.
Well played.

BRC
http://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com

Thank you. That made me ‘tear up’ a bit…

.
Be brave and hire good people. Be earnest and make good plans. Take care of your people and they will take care of you, but there will only be one CEO.

Vision, Mission, Strategy, Tactics, Objectives, Values, Culture — in writing.

Do your best with what you have and don’t lust after what you do not.

In a year, you will not recognize yourself. In three years, you will be a real CEO.

Be natural and find your legs and voice. Never be afraid to ask for help.

You got this.

BRC
http://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com

OK so far?

Or, if I want a job, then it should be better for me to create a good job for myself than to hope someone else will do that for me, gather the money to pay me, etc.

At times I’ve been the respected leader of something or other, a project, a group of people, an informal leader as a respected expert, etc. That was always because I was doing well at doing something others, even the whole organization, really wanted done and was essentially the only one present who could do that. So, I was, call it essential. Too soon I discovered: (A) If one is essential for something enough important people care about, then can get a lot of respect and cooperation within the group that cares, hostility and jealousy from others close enough to see, and get away with a lot of socially awkward behavior. But (B) otherwise, e.g., if not essential,etc., then have to be exquisitely socially sensitive and diplomatic, able to walk on lots of eggs all the time without breaking any, and still can be seriously attacked.

So, net, be essential. If have some good, potentially valuable ideas, then do a startup, name yourself your own CEO, show that the ideas are valuable by making money, and forget nearly all the exquisitely sensitive stuff.

War Story: As can sometimes happen, my wife got into a lot of stress and, then, depression in her Ph.D. program. So, our core financial planning was shot in the gut, and I basically dropped out of my Ph.D. program for three years to support us. I took a job in a think tank doing applied math and computing for some strategic projects for the US Navy. This was when such computing — basically scientific-engineering computing, was done via time sharing on a mainframe. Too soon we were doing too well with the computing, that is, spending too much money. But this was also the days of the super mini computers, and then we could just buy a computer and get a lot more computing for 18 months of our time sharing bills. The guy who led that effort had me as second in command, and when he left I inherited the computer as the local system administrator. So I was beginning to be “essential”. We were in a group of 45 people in a company of 300+ and were also, mostly as a favor to others, selling time on our computer elsewhere in the company. Then the rest of the company want such computing as their own, too. Then it was clear that I was the only one in the company of 300+ with the relevant experience to select and advise on what computer to get, became more “essential”, and was the technical lead on a selection process. So, I called in all candidate vendors plus some and got updates.

About then I got my Ph,D. and, to help my wife get well from the stress of her Ph.D., took a job relatively near her family farm; the job was as a prof in a Big Ten B-school. No way did I want to be a college prof, but I wanted my brilliant wife to get well.

Well, that think tank was not the only organization struggling with what to do with computing instead of old mainframe computing, and the B-school wanted a new MBA program with much better computing. They had a college Computer Committee that had no clue about what to do or by. So, two weeks after I arrived on campus, there was a faculty meeting with a presentation, hopeless, from the Computer Committee, headed by an accounting prof who didn’t know a bit from a byte. I stood and gave a proposal in one sentence: Gee, I’d just come from being a system administrator and serving as technical lead on a selection!

In days after the meeting, I explained informally to others. Soon the administrative Dean asked me for a proposal and gave me colleague, a full prof of economics (adult supervision?). So, again for vendors I called in, visited, all the usual suspects and made my recommendation.

At the same time, I discovered that my ability to get typing done, especially for math, was worse than awful. If I wanted to distribute class notes, then about all I could do was write clearly with black ink on white paper and distribute photocopies — total bummer. Well, there was a central campus academic mainframe with some more or less decent word processing. And, with the right daisy wheel printer, I had a chance to do well at getting good typing of relatively simple math; for that, for the super- sub-scripts, I wanted the mainframe to send some special, tricky control codes. So, we were back into the issue of the mainframe’s EBCDIC character coding and a daisy wheel’s ASCII coding. So, I wanted to see what special characters I could get the mainframe to send. How to know I was receiving a special, non-printable character? Sure, see if I could get the bell to ring on my ASCII terminal — wanted to know this before asking for a daisy wheel printer (like I’d used in typing my Ph.D. dissertation on the computers I’d been managing). So, on the mainframe, I wrote a little PL/I code to send my terminal all possible 256 bytes and see if the bell would ring. It wouldn’t I talked to the experts at the mainframe site, explained what I was doing, and asked for a copy of the translation table between EBCDIC and ASCII.

