestions might not be so dumb after all)
- Celebrating your mistakes: We’re all human. And as a leader, some of your people may build you up in their mind beyond what’s real and reasonable. Set a good example by noting when you’re wrong, noting your learnings, and not making the same mistake twice
- Taking a bullet for your team, making everything about your team and honoring your team’s work: Management 101. Give credit out liberally. Take the blame for team failings.
- Doing your share of the dirty work: An underreported quality of good leaders. Change the big heavy bottle on the water cooler. Wipe down the coffee machine. Order the pizza or push the beer cart around yourself. Again, we’re all human, leaders aren’t above doing their share to keep the community of the organization safe, fun, clean, well fed, etc.
There’s a really powerful message here. I hope this review at least scratches the surface of it.
The full book series roundup as far as OnlyOnce has gotten so far is:
Book Not-So-Short: Not Just for Women
At the request of the women in our Professional Services team, I recently read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, and while it may seem like dancing the meringue in a minefield for a male CEO to blog about it, I think it’s an important enough topic to give it a shot. So here goes.
First, given the minefield potential, let me issue a few caveats up front. These are deep, ages old, complex, societal issues and behaviors we’re talking about here. There is no quick answer to anything. There is no universal answer to anything. Men don’t have the same perspective as women and can come across as observers (which in some respects, they are). Working moms don’t have the same perspective as stay-at-home moms, or as single women. We try to be good about all these issues at Return Path, but I’m sure we’ve only scratched the surface. </caveats>
Perhaps most important, my overall take on the book is that it’s a very good business book that everyone should read – not just women. I have a strong reaction to the reactions I’ve read and heard about the book – mostly from women dismissing the book because Sandberg has immense financial resources, so how could she possibly know the plight of the ordinary mom, and how could she understand what it is like to be a stay-at-home mom? That reaction is to dismiss the dismissals! I found the book to be very broadly applicable. Of course things about life with a two-working parent family are easier if you have more money. But that’s completely not the point of the book. And Sandberg doesn’t once criticize stay-at-home moms for that choice – in fact, she acknowledges feelings of guilt and inferiority around them and admiration for the work they do that benefits all families and kids, not just their own.
Here are a few of the biggest areas of thinking, AHA, or questioning, that the book gave me:
- One of Sandberg’s underlying points is that the world would be a better place with more women in leadership positions, so that’s an important goal. It’s interesting that few enough of our leaders are women, that it’s hard for me to draw that same conclusion, but it makes sense to me on the surface, and there’s some research about management teams and boards to back it up. As far as I can tell, the world has yet to see a brutal female dictator. Or a fair share of political or corporate scandals caused by women. There are definitely some horror stories of “tough boss” women, but probably no more than “tough boss” men. It’s interesting to note that in our society, leadership roles seem to be prized for their power and monetary reward, so even if the world wouldn’t be a better place with more female leaders, it would certainly be a more fair place along those two dimensions
- I felt that a bunch of Sandberg’s points about women were more generalizations about certain personality types which can be inherent in men and women. Maybe they’re more prevalent in women, even much more, but some are issues for some men as well. For example, her general point about women not speaking up even if they have something to say. I have seen this trait in women as well as more introverted men. As a leader, I work hard to draw comments out of people who look like they have something to say in a meeting but aren’t speaking up. This is something that leaders need to pay close attention to across the board so that they hear all the voices around their tables. Same goes for some of the fears she enumerates. Many male leaders I know, myself included at times, have the “fear of being found out as a fraud” thought. Same goes for the “desire to be liked by everyone” holding people back – that’s not gender specific, either. All that said, if these traits are much more prevalent in women, and they are traits that drive attainment of leadership roles, well, you get the point
- The fact that women earn 77 cents on the dollar in equivalent jobs for men is appalling. I’ve asked our People Team to do a study of this by level, factoring in experience and tenure, to make sure we don’t have that bias at Return Path. I know for sure we don’t at the leadership level. And I sure as heck hope we don’t anywhere in the organization. We are also about to launch an Unconscious Bias training program, which should be interesting
- Sandberg made a really interesting point that most of the women who don’t work are either on the low end or high end of the income spectrum. Her point about the low end really resonated with me – that women who don’t earn a lot stop working if their salaries only barely cover childcare costs. However, she argues that that’s a very short term view, and that staying in the workforce means your salary will escalate over time, while childcare costs stay relatively flat. This is compounded by the fact that women who lean back early in their careers simply because they are anticipating someday having children are earning less than they should be earning when they do finally have children.
