<ul><li>During the early days, most startups are full of energy with no process. They use their sheer force and energy to figure stuff out. </li><li>Being at Google in the early days was like being in graduate school. There were so many interesting projects going on, but no deadlines or plans. </li><li>The interesting part was all of the raw material was there in the room. The trick is all you need to do is to ask the right questions and the answers would come out. For example: If you asked for a product plan, they could create a great product plan — they just didn’t think it was important at the time.</li></ul>

The startup phase

When Eric Schmidt joined Google, they were at 150 employees. In some periods (2004–2005), he had tripled their employees; this is classic Blitzscaling.The approach: It’s easy to double every year — you can imagine adding a person to each team, adding a country, adding a product line, etc.It’s hard to quadruple. It’s difficult to even imagine what quadrupling looks like within an organization.

Scaling Google

No product scales before it works.

An example of when not to scale was Google Wave. It was launched to great fanfare and a base of passionate users. The difficult part is you can’t tell if something is successful until 6 months after the initial wave of excitement.Great products have this big fanfare, big drop off, then a small bump back upwards, and steady usage upwards. Google Wave on the other hand had a wave of excitement and then a steady drop-off downwards.Once you have an app and business model that works — you can scale and go global fast.

When not to scale

I have also noticed the greatest products are typically designed for the benefit of the people who are building them.In Uber’s case, the original product was a private car sharing for a small set of people. Google was built for Stanford but mainly for Larry and Sergei themselves. The first Google server was in their bedroom. Once they outgrew this, they put several servers in their home, the garage, then took over the whole house, etc.

<ul><li>This is an error especially made by non-technical people. They listen to the technical people who say it works and start to scale the organization before the product is working.</li><li>It’s best to think of this process as a very long and tight funnel. It takes a long time to get the product right, then once you get it right you scale up the team as quickly as possible, then go off to a global expansion strategy.</li><li>Another way you know a product is ready is when you and your team can’t stop using it. </li></ul>

Believing you have a product that works before it works

There is a way to systematically hire people better than anyone else. Bob Taylor (founder of ARPANET) said to “sell the dream.”Here is his approach:<ul><li>He called people</li><li>Described what he wanted</li><li>They either got it and got incredibly excited or they didn’t</li><li>If they didn’t, he went to the next person.</li></ul>How hard is that? If people don’t get it initially, are they really going to get it after some persuasion? Probably not. You want someone who gets it.

How to hire the right people

<ul><li>Stay away from "friends of friends". The constant problem was somebody was a good employee, had someone they had worked with, who was very loyal, but not from a great university, and did not have a high GPA. </li><li>Stay away from "glue people.” These glue people are nice people that sit between different groups who assist in activities. They are very loyal and people love them, but the reality is you don't need them — they just slow things down.</li></ul>

Hiring rules at Google in the early days

I don’t agree that you should narrow your focus, you get the best outcome when you get the broadest appeal. (...) I’d be careful to conclude to just do a small thing. All success stems from doing one thing very well — then moving broader.

The idea is you could ask your employees to work on the company for 80% of their time, and the other 20% of the time they could work on whatever they want. If they are passionate about something, they could work on it as their 20% project. At Google, many of the features started as projects turned into core features. Part of the management job was to listen for those 20% project ideas and then aggregate them.

 "20% time"

One major complaint is the teams who are doing the work with the products you see are far larger than they should be. This is a failure of architecture — when you have this many programmers programming, it means they don’t have the right libraries, aka the problem hasn’t been generalized enough.

Failure of architecture

2 people can go off and change the world. Every successful project I have worked on within Google over the past 40 years has started off with 2 people working on an idea together.

