The Art of the Start/Kawasaki 103-104

104 If the candidate isn’t coming to you as a proven believer, then use these techniques to determine if he “gets it.”

Someone who truly loves a product or service will be able to present it to its advantage

Measure the amount of time the candidate talks about compensation, benefits, and perks versus your product or service.

Analyze the candidate’s questions: Are they built on a strong foundation of knowledge about your organization?

Your goal, remember, is to make meaning and change the world.

It sometimes pays to ignore the lack of the perfect and relevant background, while at other times it pays to ignore the presence of the perfect and relevant background.

Experience in a Big, Successful Organization. The relevant question, again, is, “Did the candidate help create the success, or was he along for the ride?”

Experience in a Failed Organization. Failure, however, is usually a better teacher than success. The candidate to avoid, though, is on who has a consistent history of working with failures.

Educational Background
Experience in the Same Industry
Experience in the Same Function.

Find the candidate who lacks major weaknesses (but doesn’t have major strengths)
Find the candidate who has major strengths (even though he has major weaknesses

Survival is Not Enough/Godin 184-186

185 Schrage believes you can tell a lot about a company by the way it prototypes, and I agree.

186 The danger, of course, is in falling in love with prototyping and never actually shipping the product.

By parading concept cars in front of the public, Chrysler accomplishes four things.
1) It positions its brand as forward-thinking and cool.
2) Its gets valuable feedback about what the public wants and doesn’t want.
3) It signals future mates (the public and its dealers) that it’s healthy.
4) It implements the Red Queen and changes the market-place for its competitors. It can wreak havoc in a market it’s not even in just by displaying a car it may or may not make several years from now.

Intellectual Capital/Stewart 86-88

87 In the Information Age, no one can afford to use human capital so inefficiently. Jack Welch: "The only ideas that count are the A ideas."

GE's Work-Out program--a never-ending series of town meetings in which employees purpose changes in work processes and bosses are required to approve or reject them on the spot--is one proven way to begin the process of getting at the idea of more people.

88 To use more of what people know, companies need to create opportunities for private knowledge to be make public and tacit knowledge to be made explicit.

Leaders need to focus and amass talent where it is needed, whether by hiring or by teaching. As always with intellectual capital, the link to strategy is essential.

GOOD TO GREAT/COLLINS 42-49

43 You get the best people, you build them into the best managers in the industry, and you accept the fact that some of them will be recruited to become CEO's of other companies.

44 To be clear, the main point of this chapter is not just about assembling the right team--that's nothing new. The main point is to first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure out where to drive it. The second key point is the degree of sheer rigor needed in people decisions in order to take a company from gtg.

45 "I don't know where we should take this company, but I do know that if I start with the right people, ask them the right questions, and engage them in vigorous debate, we will find a way to make this company great."

48 I, define my job as having the freedom to do what seems to me to be in the best interest of the company at any time.

49 We found no systematic pattern linking executive compensation to the process of going from good to great. The evidence simply does not support the idea that the specific structure of executive compensation acts as a key lever in taking a company from gtg.

The only significant difference we found was that the gtg executives received slightly less total cash compensation ten years after the transition than their counterparts at the still-mediocre comparison companies.

Intellectual Capital/Stewart 81-86

84 Ideas are also immensely valuable--more valuable than we usually realize.

85 Protecting equity in a career is a lot more more important than protecting the equity in a house.

Smart workers work smarter.

...on average, a 10% increase in workforce education level led to an 8.6% gain in total factor productivity.

The marginal value of investing in human capital is about three times greater than the value of investing in machinery.

86 Money talks, but it does not think; machines perform, often better than any human being can, but do not invent.

Routine, low skill work, even if it's done manually, does not generate or employ human capital for the organization.

The question for companies is how to acquire as much human capital as they can use profitably.

GOOD TO GREAT/COLLINS 39-42

41 The executive who ignited the transformations from gtg did not first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there. NO, they first got the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it. They said, in essence, "Look, I don't really know where we should take this bus. But I know this much: If we get the right people on the bus, the right people in the right seats, and the wrong people off the bus, then we'll figure out how to take it someplace great."