- The other end of the income spectrum also made sense once I parsed through it – why do women whose husbands make a lot of money (most of whom make a lot of money as well) decide to off-ramp? Sandberg’s point about the “Leadership ambition gap” is interesting, and her example of running a marathon with the spectators screaming “you know you don’t have to do this” as opposed to “you’ve got this” is really vivid. See two bullets down for more on this one. But it might not be straight-up Leadership Ambition Gap so much as a recognition that some of the high-earning jobs out there are so demanding that having two of them in the household would be a nightmare (noting that Dave and Sheryl seem to have figured some of that out), or that moms don’t want to miss out on that much of their children’s lives. They want to be there…and they can afford to. Another related topic that I wish Sandberg had covered in more depth is the path of moms who off-ramp, then re-on-ramp once their youngest children are in school, whether into the career they left or a different one. That would be an interesting topic on many fronts
- Societal influences must matter. The facts that, in 2011 – Gymboree manufactured onesies that say “smart like Daddy” and “pretty like Mommy,” and that JC Penney teenage girl t-shirts say “I’m too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me” are more than a little troublesome on the surface (unless Gymboree also produces “handsome like Daddy” and “wicked smart like Mommy,” which somehow I doubt). The fact that women do worse on math and science tests when they have to identify their gender at the top of the test is surprising and shocking
- I am really fortunate that Mariquita only works part time, and it’s unclear to me how our lives would work if we both worked full time, especially given my extremely heavy travel schedule, though I am sure we’d figure it out. And there’s no way that I carry 50% of the burden of household responsibilities. Maybe 20-25% at best. But I was struck by Sandberg’s comments (I am sure true) that in two-working-parent families, women still carry the preponderance of household responsibilities on their shoulders. I totally don’t get this. If you both work, how can you not be equal partners at home? A quick mental survey of a couple of the two-working-parent families we know would indicate that the parents split household responsibilities somewhat evenly, though you can never know this from the outside. This should be a no brainer. Sandberg’s point that men need to “lean into their families” is spot on in these cases for sure
- On a related note, Sandberg’s comment that “as women must be more empowered at work, men must be more empowered at home…moms can be controlling and critical…if he’s forced to do things her way, pretty soon she’ll be doing them herself” made me smile. I have definitely seen this “learned helplessness” on the home front with dads quite a bit over the years
- One really good point Sandberg makes is that younger employees who don’t have kids should be allowed to have a life outside of work just as much as women who do have kids. And that she pays people for the quality and quantity of their output, not their hours. These are principles that match our values and philosophy at Return Path 100%
- Probably the most startling moment in the book for me – and I suspect many other men – was Sandberg’s vignette about the young woman at Facebook who was starting to “lean back” because she might someday have a family – before she was even dating anyone! This really gave me a lot of pause. If widespread (and I assume it is), there are clearly societal forces at work that we need to do more to help women early in their careers overcome, if they want to overcome them
- Sandberg’s point that a rich and fulfilling career “is a Jungle Gym, not a Ladder” is spot on, but this is true for men as well as women. It matches our philosophy of Scaling Horizontally perfectly
- Another very poignant moment in the book was when Sandberg talked about how she herself had shown bias against women in terms of who she called on in meetings or lectures during Q&A. Again, lots of pause for me. If female leaders have the same societal bias against women, that’s a sign that we all have real work in front of us to help level the playing field around giving women air time. Similarly, her example of the Heidi/Howard study was fascinating around how women with the same characteristics are perceived differently by both male and female co-workers gives me pause (for the record, I know the Heidi in question, and I like her!). Likewise, the fact that female leaders are often given unflattering nicknames like “The Iron Lady” – you’d never see something like that for a man in the same position. At least Thatcher wore the name as a badge of honor
I hope this post doesn’t end up as a no-win piece of writing where all I do is touch a few nerves and inspire no ongoing dialog. “Let’s start talking about it,” the ending theme of the book, is a great way to end this post as well. As with all tough issues, articulating the problem is the first step toward solving it. Women need to allow men (as long as the men are open-minded, of course!) to think what they think, say what they think in a safe space, and blunder through their own learnings without feeling threatened. And men need to be comfortable having conversations about topics like these if the paradigmatic relationship between women and leadership is going to continue to shift instead of avoiding the topic or just calling in HR.
Hopefully this blog post is one step towards that at my company. Return Path colleagues – feel free to comment on the blog or via email and share stories of how we’ve either helped you or held you back! But overall, I’m glad I read this book, and I’d encourage anyone and everyone to read it.
News Travels Fast
Fred’s post was Day 1 of the currently-seems-silly TSA ban on liquids on airplanes. One day later, today, I had the pleasure of traveling from Idaho Falls to Boise and back (one metropolis to the next!), and I noticed almost no difference in security and passenger behavior at either airport.
