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If growing a startup into a successful business was a solved problem, then there wouldn't be as many failures. My point is: why does their appear to be an assum
by daenz 4y ago
If growing a startup into a successful business was a solved problem, then there wouldn't be as many failures. My point is: why does their appear to be an assumption that only a "dud" exec fails? Where is the allowance for the fact that there are a lot of random variables?
Don't get me wrong, I know executives make poor decisions (and have seen a few myself first hand), but also I've seen decisions that nobody knew were right or not (or at least they didn't say so, at the time). Yet if it failed, of course the armchair quarterbacks come out with the "I told you so."
- doctor_eval 4y agoI don't think that's the assumption at all. Failure can - and does - happen to everyone, and doesn't on its own imply incompetence. We all make bad assumptions and bad projections, and that's part of the game. But an incompetent executive will avoid making decisions altogether, and will pretend to lead by setting goals that are entirely detached from reality. In my experience, the lack of decision making and inappropriate goal setting is quite obvious to those of us "in the trenches". You can't, for example, expect to triple your sales in the next quarter unless you're doing something to support that goal, like increasing the size of the sales team or doing more marketing. But I have worked for people who have set sales targets thinking that this is all that's needed to make sales. These people are good at talking about the "what" but no good at working out the "how". There is strategic thinking, tactical thinking and wishful thinking. Incompetent executives generally operate using the latter framework.