"Don’t be evil"

<ul><li>The right founders. The founders have to be smart and good but more importantly the project they are working on needs to be their life's work.</li><li>You need to have some luck.</li><li>Be careful about how much margin you have. The ideal business is to have a business like Microsoft — a monopoly software business with hardware competitors — who are competing for good treatment by you — in a growing industry.</li></ul>

Advice for entrepreneurs

This is session 8 of Technology-enabled Blitzscaling, a Stanford University class taught by Reid Hoffman, John Lilly, Allen Blue, and Chris Yeh. This class features Reid Hoffman interviewing Eric Schmidt, the Executive Chairman of Alphabet Inc. (formerly Google).

technologyandthefuture

Technology & The Future

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

startup

Startups

videos

Videos

Blitzscaling 08: Eric Schmidt on Structuring Teams and Scaling Google

Create a start date that’s three to nine months in the future with clearly <a href="https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/goal-setting-the-why-behind-the-what.html">defined goals</a> and actions for every month.Ask yourself:<ul><li>How much money will you need to bring in every month to cover your existing bills?</li><li>How many customers would that equate to?</li><li>Are you going to be content to match your current salary or can you take a decrease in salary to get you going?</li><li>Do you need a level of savings in place to take the pressure off?</li><li>Do you thrive on pressure, or does it make you shut down?</li></ul>

How (And When) to Quit Your Job And Start a Business

Ask the following:<ul><li>How will you pick up the phone and ask for the contract/business/feedback/reviews?</li><li>How will you have faith that people will come to you instead of the competition?</li><li>How will you have the guts to put yourself out there to win awards? Get in the media? Or attend networking events?</li><li>How will you stop hiding and go live on social media so you can create an interested audience ready to buy your product?</li></ul>Don’t scrimp on this action. You need to understand and monitor your confidence

Get Your Confidence in Check

Just because your Mum/Brother/Best mate said it’s a great idea, it doesn’t make it a business. Find out what’s available. Do your research now to help you determine your products and services, price points, customers, opportunities and threats, and even your brand and marketing.

Do Research Before Deciding on Your Products

How you will make yourself available to build a business? Because that ensures its sustainability, too. On average, you want about 25% of your time available to start your own business. However you manage your time, you must communicate your decision and ensure those around you adhere to those boundaries. It’s one of the biggest sources of stress in business owners—not making enough time to create the business they want.

Dedicate Enough Time

People won’t tell you that, at times, you’ll work ridiculously hard and have nothing to show for it. That can be soul-destroying.To combat this, know why you want to quit your job and go it alone. It’s not enough to say it’s because you want to make money and work when you want. You have to understand what motivates you.Ideally, create a thorough list of things that will make you motivated no matter what the task—on a dreary Monday when you’ve got a stinky cold and just want to crawl back into bed. This list is crucial.

Understand What Motivates You

What values matter to you most? Often, business owners who aren’t satisfied despite making fairly good profits and enjoying most aspects of business because they aren’t running a business aligned to their values.

Identify Your Values

If you had the perfect business, what would it look like?When answering this, if you don’t want to work Thursdays because you want to go to an art class, then write it. The big picture needs to address all areas of your life.There are too many business owners who have cracked excelling at business but failed to grasp how to win at life, too, so they still aren’t happy!

Look at the Big Picture

Before you go out looking for your first sale if you were at capacity, would your prices give you the profit you want?Don’t start with low prices and think you can put them up later. You risk having to find a whole new set of customers if you do this, so get the pricing right at the start. Can you see why confidence is so important?

Mind Your Pricing

Goals – What will your business look like in one, five, and ten years?Action – What actions have you planned to achieve your goals?“Now” goals – These refer to the short-term things you need and long-term achievements you want.Strategy – What is the strategy to achieve these goals?Vision – What’s the vision that your business will fulfill? What you want it to do for you and what you want it to do for your customers. Timing – When will you be able to quit that job? How many customers/sales will give you the profit margin you need?

Business Plan: Aspects To Check

Of all the things to keep an eye on, few know their numbers as well as they should: What are your basic profit requirements (i.e., what can you survive on?), good level of profit (business is sustainably profitable), and exceptional profit (money is available for investment in the business, rainy days—they do happen—or tax bills)?

