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The most difficult CEO skill: managing your own psychology
- RiderOfGiraffes 16y agoDup: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2391735 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2391735 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2391744 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2391744 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2391756 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2391756
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- JoachimSchipper 16y agoYes, but avoiding the Techcrunch blogspam is not a bad thing.
- shadowsun7 16y agoFred Wilson also linked to this, saying: Every once in a while I come across a blog post that so totally nails something and I am reminded why professionals blogging about their craft is such an important development in the world of media. Read this. I found it inspiring. But it also scared the shit out of me, and made me wonder at the few people who've made it as CEO. PS: Notice how all the default pronouns in a Ben Horowitz post are female? I find that totally awesome.
- roel_v 16y ago"PS: Notice how all the default pronouns in a Ben Horowitz post are female? I find that totally awesome." I found it mostly distracting. I'm as progressive as it comes in this regard, but please - "separate the women from the girls"?
- stumm 16y agoWhat's your second sentence supposed to mean?
- gaius 16y ago"Men from the boys" is a common idiom. It harks back to the days when male adolescents would have to commit some act of skill and/or bravery to be considered adults. Writing it as "women from the girls" seems forced and clumsy. Especially since there's no history behind it; in those ancient societies a girl became a woman by getting married.
- commanda 16y agoSo because there's no history or common idiom referencing women in leadership roles, we should just speak of all hardship as though only men have ever, do ever, and will ever perform in difficult rites of passage? Please. This isn't clumsy, it's forward-thinking, and arguably present-aware.
- gaius 16y agoSo coin an all new term, don't knock a square peg into a round hole. Next you'll say that's sexist I suppose. Note that there are no real rites of passage for either sex in the present day, how is it "present aware"? Sorts the pros from the wannabes, how's that?
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- rbarooah 16y agoWhat do you mean 'there's no history behind it'? You've just explained it. The whole purpose is to cause people to examine the metaphor.
- alabut 16y agoIt's not only distracting but unnecessary. The English language has a perfectly usable way to avoid gender-specific pronouns: just use the plural. "A good CEO knows his/her values" becomes "a good CEO knows their values".
- ghshephard 16y agoOr drop the gender altogether: "A good CEO knows their values." Grammar cops hate the use of the collective pronoun where a singular would be more correct, but I see it used often enough that it's slowly working it's way into the English language. In Ben's case, he's making a political statement, so the use of "her" is appropriate in that instance though.
- ZoFreX 16y ago> it's slowly working it's way into the English language It's actually been in English for a pretty long time, there is plenty of precedent. The people that complain loudest about grammar "mistakes" are often the least equipped to talk about them.
- harryh 16y agoYou're missing the point.
- aneth 16y agoI'm not opposed to this, however I didn't realized having your pronouns disagree in number with your nouns had become generally accepted.
- Natsu 16y agoA singular form of "they" has long been used in English writing. Even Shakespeare used it. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Singular_they https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Singular_they That said, constructions like "didn't realized" are best avoided.
- cmicon 16y agoI found the female pronoun use, including the "separate the women from the girls" line, to be delightfully distracting. In a perfect world, I'd say pick a singular gender and go with it for the sake of consistent grammar. However, from my experience, women still deal with unfair perceptions in the work place. This is an easy, subtle way to combat that. I think it's completely worth the distraction. (Note, many writers have done this for the past few years, not just Ben, but it really stands out in the context of a tech startup CEO).
- robg 16y agoI'd add exercise, sleep, and nutrition. A healthy body helps keep a healthy mind.
- jkuria 16y agoCommon man! You don't have to be so overly politically correct. It's ok to say "choices like these separate the boys from the men"! The feminine version just doesn't capture the essence!
- tomjen3 16y agoThank you, stupid stuff like that makes the article so annoying to read because you have to scan back. And no, what separates the women from the girls is boobs.
- bentoner 16y agoI doubt he uses female pronouns to be politically correct: rather, he's doing it to address the very real problem of lack of women in tech startups.
- bfe 16y agoBen and his partner Marc Andreessen have been doing this for a long time; not coincidentally, Marc co-founded Ning with Gina Bianchini as the CEO.
