The only real equality in the world is time. We each get 24 hours a day. The rest of equality notions are lies, headfakes, just opiates for the masses — except for time.
Time is an absolute and nobody gets one more minute in an hour than all of us do. When it comes to time, you are as rich as Elon Musk.
Which beings me to the subject of how we use our time and the friction that life imposes on us and thereby shoplifts our time. Continue reading
I realize today — I didn’t realize it at the time — that I had a close, personal relationship with risk as a young man. It was unconscious and I never thought about it. It just happened.
The proper young lieutenant having just parachuted into a rice patty fertilized with “night soil” and having executed a standing landing. Look at the boots.
Eight years ago, I wrote a blog post entitled: “Tone And The Common Touch (5-8-2013)” wherein I laid out case for ensuring that your — assuming you to be a CEO or C-suite denizen — tone and the way you dealt with your subordinates was a critical element in how they perceived you and, thus, how they followed your lead.
Therein, I said: “Keep the common touch. The grounded view of the world from which you launched your enterprise. The humble, lean, agile, nimble startup and success story that you always intended to create.” Continue reading
When you are calling in CAS (close air support — might be Snakes, Warthogs, fast movers, Puff the Magic Dragon — I know, dating myself) you will tell the flyboys they are “cleared hot” meaning they can bring their special brand of firepower and turn it loose on the target and that the friendlies are out of the line of fire. You are also assuring them that if you had guns firing that the gun-target line is clear.
When you are a CEO, you can never, ever clear yourself in hot when disciplining employees. Continue reading
This post is written from a slightly different perspective as it is spawned by three conversations of about a year ago wherein VCs asked me what I thought about replacing CEOs and what the ideal process might be.
No, this is NOT the ideal process.
As the pandemic winds down (it is, right?), persons who worked from home are returning to their original office locations. Big companies like JPMorganChase are starting to make it real.
Jamie Dimon, CEO/Chairman of JPMorganChase has made his intentions clear: “I’m about to cancel all my Zoom meetings. I’m done with it.”
“Get your WFH candy asses back to work. Yes, you have to commute. And, have a blessed day.”
This sentiment, it is time to go back to work, is becoming more prevalent.
When a startup reaches year three it is no longer crawling in the crawl, walk, run continuum. It has survived the danger zone (imagine Top Gun soundtrack of Danger Zone) in which most companies fail.
“Highway to the Danger Zone, CEOs. Listen up,” says Maverick.
If it is typical, it has a well developed product or service — well beyond Minimum Viable Product — and if it is in the commerce space it may have sales of as much as $10,000,000. It is likely profitable and if the growth rate continues, it will be very profitable.
With success comes a new set of problems and many times they are related to staff. Has the staff grown at the same rate as the company? Can the staff you hired when the company was a seed run this larger and more complex enterprise? It happens all the time.
Look at this baby from Airstream. What is it going to take for me to put you in this ultimate WFH rig?
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