The Profit You Plan To Make

It’s a well-trusted strategy to consider your Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats(SWOT).  In addition, you must review and reflect regularly. It’s the first question I ask clients when we meet in the next session: What have you noticed? What has changed?

Have A SWOT Analysis

Did you know anyone can set up a business that says it can help you grow your business?They need no qualifications, they can just read some books, google some info, and set up programs and training for business.Things like Canva and Lumen 5 can make you look sleek and professional online (for free), but it also means you’ve easily duped into believing a pretty sales page or social media account.To avoid this, ask to speak to customers, not look at reviews. Anyone can write those, and the unscrupulous write them for themselves!

Shiny Does Not Make Brilliant

Communication is one of the defining issues for your new business.<ul><li>How will you communicate when you are unavailable so you can get on with working on your business?</li><li>What boundaries will you set? If you were with a customer, you wouldn’t answer the phone. People will easily drain your time if you let them, so set boundaries and communicate their existence.  </li></ul>

Find the Best Way to Communicate

You need a strong powerful marketing message. Once you know what you are selling, to whom, at what price, and with what desired outcome, then you need to hone your understanding of your perfect customers.Running a business you want to get to know, like, and trust people can make it awkward to have difficult conversations where you need to tell someone they aren’t delivering as promised or you need to increase your prices. Learning how to be comfortable with difficult conversations will help.

Your Message

Ensure you’re not reliant on your mates to spread the word. Define your market—your customers.  The more you define your customer, the more you know them.Then, ask what language they use and ensure that features in your marketing strategy. This is essential for the next key strategy.

Understand Your Perfect Customers

Social media can be a marketing strategy, but for the person looking to quit their full-time job, it rarely sits alone. Ideally, you will have eight to ten routes to market:<ul><li>Hold events.</li><li>Encourage online connection through social media, email campaigns, newsletters, and blogs.</li><li>Networking – definitely network!</li><li>Get in the local newspaper—for free, not paid!</li><li>Get on the local radio or a relevant podcast.</li><li>Google My business – ask every customer to post a review to GMB because it’s great for logistical businesses.</li><li>Publish your articles on relevant sites like Medium or industry-relevant sites</li></ul>

Social Media Is Not a Marketing Strategy

Question your thoughts, actions, and beliefs at all times. It’s often where you may find missed opportunities with clients.<ul><li>Are you following up as effectively as you could?</li><li>Are you assuming it’s too early to enter an award? It’s not!</li><li>Are you assuming that person has your best intentions at heart?</li><li>Are you assuming yes is the right answer? Go back to these key strategies and your business plan—does it really fit?</li></ul>

Always Make Assumptions

Reading these strategies to quitting your job, it can be all too easy to shut down to the idea—please don’t.Get the right support around you (not friends and family), get the right business model and marketing strategy, and ask for help.It’s scary to say “I don’t know the answer to this.” That’s why business (even self-employment) is better together—there are over 400 million small businesses globally, so please do join us.

The Bottom Line

Are you fed up with working long hours but not earning more no matter how hard you work? Here's how to quit your job to start a business.

career

Career

How to Quit Your Job to Start a Business: 13 Untold Tips

In 2019, 50.7 million businesses were identified as small, employing up to 499 people. Eighty-one percent of those business owners had no additional employees. Solopreneurs are entrepreneurs who, by choice, run their businesses entirely on their own. They come in all shapes.

Solopreneurs are on the rise

People are leaving their jobs to start their own businesses. Yet, <a href="https://eig.org/news/the-startup-surge-business-formation-in-2021-on-pace-to-break-record?mod=djemRTE_h">less than three percent</a> of the 51 million independent workers filed as businesses intending to hire employees. A 2021 MBO Partners report found that 82 percent of independent small business owners want to keep their company small, and 56 percent said they wanted to remain solopreneurs. Many became entrepreneurs to improve their well-being, not to add complexity by managing other people or building a mass operation.

