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
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.
Interpretation
Being a founder and CEO comes with immense responsibility and accountability for every decision made.
In this quote, Ben Horowitz emphasizes the weight of leadership, particularly for founders and CEOs, highlighting that they are ultimately responsible for all outcomes in their organization. Every choice, whether positive or negative, reflects directly on the leadership, underscoring the reality that the burden of accountability lies firmly on their shoulders.
In practice
In a discussion about startup challenges, this quote can be used to illustrate the weight of leadership.
Big companies have trouble with innovation. Innovation is about bad ideas, or ideas that look like bad ideas. That's the fundamental thing.
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.
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.
Nobody knows how to be a CEO. It's something you have to learn. It's a very lonely job.
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.
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.
Leadership is seeing the possibilities in a situation while others are seeing the limitations.
Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt.
My role is to make sure we're moving in the right direction, getting points, rebounds, steals, assists and providing leadership.
The one thing I was always told is you absolutely have to tell truth to power. Whether you're a second lieutenant working with a captain and a lieutenant colonel, or a four-star general working with the Office Secretary of Defense and the White House, the decision makers have got to have ground truth.
Most of my work has been in corporations, studying how you build an organization that helps people to identify and work to their strengths.
It's not enough to just have talent at Atletico Madrid. At other clubs it is, but we can't sign superstars and have to look for players with a good work ethic.
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