42 The gtg leaders understood three simple truths. First, if you begin with "who", rather than "what", you can more easily adapt to a changing world. Second, if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away. The right people don't need to be tightly managed or fired up, they will be self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great. Third, if you have the wrong people, it doesn't matter whether you discover the right direction; you still won't have a great company. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.

"injecting an endless stream of talent"

The Art of the Start/Kawasaki 101-103

103…startups need three kinds of A players: first, kamikazes who are willing to work eighty hours a week to achieve success; second, implementers who come in behind the first group and turn its work into infrastructure; third, operators who are perfectly happy running the infrastructure.

It’s not enough that candidates are good and different; they must also believe that your organization can change the world.

…your customer base is the most fertile ground for recruiting.

Survival is Not Enough/Godin 183-184

184 For some reason I don’t understand, people are far quicker to give feedback on something that’s already done, that’s easy to hold and touch and work with.

There’s almost no product or service made by a company that can’t be made into a prototype before the factory is built or the people are hired. Yet most companies fail to even bother.

185 Schrage believes you can tell a lot about a company by the way it prototypes, and I agree.

Intellectual Capital/Stewart 78-81

81 It comes back in the form of attitude. People feel they're playing in the game, not being kicked around in it.

84 Ideas are also immensely valuable--more valuable than we usually realize.

85 Protecting equity in a career is a lot more important than protecting the equity in a house.

Smart workers work smarter.

...on average, a 10% increase in workforce education level led to an 8.6% gain in total factor productivity.

The marginal value of investing in human capital is about three times greater than the value of investing in machinery.

86 Money talks, but it does not think; machines perform, often better than any human being can, but do not invent.

Routine, low skill work, even if it's done manually, does not generate or employ human capital for the organization.

The question for companies is how to acquire as much human capital as they can use profitably.

GOOD TO GREAT/COLLINS 38-39

39 LEVEL 5 (L5) LEADERSHIP SUMMARY--KEY POINTS
Every gtg company, had L5 leadership during the pivotal transition years.
-L5 refers to a five-level hierarchy of executive capabilities, with L5 at the top. L5 leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves.
-L5 leaders set up their successors for even greater success in the next generation, whereas egocentric Level 4 leaders often set up their successors for failure.
-L5 leaders display a compelling modesty, are self-effacing and understated. In contrast, two thirds of the comparison companies had leaders with gargantuan personal egos that contributed to the demise or continued mediocrity of the company.
-L5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results. -They are resolved to do whatever it takes to make the company great, no matter how big or hard the decisions.
-L5 leaders are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results. -They are resolved to do whatever it take to make the company great, no matter how big or hard the decisions.
-L5 leaders display a workmanlike diligence--more plow horse than show horse.
-L5 leaders look out the window to attribute success to factors or other than themselves. When things go poorly, however, they look in the mirror and blame themselves, taking full responsibility. The comparison CEO's often did just he opposite--they look in the mirror and blame themselves, taking full responsibility. The comparison CEOs often did just the opposite--they looked in the mirror to take credit for success, but out the window to assign blame for disappointing results.
-One of the most damaging trends in recent history is the tendency (especially by board of directors) to select dazzling, celebrity leaders and to de-select potential Level 5 leaders.
-I believe that potential Level 5 leaders exist all around us, if we just know what to look for, and that many people have the potential to evolve into Level 5.
-Larger-than-life, celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with going from gtg. Ten of eleven gtg CEO's came from inside the company, whereas the comparison companies tried outside CEOs six times more often.
-L5 leaders attribute much of their success to good luck, rather than personal greatness.
-We were not looking for L5 leadership in our research, or anything like it, but the data was overwhelming and convincing. It is an empirical, not an ideological, finding.

The Art of the Start/Kawasaki 97-101

100 The Art of Recruiting
1) Can the candidate do what you need?
2) Does the candidate believe in the meaning you’re going to make?
3) Does the candidate have the strengths you need (as opposed to lacking the weaknesses you’re trying to avoid)?