Redefining a work-life balance

A decade ago, solopreneurship might not have been possible but new technologies give the tools to turn anyone into an entrepreneur. <ul><li>Billionaire Kylie Jenner outsources manufacturing and packaging to private label producers while letting different services handle her sales.</li><li>Drop-shippers evolved from third-party order fulfillment for Amazon and eBay.</li><li>Solopreneurs, from dog trainers to therapists, can bring home six-figure incomes.</li></ul>

Diverse solopreneurs

As major enterprises continue to automate and consolidate, they’ll need less manpower and leave fewer places for everyone to fit. This will leave more room for people to start their own businesses. Reports predict that the number of solopreneurs will skyrocket by 2026. They’ll create more networks of solopreneurs hiring solopreneurs and increasingly develop more resilience working together. As they become more diverse, society as a whole will demonstrate greater economic endurance and stability.

A diverse economy is stronger

A new kind of entrepreneur is taking the business world by storm -- and solopreneurs are doing it all by themselves. 

Discover the world of business and economics.

economics

Economics

business

Business

Solopreneurs are Changing the Face of the Economy

Bias exists, in part, because our brains naturally seek shortcuts for understanding our complicated world. We categorize things we encounter in life (including people) and then absorb “cultural knowledge” (including societal beliefs and attitudes toward different groups of people), which leads to stereotyping and biased expectations in our everyday interactions. This happens unconsciously so that even if we’re not consciously prejudiced, we are still prone to automatic stereotyping—especially when we’re low-energy or stressed.

The roots of bias

<ul><li>Don’t try to ignore difference. Instead, it’s important to recognize difference and work to decrease your stereotypical responses.</li><li>Learn your history. A better understanding of systemic causes of racism, for example, can motivate people to revise their biased views. </li><li>Work on reducing your stress levels when you’re interacting with people who are different from you, because negative encounters can promote more bias and less self-reflection. </li><li>Increase your sense of common humanity by purposefully engaging with people of different backgrounds.</li><li>Recognize how undoing bias has meaning for you. </li></ul>

Tips for reducing personal bias

<ul><li>Uncover places within your organization where workers are evaluated from a personal rather than objective perspective.</li><li>Stay open to listening to people within your organization who may challenge the usual way of doing things, recognizing that you may have blind spots when it comes to bias.</li><li>Consider enacting a form of affirmative action, prioritizing the addition of and support for those who are underrepresented within the organization at all levels.</li><li>Partner with people who have expertise in bias reduction to come up with new ways of doing things, rather than relying solely on past expertise.</li></ul>

Tips for reducing organizational bias

Bias is ubiquitous, but we can take steps to overcome it if we understand where it comes from, a new book argues.

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

artsandculture

Society, Arts & Culture

Tips for Rooting Out Bias in Yourself and Your Organization

If you can do both, you will be unstoppable.That’s when you get true superpowers. That’s when you get people who can create entire industries.A living example is Elon Musk. He may not necessarily be building the rockets himself, but he understands enough that he actually makes technical contributions and he’s not running around making claims that he doesn’t think he can’t eventually deliver. People who understand the underlying product and how to build it and can sell it, are catnip to investors, they can break down walls if they have enough energy, and can get almost anything done.

Learn to Sell, Learn to Build

You should be able to pick up any book in the library and read it.Start off just reading wherever you are and then keep building up from there until reading becomes a habit.Take your natural path and just read the things that interest you until you kind of understand them.it is important that you read foundational things, they are the original books in a given field that are very scientific in their nature.Also, make sure that you’re building a frame of understanding because you’re putting together a foundation for skyscrapers, and you’re not just memorizing things.

Read What You Love Until You Love to Read

It’s not the means of education or the means of learning are scarce, the means of learning are abundant. It’s the desire to learn that’s scarce.