I was told that the table was “confidential”. That evening there was a high end cocktail party, and the head, then the longest sitting in US higher education, a stiff guy, of the mainframe shop told my Dean that he had a new prof trying to use the mainframe to ring the bell on his terminal. I was being sabotaged! My Dean called me in, and I explained.

But the selection process continued.

So, I’d need to buy at least one hard disk drive. Then Control Data sold a Storage Module Drive, 300 million bytes on a removable disk pack, 14″ in diameter, 750 pound shipping weight, $40,000 or so. I was supposed to get the disk drive from my computer vendor, maybe DEC, Prime, Data General, etc. but wondered if I could save money buying directly from Control Data. So, I called them and get their technical and engineering documents. Naw, I decided that the prudent thing to do was to buy from the computer vendor, not directly from Control Data.

Soon I got a call asking if I could come to the Dean’s office. There were no more details, but just in case I got a stack about 1 foot high of papers relevant to the selection including the engineering documents from Control Data.

At the Dean’s office was the head of the mainframe shop, the guy who tried to attack me about the bell.

The head was very much against anything like the computer I was selecting. In particular he was against the “high density” disk drive I had in mind and the comfort instead of computer room A/C I was planning (had done well with such A/C in the system I’d administered in grad school). The A/C he claimed was necessary alone cost nearly as much as the whole computer I was planning, several times as much as the A/C I was planning. The A/C he had in mind had very accurate control of both temperature and humidity.

[“High density”, 300 million bytes in something the size of a washing machine, 750 pounds, when now we can get 14 trillion bytes in a little 3.5 inch package? WOW!]

I responded with my experience that what I was planning worked fine for many months in the installation I’d managed. The Head responded that I was just “lucky”. I responded that the A/C I was planning was fine according to the environmental specifications of the computer vendor. The Head responded that the computer vendor was wrong. I explained that the disk drive I had in mind was from Control Data and was popular in the industry, and the Head concurred. Then I said: “I happen to have with me the official engineering specifications for that drive directly from Control Data, and their environmental specifications are more liberal than the computer vendor’s except on one point; Control Data wants no more than 15 F temperature change in an hour.” The Head again claimed that the drive would not work, but it appeared that the Dean was starting to believe me.

So, the Head was working hard with my Dean to cut me off at the knees.

So, I was being attacked out of jealousy or whatever.

I got the computer, and it was wildly successful for years.

Soon after the computer was working well, the Head retired and I was on the committee to pick another campus academic CIO and was appointed Chair of the college computing committee. There was a really good staff to run the computer, and I never called a meeting of the Computer Committee and dropped the whole issue.

For my typing, at home I got a terminal, a dial-up modem, and a daisy wheel printer, and much of my typing problems were solved.

So, as in the pattern, within the B-school my essential expertise carried the day, but outside of the B-school I got attacked.

Lesson: So, for being a CEO, having essential expertise can solve lots of other problems; not having essential expertise can leave one vulnerable to attacks from wherever for any silly reasons or no reasons. Net, have some essential expertise.

Maybe another example: At standard ad rates, the traffic Matt Drudge has long been getting at his Web site Drudge Report by now should have him nicely wealthy. And Snap Chat looks like a big thing. But, really, there is no good reason Zuck and Facebook could not clone both Drudge Report and Snap Chat so that, really, neither of those two has any “essential expertise.”

Hmm …. Looks like if want to go live on the Web, should have some essential expertise not easily duplicated or equaled!

Or, having some essential expertise can be one heck of a security blanket, problem solver, and suit of armor; not having that can leave one vulnerable.

http://themusingsofthebigredcar.com/ceo-reflections/

BRC
http://www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com