Category Archives: Career

Books, Career, Startups

It’s all your fault.

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sepThis is the second in a series of leadership posts brought on by my latest reading of Shogun. As a reminder, Blackthorne is an English ship navigator marooned in Japan (loosely based on the exploits of the historical figure William Adams, the first Englishman to reach Japan and the first western Samurai). Samurai had a fierce sense of honor and committed ritual suicide if they failed in their duty, hence the tongue in cheek image.

Shogun

SOON TO BE AN FX LIMITED SERIES * A bold English adventurer. An invincible Japanese warlord. A beautiful woman torn between two ways of life. All brought together in an extraordinary saga aflame with passion, conflict, ambition, and the struggle for power.Here is the world-famous novel of Japan that is the earliest book in James Clavell’s masterly Asian saga.

There’s a natural tendency amongst first time CEOs (and first time managers) to blame subordinates when something goes wrong. After all, they probably did make a mistake. But, it’s always your fault. You are responsible. If not for doing the task correctly, then for ensuring that it is done correctly. That the mission is clear. That the right resources are available; that there’s no roadblocks; that the right person is leading the activity. If something big goes wrong, it’s your fault.

Shogun contains an interesting illustrative example. Blackthorne is in the process of becoming Samurai, via the Japanese daimyo (lord) Toranaga, his sponsor and protector. Blackthorne has been given possession of a household and servants, and raised to Samurai class. But he’s not quite made the jump to Japanese food, and so he is hanging a pheasant near the house for it to improve in flavor, and the bird is beginning to decompose and attract flies. An old gardener volunteers to remove the bird from the house during Blackthorne’s absence. Samurai have the power of life and death over their subjects and violating an order is punishable by death. So the gardener is put to death by Blackthorne’s Japanese wife, also Samurai. After raging at her for the unnecessary death,

He wept because a good man was dead unnecessary and because he now knew that he had murdered him. “Lord God forgive me. I’m responsible — not Fujiko. I killed him. I ordered that no one was to touch the pheasant but me. I asked her if everyone understood and she said yes. I ordered it with mock gravity but that doesn’t matter now. I gave the orders, knowing their law and knowing their customs. The old man broke my stupid order so what else could Fujiko-san do? I’m to blame.”

If you’re the CEO, it’s your fault. And sometimes you have to fall on your sword for it, metaphorically speaking. But embrace the responsibility and this way of thinking, and you’ll find that things don’t go wrong very often.

 

Books, Career, Favorites, Startups

Playing the long game

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shogun

Fred Wilson recently posted a great article entitled Don’t Kick the Can Down the Road. It exhorts entrepreneurs to not avoid making hard decisions. Great advice — and yet, sometimes you need the patience to let things develop, or not make a decision before you need to. (Ironically, many VCs — not necessarily Fred — are past masters at not making a decision, happily telling entrepreneurs “come back when you have more data” vs. just telling them no and getting it over with).

I recently read Shogun, James Clavell’s enormously entertaining and informative novel about set in feudal Japan. It is a master class in how patience is necessary to achieve big goals.

Shogun

SOON TO BE AN FX LIMITED SERIES * A bold English adventurer. An invincible Japanese warlord. A beautiful woman torn between two ways of life. All brought together in an extraordinary saga aflame with passion, conflict, ambition, and the struggle for power.Here is the world-famous novel of Japan that is the earliest book in James Clavell’s masterly Asian saga.

Blackthorne is an English ship navigator marooned in Japan (loosely based on the exploits of the real historical figure William Adams, the first Englishman to reach Japan and the first western Samurai). He is made Samurai by lord Toranaga (a fictionalized version of the historical figure Tokugawa Ieyasu). The novel is ostensibly focused on Blackthorne but the true central figure of the book is Toranaga. Toranaga secretly desires to become Shogun, the supreme military commander of Japan, and de facto ruler of the country. But against him are an array of other leaders, with a stronger political position and bigger armies. Toranaga is the master of not making a decision until he has to, or the time is right:

though in reality it was only a cover to gain time, continuing his lifelong pattern of negotiation, delay, and seeming retreat, always waiting patiently until a chink in the armor appeared over a jugular, then stabbing home viciously, without hesitation.

or

“Doesn’t this explain Toranaga? Doesn’t this intrigue fit him like a skin? Isn’t he doing what he’s always doing, just waiting like always, playing for time like always, a day here a day there and soon a month has passed and again he has an overwhelming force to sweep all opposition aside? He’s gained almost a month since Zataki brought the summons to Yokose.”