If you understand them, then you have the basis for understanding the scientific method. Once you understand the scientific method, you can understand how to separate truth from falsehood in other fields and things you’re reading.It’s better to go through a book really slowly and struggle and stumble and rewind than it is to fly through it quickly.To lay a foundation for learning, you need two things. Persuasion and programming.If you’re good with computers, good at basic mathematics, good at writing, good at speaking, and if you like reading, you’re set for life.

The Foundations Are Math and Logic

Some of the things taught in business school are just anecdotes (case studies). They’re trying to help you pattern match by throwing lots of data points at you, but the reality is, you will never understand them fully until you’re actually in that position yourself. Doing is faster than watching, so you’re going to learn a lot more about running a business by operating your own.The number of ‘doing’ iterations drives the learning curve. the more iterations you can have, the more shots on goal you can have, the faster you’re going to learn. It’s not just about the hours put in.

There’s No Actual Skill Called ‘Business’

And doing something new the first time is painful because you’re wandering into an uncertain territory and high odds are that you will fail. So you just have to get very, very comfortable with frequent small failures.Nassim Taleb made his fortune, his wealth by being a trader who basically relied upon black swans, by losing little bits of money every day then once in a blue moon he would make a lot.We’re evolved for small victories all the time but that becomes very expensive.Entrepreneurs bleed every day they’re constantly losing, but when they win they win big.

Be willing to bleed a little every day, you may win big later.

Embrace accountability and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.if you look at a Kanye or Elon or anyone like that, these people can get rich just off their name.A well-functioning team has clear accountability for each position.It is really important because when something succeeds or fails if it fails, everybody points fingers at each other, and if it succeeds, everybody steps forward to take credit.When you put your name out there, you take a risk with certain things. You also get to reap the rewards and benefits.

Embrace Accountability to Get Leverage

When you’re negotiating with other people, ultimately if someone else is making a decision about how to compensate you, that decision will be based on how replaceable you are. If you have high accountability, that makes you less replaceable.If you look at the hierarchy of capital in a company, the employees get paid first. The equity holders get paid last and take on greater risk but in exchange, they get the nearly unlimited upside.When every member of a team can take on accountability for their portion you get a well-functioning team.

Take Accountability to Earn Equity

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

Learn to sell and build, embrace accountability and be willing to bleed everyday.

The Trait of Assholeness: The sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behavior, excluding physical contact.
<ul>
<li>Test One: After talking to the alleged asshole, does the “target” feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled by the person? In particular, does the “target” feel worse about him or herself?</li>
<li>Test Two: Does the alleged asshole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those who are more powerful?</li>
</ul>

What Assholes Do and How To Know Who Is One

<ul>
<li>Personal insults</li>
<li>invading one’s “personal territory”</li>
<li>uninvited physical contact</li>
<li>threats and intimidation, both verbal and nonverbal</li>
<li>“Sarcastic jokes” and “teasing” used as insult delivery systems</li>
<li>withering e-mail flames</li>
<li>status slaps intended to humiliate their victims</li>
<li>public shaming or “status degradation” rituals</li>
<li>rude interruptions</li>
<li>two-faced attacks</li>
<li>dirty looks</li>
<li>treating people as if they are invisible.</li>
</ul>

Common Everyday Actions That Assholes Use

Every organization needs the no asshole rule because mean-spirited people do massive damage to victims, bystanders who suffer the ripple effects, organizational performance, and themselves.Nasty interactions have a far bigger impact on our moods than positive interactions—five times the punch, so nasty people pack a lot more wallop than their more civilized counterparts.