- staunch 16y agoWhich I thought really cool, then I was disappointed when I read that Andreessen is an ex-boyfriend of Bianchini's. I can't help but feel that taints the coolness of it and reinforces a negative stereotype.
- qeorge 16y agoStrong disagree. I'd guess that most successful cofounding teams have a prior, personal relationship (platonic or otherwise). I know the fact that my cofounder and I have been close friends for > 20 years has been crucial to our success, and pg has cited the strength of the founders' friendship as a deciding factor for YC interviews. So, the fact that Mr. Andressen and Ms. Bianchini have a prior relationship is unsurprising. To imply their romantic past conferred her this opportunity, in a way that a platonic friendship would not have, is dangerously close to calling her a whore. (PS: I'm sorry to jump on you, and I empathize with your sentiment. But its one of those built in stereotypes that we need to actively fight within ourselves.)
- petervandijck 16y agoFor fuck sake. This glorifying of CEO's (and entrepreneurs) is making me sick. Sure, it's hard being a CEO. It's hard being a teacher. It's hard being a parent. Stop believing you're so special. "Jason was the one who had to live with the consequences." -> the people being fired have to live with the consequences. Jason only has to live with making the decision, which is much easier. Jeez. Grump.
- jasonshen 16y agoI don't think he's saying that being a CEO is harder than being a parent or teacher. His main point is that CEO's often underestimate the mental/emotional strain that comes with their role. It's true that people who are fired have to live with the consequences - but they usually have friends and family to empathize and support them. Nobody is going to listen to a CEO's sob story about how hard it was to lay off someone - but the fact is it's quite painful. When I was running the Stanford Daily, we were bleeding cash and I had to lay off a 65 year old lady who had been working at the company for 10 years. She was reliable but did poor work and was costing the company tens of thousands of dollars annually. That conversation was not fun and the entire process was stressful. I can't imagine having to lay off an entire division, especially of people that I hired.
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- mkramlich 16y agoThis is part of the reason that I'd ideally like to never have employees. Because it would be horrible to have to lay someone off.
- shalmanese 16y agoThat's like saying you never want to have sex because you heard that Herpes was kind of itchy.
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- iuguy 16y agoIt's like the author just drilled into my mind and started pulling things out. I continually question every decision I make, relying on as much data as I can, but ultimately the buck stops with me, and if you don't find that prospect terrifying, then you're probably not of the right mind to run a company.
- Hoff 16y agoSome perspective, please? If it's not involving building collapses or motor vehicle collisions or bomb blasts or wildfires or other forms of mayhem, and if the decision doesn't involve significant risk of or result in death or serious personal injury, then "terrifying" probably isn't right word. Bankruptcy is not death. Dead is dead. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, Repeat, or however you prefer to think of the decision-making process. Make your decisions with the best possible considerations and information that you have available, work to get the best and the smartest folks around you and with you, and don't undermine yourself with second-guessing your own decisions. And if you're going to be involved in any serious forms of mayhem at all regularly, sure, it can get scary, but you train for it, equip for it, and you make the best available decisions and the perform the best triage you can manage. Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, Repeat.
- klbarry 16y agoThis is a truly amazing article, I've never seen these issues from this perspective.
- rahooligan 16y agoI am grateful to Ben for making such posts. They have the potential to save me months of misdirection. Best parts: ” Whenever I meet a successful CEO, I ask them how they did it. Mediocre CEOs point to their brilliant strategic moves or their intuitive business sense or a variety of other self-congratulatory explanations. The great CEOs tend to be remarkably consistent in their answers. They all say: “I didn’t quit.” and "Focus on the road not the wall—When they train racecar drivers, one of the first lessons is when you are going around a curve at 200 MPH, do not focus on the wall; focus on the road. If you focus on the wall, you will drive right into it. If you focus on the road, you will follow the road. Running a company is like that."
- PetoVera_Matt 16y agoEnjoyed this post a lot, thanks for writing it, Ben.
- staunch 16y agoTo me the most important line is something I realized after working in a decently run 200 person company and then moving to a really well run 30 person company many years ago. > "If you manage a team of 10 people, it’s quite possible to do so with very few mistakes or bad behaviors." His only mistake is thinking that 10 people is the limit. I think with some effort you can probably get to 30-40-50 people and still run it "with very few mistakes or bad behaviors." To me that's the ideal. There are very few things a really well motivated, hard working, talented team of 50 can't do that a mixed-competence, unmotivated, bureaucratic team of 1000 can do. Most people grow their companies to thousands of people without really thinking about it, because that's historically what you're supposed to do. Not enough companies try to be small and "perfect".
