Big companies have trouble with innovation. Innovation is about bad ideas, or ideas that look like bad ideas. That's the fundamental thing.
Ben HorowitzRead
As a company gets big, the information that informs decision-making gets massive. Depending upon the prism through which you view the business, your perspective will vary. If two people are in charge, this variance will cause conflict and delay.
Interpretation
What this quote means
As companies grow, the complexity of information increases, which can lead to conflicts in decision-making based on different perspectives.
In this quote, Ben Horowitz emphasizes the challenges that arise in leadership as organizations expand. He points out that with growth comes an overwhelming amount of information, and when different leaders hold varying viewpoints or 'prisms' through which they interpret this information, it can lead to disagreements and slowed decision-making processes. This highlights the importance of aligning perspectives among leadership to ensure effective functioning and progress within a large company.
Themes
LeadershipDecision-MakingConflictPerspectiveGrowth
In practice
Example use cases
In a corporate leadership meeting to address internal conflicts on strategy.
More from Ben Horowitz
All quotes →You read these management books that say, 'These are the hard things about running a company.' But those aren't really the hard things. The hard things are when you have to layoff half your company, or you have to fire your best friend. Or you have to figure out a way not to go bankrupt.
Ben HorowitzRead
Look - this is the terror of being a founder & CEO. It is all your fault. Every decision, every person you hire, every dumb thing you buy or do - ultimately, you're at the end.
Ben HorowitzRead
Nobody knows how to be a CEO. It's something you have to learn. It's a very lonely job.
Ben HorowitzRead
As long as people are clear on what they need to do and what's going on, you're very likely to succeed. When nobody is clear, then you're guaranteed to fail.
Ben HorowitzRead
I emphasize to C.E.O.s, you have to have a story in the minds of the employees. It's hard to memorize objectives, but it's easy to remember a story.
Ben HorowitzRead
Similar quotes
Once you have a staff of prepared, intelligent, and energetic people, the next step is to motivate them to be creative.
Akio MoritaRead
Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust must be men of unexceptionable characters.
Samuel AdamsRead
The Presidency, even to the most experienced politicians, is no bed of roses; and [Zachary] Taylor like others, found thorns within it. No human being can fill that station and escape censure.
Abraham LincolnRead
Sweat saves blood, blood saves lives, but brains saves both.
Erwin RommelRead
Inspiring conduct has so much more of an impact than coercing it.
Thomas FriedmanRead
I think I lived those years very impersonally. It was almost as though I had erected someone outside myself who was the president's wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I felt and worked until I left the White House.
Eleanor RooseveltRead