The Damage Is Mind-Boggling

<ul><li>Make it public by what you say and especially what you do.</li><li>Weave the rule into hiring and firing policies.</li><li>Apply the rule to customers and clients. (69)</li><li>Status and power differences: roots of many evils. When the social distance between higher- and lower-status mammals in a group is reduced and steps are taken to keep the distance smaller, higher-status members are less likely to act like jerks. </li><li>Focus on conversations and interactions: small, seemingly trivial changes in how people think, talk, and act can add up to some mighty big effects in the end.</li><li>Teach people how to fight.</li></ul>

Implementing The No Asshole Rule

When we see someone break a known rule—like “don’t litter”—and no one else seems to be breaking it, that single “deviant act” sticks out, which makes the rule more vivid and powerful in our minds. But when we see a person break a rule and everyone else seems to be breaking it, we are even more likely to break the rule, too—because there is evidence that we can get away with it, or even are expected to break the espoused rule. When one or two “bad apples” are kept around—and perhaps rejected, punished, and shunned—everyone else is more conscientious about following the rules.

Following Rules And Policies

Enforce the rule by linking big policies to small decencies. Having all the right business philosophies and management practices to support the no asshole rule is meaningless unless you treat the person right in front of you, right now, in the right way

The Real World Is Right Now

If you can’t or won’t follow the rule, it is better to say nothing at all—avoiding a false claim is the lesser of two evils. 
You don’t want to be known as a hypocrite and the leader of an organization that is filled with assholes.

Say The Rule, Write It Down, And Act On It

Keep your resident jerks out of the hiring process, or if you can’t, involve as many “civilized” people in interviews and decisions to offset this predilection of people to hire “jerks like me.”

Assholes Will Hire Other Assholes

Organizations usually wait too long to get rid of certified and incorrigible assholes, and once they do, the reaction is usually, “Why did we wait so long to do that?”

Get Rid of Assholes Fast

Even if people do other things extraordinary well but persistently demean others, they ought to be treated as incompetent.

Treat Certified Assholes As Incompetent Employees

Beware that given people—even seemingly nice and sensitive people—even a little power can turn them into big jerks.
Accept that your organization does have and should have a pecking order, but do everything you can to downplay and reduce unnecessary status differences among members. The result will be fewer assholes and, according to the best studies, better performance, too.

Power Breeds Nastiness

Effective asshole management means focusing on and changing the little things that you and your people do—and big changes will follow. Reflect on what you do, watch how others respond to you and to one another, and work on “tweaking” what happens as you are interacting with the person in front of you right now.

Manage The Moments

Develop a culture where people know when to argue and when to stop fighting and, instead, gather more evidence, listen to other people, or stop whining and implement a decision (even if they still disagree with it). 
When the time is ripe to battle over ideas, follow Karl Weick’s advice: fight as if you are right; listen as if you are wrong.

Model and Teach Constructive Confrontation

Because people follow rules and norms better when there are rare occasional examples of bad behavior, no asshole rules might be most closely followed in organizations that permit one or two token jerks to hang around. 
These “reverse role models” remind everyone else of the wrong behavior.

Adopt the One Asshole Rule

Effective asshole management happens when there is a virtuous, self-reinforcing cycle between the “big” things that organizations do and the little things that happen when people talk to one another and work together.

Link Big Policies to Small Decencies

<ul><li>Being around people who look angry makes you feel angry.</li><li>Don’t join the jerks.</li><li>Seeing coworkers as rivals and enemies is a dangerous game. </li><li>Organizational life is nearly always a blend of cooperation and competition, and organizations that forbid extreme internal competition not only are more civilized but perform better too—despite societal myths to the contrary.</li><li>See yourself as others do.</li><li>Face your past. The best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. </li><li>To avoid acting like or becoming a known asshole, know thyself.</li></ul>

Stopping Your Inner Jer

<ul><li>You feel surrounded by incompetent idiots—and you can’t help letting them know the truth every now and then.</li><li>You were a nice person until you started working with the current bunch of creeps.</li><li>You don’t trust the people around you, and they don’t trust you.</li><li>You see your coworkers as competitors.</li><li>You believe that one of the best ways to “climb the ladder” is to push other people down or out of the way.</li><li>You secretly enjoy watching other people suffer and squirm.</li><li>You are often jealous of your colleagues</li><li>You have a small list of close friends and a long list of enemies.</li></ul>