101 I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers. Ralph Nader.

…one thing a CEO must do, it’s hire a management team that is better than he is.

The first is the humility to admit that some people can perform a function better than they can. Second, after making this admission, they need the self-confidence to recruit these people.

FIVE WAYS TO AVOID HIRING THE WRONG PEOPLE
1) Don’t confuse correlation and causation. Just because a candidate worked for a successful organization doesn’t mean they contributed.
2) Don’t confuse Big-Organization skills with new organization skills. Success in a big organization doesn’t guarantee success in a startup.
3) Dramatize your expectations. Make it crystal clear that working in a startup is different from what they might be used to in their previous organization. “ No secretary, cheap motels, etc”
4) Read the tea leaves when checking references. No references = negative. Or sent to the HR department = negative.
5) Trust the richest Vein. Your current employees are the richest resource for finding great people and for preventing a bozo explosion at your organization.

Survival is Not Enough/Godin 178-183

179 The pose of fast feedback loops is that you can find right now, from real people, whether your idea is worth pursuing.

Thomas Edison…The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into 24 hours.

180 Managing your product line based on the objections of people who aren’t yet your customers is a dangerous policy.

182 Wouldn’t it be useful to know how people are actually using your product, and more important, how they’re not using it?

183 Suddenly, the cost of knowing is dwarfed by the cost of not knowing.

Intellectual Capital/Stewart 74-78

75 Where to Look for Intellectual Capital....Its people, its structures, and its customers.

Human Capital, Structural Capital, and Customer Capital.

76 ...certain that intellectual capital is the raw material from which financial results are made.

Human capital matters because it is the source of innovation and renewals, whether from brainstorms in a lab or new leads in a sales rep's little black book.

77 The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was a genius. Compiling human knowledge into structural intellectual capital...quickly...take advantage of the worldwide trend.

Customer capital is the value of an organization's relationships with the people with whom it does business. It's the likelihood that our customers will keep doing business with us.

78 Customer capital shows up in complaint letters, renewal rates, cross-selling, referrals, the speed with which your phone calls are returned. Most important, it is manifest in learning, access, and trust.

The better that relationship, the more likely the buyer is to share its plans and expertise with the seller--that is, the more likely a company can learn with and from its customers and its suppliers. Shared knowledge is the ultimate form of customer capital.

Crucially, intellectual capital is not created from discrete wads of human, structural, and customer capital but from the interplay among them. Structural capital in the form of databases, computer networks, patents, and good management can augment the talent of an engineer; bad tools and bureaucrats can devalue it.

Intellectual capital is useless unless it moves

GOOD TO GREAT/COLLINS 35-38

37 In looking at the data, we noticed that some of the leaders in our study had significant life experience that might have sparked or furthered their maturation.

A strong religious belief or conversion might also nurture development of Level 5 traits.

....Level 5 leaders are highly prevalent in our society. The problem is not, in my estimation, a dearth of potential Level 5 leaders. They exist all around us, if we just know what to look for. Look for situations where extraordinary results exist but where no individual steps forth to claim excess credit.

38 Whether or not we make it all the way to Level 5, it is worth the effort. For like all basic truths about what is best in human beings, when we catch a glimpse of that truth, we know that our own lives and all that we touch will be the better for the effort.

The Art of the Start/Kawasaki 92-97

95 …a great board will help you get money as much as money will help you get a great board.

96 Sweat the Big Stuff
Small stuff…office space, furniture, computers, office equipment, office supplies, biz cards and letterhead.
Big Stuff…Developing your product and service, selling your product or service, collecting the money for your product or service.

...the real enemy of bootstrapping isn’t spending—it’s failing to execute.

97 …THE ART OF EXECUTING
Set and Communicate Goals
Measure Progress
Establish a single point of accountability
Reward the achievers
Follow through until an issue is done or irrelevant.
Heed Morpheus
Establish a culture of execution.