Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, recounts the best advice he ever got: have an executive coach. I’m an established CEO yet “Everyone needs a coach,” says Schmidt. The advice came from the dean of venture capital, John Doerr.
The winners of the Distinguished Alumni Award at a top business school were asked, “What leads to success in business–a lucky experience or a series of planned decisive steps?”
These Chicago Booth graduates:
easily agreed:
Give yourself some slack. Success involves chance as well as virtue.
Luck plays a meaningful role in everyone’s lives.
–James Simons
#1 Hedge Fund Manager
People are often surprised that I do not read popular business magazines, the latest management books, or eagerly attend speeches by top executives and successful entrepreneurs. I am certainly not knowledge averse; I read a great deal and love information. I am very interested in business and know a lot about it. Clients know that there is seldom an aspect of their enterprise I can not comment upon usefully. I just do not get my data from the usual sources.
I just came across an article in the California Management Review that explains one reason that reading most business journalism and executive memoirs is worse than useless. Phil Rosenzweig’s article, Misunderstanding the Nature of Company Performance: The Halo Effect and Other Business Delusions and his book shows that bad science and poor logic permeate the business press. Rosenzweig’s demolition of the over-praised Good to Great books is especially satisfying.
…it’s easy for pundits and professors to claim that someone blundered. Decisions that turned out badly are castigated as bad decisions. However, these sorts of judgments are erroneous, made retrospectively in light of what we know to have happened subsequently. These errors are surprisingly widespread in the business world. They affect not only journalistic accounts about specific companies, but also undermine the data used for large-scale studies about company performance. They lead to a broad misunderstanding of the forces that drive company success and failure. As we will see below, some of the most popular business studies in recent years are undermined by fundamental problems of data integrity.
…
strategy is about choice, and choice involves risk. There are no easy formulas to apply, no tidy plug-and-play solutions that offer a blueprint for success.
I watched the famous “Gloria” films this weekend, more properly known as Three Approaches to Psychotherapy. Gloria, the patient, generously agreed to have filmed sessions with each of the three great psychotherapists of the 1960s: Carl Rogers, Fritz Perls, and Albert Ellis. It must have been quite a day for her!
Carl Rogers actively worked to wrest control of counseling from the medical monopoly established by Freud and Jung, opening the work to (more…)
Business owners all seem to be very busy and over-worked. For most of them, the reason is that most of what they are doing is just creating more things that have to be done, instead of making the business more successful.
Want more time to relax? Stop trying to fix everything.
—Dan Wertenberg
Serial CEO and Vistage Speaker
(Paraphrased.)
The human immune system is a wondrous mechanism. It detects and destroys invading bacteria, viruses, and debris. It is vigilant 24×7 and extends into every tiny and obscure part of our body. Our immune system is adaptable to changing threats because it learns from and emerges stronger from many infections. A fantastic model for an executive to learn from as she designs monitoring and control systems in a business.
The immune system has a flaw that may also be instructive for managers. It can (more…)
I was very pleased to be invited to a meeting with former MCI Worldcom internal auditor, Cynthia Cooper, sponsored by Accelerent. She is the employee who discovered and “blew the whistle” on the $11 billion financial fraud that, along with Enron, changed corporate governance in America. Unfortunately, similar frauds continue to be perpetrated. Her story, also told in Extraordinary Circumstances, illustrates an important principle of business integrity.
Business crimes are seldom committed by evil people searching for opportunities to lie, cheat, or steal. Most misdeeds, from pilfering pens and misusing the copier to billion-dollar stock frauds, are carried out by regular people who have rationalized small steps over the line. At MCI Worldcom, accountants reclassified some reserves into revenue because the CFO said (more…)
On Killing:
The Psychological Cost of
Learning to Kill in War and Society
by Dave Grossman
Capsule Review
I read this book and I review it here not because of any particular interest in sanctioned killing, rather because of my interest in institutional means of getting people to do difficult yet important tasks. I train salespeople and other business leaders.
I first heard the author, Dave Grossman, on a radio interview promoting this book. I heard him say that that in the history of combat from Alexander the Great through World War II only about 15% of soldiers in battle were trying to kill the enemy. He’s not talking about the long administrative and logistical tail of the army. Only 15-20% of the people with guns or swords in their hands, who were facing a threatening enemy, were willing to kill that enemy. I know this is hard to believe. I first heard this statistic from a pacifist and I called him a liar. Then I heard it from this author, a former US Army Colonel and military historian, who references the research of the US Army’s official W.W.II historian as well as many other scholars.
Reducing debt? See how many hours you need to work to earn your next purchase.
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An email from my wife to our acupuncturist, Jake Avancena of Acupuncture Advantage Care in Herndon and Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Jake,
I recently told a teacher at my kids’ elementary school about you. She asked me to send her your contact info, which I did. But I also told her about our experiences with you. Below is what I sent her. I thought you might appreciate hearing about our successes again. If you would like to include my testimonials on your website, I would be honored. Feel free to edit.
I hope you are well and business is booming!
Kristine Denzau-Mayo
My husband, my oldest son, and I have all been successfully treated by Jake for various problems. My husband had hand pain for 2 years that was so bad that he couldn’t use his hand for anything, including shaking hands, squeezing a binder clip or using a computer mouse. Jake cured him in just 2 visits. That was about 3 years ago and his hand is still fine. He also had (more…)
…one of the key pieces of advice that I regularly give entrepreneurs is to “join a formal group of your peers that meets regularly and spend deep time with them.” I don’t mean “industry associations” or “random networking clubs” – I mean things like EO, Vistage, or YPO.
When I was a first time entrepreneur, I often thought “I don’t have time for this.” Bullshit – I didn’t have time not to do it. And that continues today even after having been involved in hundreds of companies. Entrepreneurial communities aren’t merely geographic or industry focused – peer groups that build deep, intimate, and long term relationships between the members play a key part in the process of entrepreneurship.
–Brad Feld
Early stage investor and entrepreneur
Technology Review
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