Your Inner Jerk: Gut Reactions Self-Test

<ul><li>You sometimes just can’t contain your contempt toward the losers and jerks at your workplace.</li><li>You find it useful to glare at, insult, and even occasionally holler at some of the idiots at your workplace.</li><li>You take credit for the accomplishments of your team—why not? They would be nowhere without you.</li><li>You enjoy lobbing “innocent” comments into meetings that serve no purpose other than to humiliate or cause discomfort to the person on the receiving end.</li><li>You are quick to point out others’ mistakes.</li><li>You don’t make mistakes. When something goes wrong, you always find some idiot to blame.</li></ul>

Self-Test: How You Treat Other People

<ul><li>You notice that people seem to avoid eye contact when they talk to you—and they often become very nervous.</li><li>You have the feeling that people are always very careful about what they say around you.</li><li>People keep responding to your e-mail with hostile reactions, which often escalate into “flame-wars” with these jerks.</li><li>People seem hesitant to divulge personal information to you.</li><li>People seem to stop having fun when you show up.</li><li>People always seem to react to your arrival by announcing that they have to leave.</li></ul>

The Hidden Jerk: Observing How People React To Us

<ul>
<li>Change how you see things</li>
<li>Hope for the best; expect the worst</li>
<li>Develop indifference and emotional detachment</li>
<li>Look for small wins</li>
<li>Limit your exposure</li>
<li>Build pockets of safety, support, and sanity</li>
<li>Fight and win the right small battles</li>
</ul>

Tips For Surviving Nasty People and Workplaces

It is naïve to assume that assholes always do more harm than good. So this chapter is devoted to the upside of assholes. Beware, however, that these ideas are volatile and dangerous: they provide the ammunition that deluded and destructive jerks can use to justify, and even glorify, their penchant for demeaning others.<ul><li>Gaining personal power and stature.</li><li>Intimidating and vanquishing rivals.</li><li>Motivating fear-driven performance and perfectionism.</li><li>Bringing unfair, clueless, and lazy people to their senses.</li></ul>

Benefits Of Being An Asshole

<ul><li>A few demeaning creeps can overwhelm the warm feelings generated by hoards of civilized people.</li><li>Talking about the rule is nice, but following up on it is what really matters.</li><li>The rule lives—or dies—in the little moments</li><li>Enforcing the no asshole rule isn’t just management’s job.</li><li>Embarrassment and pride are powerful motivators.</li><li>Assholes are us.</li></ul>

The No Asshole Rule: A Way Of Life

The definitive guide to working with -- and surviving -- bullies, creeps, jerks, tyrants, tormentors, despots, backstabbers, egomaniacs, and all the other assholes who do their best to destroy you at work. "What an asshole!" How many times have you said that about someone at work? You're not alone! In this groundbreaking book, Stanford University professor Robert I. Sutton builds on his acclaimed Harvard Business Review article to show you the best ways to deal with assholes...and why they can be so destructive to your company. Practical, compassionate, and in places downright funny, this guide offers: Strategies on how to pinpoint and eliminate negative influences for good Illuminating case histories from major organizations A self-diagnostic test and a program to identify and keep your own "inner jerk" from coming out The No Asshole Rule is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Business Week bestseller.

books

Books

humanresources

Human Resources

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace

In the wake of Jack Dorsey’s resignation from Twitter, some have begun asking whether the move could herald a new era, in which founders voluntarily step aside rather than sticking around for decades or waiting to be ousted.
To explore the value added by a founder-CEO, an analyze of stock price and financial performance data from more than 2,000 publicly traded companies found that founder-led firms outperform those with non-founder-CEOs — but that the difference dwindles to zero just three years post-IPO, after which founder-CEOs actually start detracting from firm value.