Most people in line zinged out one bit of sarcastic resignation after the next about the silliness of banning all liquids. My favorite was “next thing you know, we’re going to have to travel naked” — yikes — YIKES! — but as terrorists find new and exciting ways to terrorize us, and as our now-nationalized airport security staff doesn’t seem to understand the phrases “anticipation” or “long-term planning,” this seems like a not-so-silly comment.
Hopefully this hysteria will die down at some point. I do remember for a few weeks after 9/11, security personnel were removing nail clippers and disposable razor blades from unsuspecting passengers, as if somehow we were going to shave the pilot to death. Then again, the phrase “death by 1,000 cuts” must come from somewhere.
But the element of this whole thing that left the biggest impression on me was the difference between this and 9/11 — in the weeks after 9/11, passengers still showed up at the airport not knowing that Swiss army knives were contraband. Within 48 hours of this incident, every single person I could hear at both small regional airports in Idaho were 100% informed and had not a single bottle of liquid on their person. Perhaps one more reminder than in the Internet era, news travels super fast?
Book Short: Steve Jobs and Lessons for CEOs and Founders
First, if you work in the internet, grew up during the rise of the PC, or are an avid consumer of Apple products, read the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs (book, kindle). It’s long but well worth it.
I know much has been written about the subject and the book, so I won’t be long or formal, but here are the things that struck me from my perspective as a founder and CEO, many taken from specific passages from the book:
- In the annals of innovation, new ideas are only part of the equation. Execution is just as important. Man is that ever true. I’ve come up with some ideas over the years at Return Path, but hardly a majority or even a plurality of them. But I think of myself as innovative because I’ve led the organization to execute them. I also think innovation has as much to do with how work gets done as it does what work gets done.
- There were some upsides to Jobs’s demanding and wounding behavior. People who were not crushed ended up being stronger. They did better work, out of both fear and an eagerness to please. I guess that’s an upside. But only in a dysfunctional sort of way.
- When one reporter asked him immediately afterward why the (NeXT) machine was going to be so late, Jobs replied, “It’s not late. It’s five years ahead of its time.” Amen to that. Sometimes product deadlines are artificial and silly. There’s another great related quote (I forget where it’s from) that goes something like “The future is here…it’s just not evenly distributed yet.” New releases can be about delivering the future for the first time…or about distributing it more broadly.
- People who know what they’re talking about don’t need PowerPoint.” Amen. See Powerpointless.
- The mark of an innovative company is not only that it comes up with new ideas first, but also that it knows how to leapfrog when it finds itself behind. This is critical. You can’t always be first in everything. But ultimately, if you’re a good company, you can figure out how to recover when you’re not first. Exhibit A: Microsoft.
- In order to institutionalize the lessons that he and his team were learning, Jobs started an in-house center called Apple University. He hired Joel Podolny, who was dean of the Yale School of Management, to compile a series of case studies analyzing important decisions the company had made, including the switch to the Intel microprocessor and the decision to open the Apple Stores. Top executives spent time teaching the cases to new employees, so that the Apple style of decision making would be embedded in the culture. This is one of the most emotionally intelligent things Jobs did, if you just read his actions in the book and know nothing else. Love the style or hate it – teaching it to the company reinforces a strong and consistent culture.
- Some people say, “Give the customers what they want.” But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, “If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’” People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page. There’s always a tension between listening TO customers and innovating FOR them. Great companies have to do both, and know when to do which.
- What drove me? I think most creative people want to express appreciation for being able to take advantage of the work that’s been done by others before us. I didn’t invent the language or mathematics I use. I make little of my own food, none of my own clothes. Everything I do depends on other members of our species and the shoulders that we stand on. And a lot of us want to contribute something back to our species and to add something to the flow. It’s about trying to express something in the only way that most of us know how—because we can’t write Bob Dylan songs or Tom Stoppard plays. We try to use the talents we do have to express our deep feelings, to show our appreciation of all the contributions that came before us, and to add something to that flow. That’s what has driven me. This is perhaps one of the best explanations I’ve ever heard of how creativity can be applied to non-creative (e.g., most business) jobs. I love this.
My board member Scott Weiss wrote a great post about the book as well and drew his own CEO lessons from it – also worth a read here.
Appropos of that, both Scott and I found out about Steve Jobs’ death at a Return Path Board dinner. Fred broke the news when he saw it on his phone, and we had a moment of silence. It was about as good a group as you can expect to be with upon hearing the news that an industry pioneer and icon has left us. Here’s to you, Steve. You may or may not have been a management role model, but your pursuit of perfection worked out well for your customers, and most important, you certainly had as much of an impact on society as just about anyone in business (or maybe all walks of life) that I can think of.