- mathgladiator 16y agoHaving 1000s of employees may be the goal to offset personal liability for health insurance, I know many entrepreneurs who have serious funds yet are working ridiculously hard because a stroke of bad luck for either them or their family means game over.
- apike 16y agoI think with some effort you can probably get to 30-40-50 people and still run it "with very few mistakes or bad behaviors." No. The reason 10 people can work like magic is that they all report to you. There are no middle managers, just people who get things done, plus one person to coordinate. Everybody knows what everybody else is doing, and the communication path is only one level. The upper bound for this type of company is how many people you can manage personally. You can not manage 30 people, and you probably can't manage 20. Once you need to add a layer of managers under you who aren't actually getting shit done, the entire dynamic changes.
- staunch 16y agoLike I said, I've experienced 30 done very effectively, so I know it certainly can be done to that point. In that case it was one head honcho and two lieutenants directly managing the two sides of the business. Things might start to get shaky at 50, but I seriously doubt it's impossible.
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- bfe 16y agoI found this insightful for anyone who has lots of urgent and important tasks to get done and decisions to make and lots of people to keep happy, yet who also has many other personally conceived projects to pursue that no one else is going to follow up on. There's a real skill to balancing getting everything done you need to, as well as can be done, while still not expending all your efforts and mental energy on established projects and on reacting to external events, and instead reserving some of your time and energy for new projects; or, not letting day-to-day operational competence squeeze out meaningful pursuit of vision.
- nickpinkston 16y agoI can't up-vote this enough. The whole final-ness of being where the buck stops is certainly a little overwhelming - but it also is a great feeling when things go great. I forget who said: "The good is never as good you think, and the bad is never as bad". The mental game of entrepreneurship is certainly the biggest component.
- jc123 16y agoI assume Ben is writing about his experience at Loudcloud and it seems he has a glaring omission about his cofounders (Tim Howes, In Sik Rhee, in addition to Andreessen). Where's the story about when he managed his ego when he had disagreements with them? Or a story/acknowledgment about his cofounders assisting him with psychological support? I am not disagreeing with the weight on the CEO and overall it was a thought provoking post. But it only scratched the surface and did not write enough about his own experience (and management of his psychology). Incidentally, those were the 2 parts I found most insightful: 1. "The new customers didn’t save us, but we figured out another way to survive and ultimately succeed. The key to getting to the right outcome was to keep from getting married to either the positive or the dark narrative." 2. "Get it out of your head and onto paper"
- bo_Olean 16y ago>>Get it out of your head and onto paper. I wrote down a detailed explanation of my logic. The process of writing that document separated me from my own psychology and enabled me to make the decision swiftly. Agreed. To the HN readers who type things often in computer, i would suggest to pour out with a pen onto paper next time, this is healer!
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- felix0702 16y ago>"...when you don’t actually know what you are doing..." This is where CEO's psychology starts melting down. Uncertainty leads to fear and fear leads to panic. It's like driving a car blindly. What a CEO needs is a light which points to a right direction, whether this direction is really right or wrong is another topic.) This is just my own view. All uncertainties can be grouped into two categories: Vision and Culture. Vision is like a guiding system, it tells your customers (consumer, employee, and investor) where your company is going. Culture is like an internal machine which take your company to where you want to go. When these two things are defined and guidelines are created, uncertainties become clear. It's because now you have two groups of high-level guidelines to tell whether you should handle an uncertainty seriously or not. However, even your company have a good vision and great culture, you will still feel uncomfortable. It's the feel like driving at 200 MPH when you are used to drive at 70 MPH. Experiences can certainly help to ease this feeling when you gradually increase driving speed. The other way is to build a data-driven company from beginning. This is like flying a jet plane which you do not visual see what's going on outside, but rather you see if you are doing well through dashboard panels. But at least a CEO must learn and know what information is important in order to have a meaningful dashboard. This is getting too long. Any feedback on my opinion is welcome.