To stay or walk away

While founders add the most value as CEOs in the early years of a firm’s development, by the six-year mark, they become more valuable in non-CEO positions, such as CTO or a board seat. Of course, six years is just an average — the optimal timing will vary substantially based on the specific situation. 
But in general, encouraging a founder-CEO to transition to another role within the organization enables the firm to benefit from new top management while still leveraging the founder’s deep knowledge about the organization in an advisory capacity.

Strategy 1: Funnel founders towards non-CEO positions

Every founder is drawn to entrepreneurship for different reasons. Gaining a better understanding of what drives a particular organization’s founder is the best way to help them determine the next step that they’ll find most rewarding. 
Some founders, for instance, are passionate about the specific ideas or causes underlying their businesses.

Strategy 2: Funnel founders towards personal passions.

In organizations where the founder still holds significant power and influence, board members and executives may be reluctant to even think about succession planning, let alone open up a candid conversation on the topic. 
But one way or another, succession will have to happen eventually, and it’s likely to go a lot better if the CEO is involved from the outset in crafting and implementing the plan.

Strategy 3: Involve founders in succession planning

On average, their value-add tends to decline after an IPO.

How Long Should a Founder Remain CEO?

If you’re not telling a compelling story, then you’re losing your audience before you’ve even started. Numbers and other data will make your audience believe but stories will make them engaged listeners.
There’s a big misnomer whereby people perceive storytelling as telling a little ice breaker or making some jokes. This isn’t the case. Storytelling actually dates back thousands of years in the form of artifacts and literature. It’s the way information was conveyed when language first originated in the cave days and that’s how our brains and communication developed.

The Importance Of Storytelling

One of the biggest mistakes that many people make is putting together disjointed pitch decks that are very heavy on numbers but don’t have a story element. Presentations have an overload of information with endless bullet points while still failing to highlight critical aspects such as the customer experience.Instead, go easy on the data. Don’t just add everything with the hope that something will stick. You should be giving a distilled, clear, concise view because you come across looking much smarter that way — and then let them ask you questions.

Too Much Information

The best way to highlight the problem is with a story. “You can weave the storytelling into the storytelling framework. Talk about your origin story. Where did you come up with the idea? What was the pain you identified in your lives or in the life of someone that you cared about?  Think about how your journey began and your inspiration to start. You can then expand it from your micro to the macro by introducing the bigger problem supported by relevant numbers to drive the point home.

The Best Approach To Create A Pitch Deck: The Problem and the Genesis

Ensure you can explain your product or solution simply in a solution statement. For example, “we do X for Y by Z.” It’s important that your solution statement is easy for anyone to understand. You can then show your audience a demo. Take them on the user journey and showcase your product through a user story because it’s a lot more impactful. “It could be a video. It could be screenshots. Use a real client if you can because it’s much more powerful.

Your Hero: The Product Or The Solution

You need to give a bit more insight into the business element by clearly explaining your business model, the market, the facts and figures, the competitive landscape, and the go-to-market strategy. People often start off with the hero’s plan as the first act, which isn’t the best route to take. While you absolutely want to highlight that there’s a big market among other factors that show the viability of your product or solution early on, you don’t have to get so deep into it at the very beginning.

The Hero’s Plan: The Business

This step details what the future looks like and the direction your business will take moving forward. “Where are you going? What’s your big vision? What will the company have shifted in the market when you are successful in three, five, or eight years from now?” Establish the different milestones that will get you to your destination, including the additional markets you’ll look to penetrate and everything you’ll need along the way to turn your vision into reality.

The Future: The Direction Of The Business

When it comes to numbers, you want to include things like growth metrics, engagement, and revenue. Stay away from meaningless vanity metrics that add little to no value. Instead, go for the measurable statistics like monthly active users that’ll truly make an impact.

The Data In The Deck

If you’re not telling a compelling story, then you’re losing your audience before you’ve even started. Learn how to create the perfect sales pitch deck!

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Learn to sell and build, embrace accountability and be willing to bleed everyday.

Ronald Anderson