In the end, it is all about patience, or as Toranaga says:

Patience means holding back your inclination to the seven emotions: hate, adoration, joy, anxiety, anger, grief, fear. If you don’t give way to the seven you are patient, then you’ll soon understand all manner of things…

If you’re building a business, you don’t have to raise venture capital. The tech press romanticize this path. You can bootstrap, but that requires patience (and resources or a very low burn rate). But if you are patient, passionate, and committed, you can build a very interesting company this way.

This strategy doesn’t lend itself well to fast-developing, winner-take-all markets. Competing with an Uber or a Groupon, you have to scale fast or get run over. In venture-backed companies, you are on the “shot clock” as soon as you take money — investors want a return. Conversely you become addicted to the funding and can’t survive without it, so you have to succeed quickly or you’ll run out of money.

In more slowly developing markets, or markets that are small enough that big money or big companies aren’t a threat, patience can be a virtue, or even a requirement. Books are an interesting example. The market develops slowly. The few major success stories, say Goodreads or Wattpad, were almost a decade in the making. Any number of innovative startups (e.g. discovery engine Small Demons, subscription reading platform Oyster) produced great products but were unable to fund operations long enough to achieve critical mass.

So, with my book discovery engine, The Hawaii Project, I’m playing the long game. I’m not raising funding and going for the big splash, because I know the market will take longer to develop than the shot clock will permit. I’m self funding. Cloud computing and open software have made it possible for a single person to build very interesting products, and let them run for long periods of time at very little cost. I can wait out the competition; most of them will run out of money.

When I meet with young entrepreneurs embarking on something, one of my first questions is, “Do you care enough about this problem to spend 5 or 10 years of your life on it?”. Because that is what it’s going to take.

Career, Favorites, Startups

Everything is practice

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peleEverything is training.

In the early days of a startup, everything is training. You’re alway practicing. Talk to anyone who will listen. Think of yourself as an athlete, always training, practicing.

That party where you’re answering questions from some random person at your startup — 2 months later you’re going to get that question from a rock star reporter when you least expect it, and you’ll be ready with the answer on autopilot. Keep building. Keep doing stuff even when the payoff isn’t 100% clear. Invest yourself. Get paid later.

That random student who wanted to chat, you thought about blowing off? Turns out his mom is a VC. That candidate who you knew wasn’t right, but still wanted to chat? Turns out he knows the perfect person and introduces you after you do him the courtesy of a conversation. Invest. Share. It will come back to you in ways you never expect.

You don’t make your money now off your success now (mostly). You make your money in the next “life”. Because what you do in this “life” (your current gig) is what gets to that next, bigger gig, your next “life”, that’s an even bigger opportunity. You’ll have to earn it there, too, but you’ll never get the chance if you don’t invest.

Most of the money I’ve made, I’ve made via Endeca, when they/we were acquired by Oracle. And I worked my ass off for it. But I’d never have gotten the chance, if I hadn’t invested 5 “dog years” (seemed like 35 years) at PTC. It was a meat grinder, a hell of place to learn but an unrelenting grind. But because of the work I did there, and the reputation I built, I got a chance to take the next step up at Endeca. Invest.

I constantly speak to managers or leaders who are aggravated that someone who works for them makes more than they do. “Get over it”, I tell them. I’ve been everything from a manager of a few people to a VP running hundreds of people to a CEO. In almost every circumstance I’ve had someone reporting to me who made more than I did. They say you should hire people smarter than you. I agree. And that probably means they’re sometimes going to get paid more. And you know what — that’s ok, because they’re going to make me money, in this life or the next.