Notes on Leadership // ben's blog - The Diigo Meta page

• 24 Aug 10
  

  Damon Snyder

  leadership

• 10 Jun 10
  

  Alex Ko

  business leadership

  • You have achieved excellence as a leader when people will follow you anywhere if only out of curiosity.
  • the measure of the quality of a leader: the quantity, quality and diversity of people who want to follow her.

  • 3 key traits:

     
     
    • The ability to articulate the vision
     
    • The right kind of ambition
     
    • The ability to achieve the vision
  • The first thing that any successful CEO must do is get really great people to work for her. Smart people do not want to work for people who do not have their interests in mind and in heart.
  • Truly great leaders create an environment where the employees feel that the CEO cares much more about the employees than she cares about herself. In this kind of environment, an amazing thing happens: a huge number of the employees believe that it’s their company and behave accordingly.
  • the enemy of competence is sometimes confidence. A CEO should never be so confident that she stops improving her skills

  4 more annotations...

• 03 Jun 10
  

  Alexander Ainslie

  great links in @bhorowitz' post: Notes on Leadership http://cot.ag/bvZkix Netflix deck http://cot.ag/UWVgX Bezos letter http://cot.ag/cJ9FqB
  – Laura Fitton (Pistachio) http://twitter.com/Pistachio/statuses/15329374890

  via:packrati.us

• 01 Jun 10
  

  Jeremy Gollehon

  Business leadership motivation

• 31 May 10
  

  Joel Liu

  leadership

  • A better definition comes from former Secretary of State Colin Powell who said: “You have achieved excellence as a leader when people will follow you anywhere if only out of curiosity.” For our purposes, we can generalize this to be the measure of the quality of a leader: the quantity, quality and diversity of people who want to follow her.

     

    So what makes people want to follow a leader? We look for 3 key traits:

     
     
    • The ability to articulate the vision
     
    • The right kind of ambition
     
    • The ability to achieve the vision
  • I believe that Jobs’ greatest achievement as a visionary leader so far was a) getting so many super talented people to continue following him at NeXT, long after the company lost its patina; then b) getting the employees of Apple to buy into his vision when the company was weeks away from bankruptcy. It’s difficult to imagine any other leader being so compelling that they could do these back-to-back and this is why we call this one the Steve Jobs attribute.
  • Can the leader articulate a vision that’s interesting, dynamic, and compelling
  • However, it’s critical that those executives have “the right kind of ambition”: ambition for the success of the company rather than the “wrong kind of ambition”: ambition for the success of themselves.
  • The first thing that any successful CEO must do is get really great people to work for her. Smart people do not want to work for people who do not have their interests in mind and in heart.
  • Truly great leaders create an environment where the employees feel that the CEO cares much more about the employees than she cares about herself. In this kind of environment, an amazing thing happens: a huge number of the employees believe that it’s their company and behave accordingly. As the company grows large, these employees become the quality control for the entire organization. They set the standard of work that all future employees must live up to. As in, “Hey, you need to do a better job on that datasheet—you are screwing up my company.”
  • A huge part of why he has been so unbelievably strong on this dimension of leadership is that he’s totally

    authentic

    authentic. He would happily sacrifice his own economics, fame, glory, and rewards for his employees. When you talk to Bill, you get the feeling that he cares deeply about you and what you have to say, because he does. And all of that shows up in his actions and follow through.
  • Despite shocking many of his best employees with this radical strategy, ultimately the company trusted Andy. They trusted him to rebuild their company around an entirely new business. And that trust turned out to be very well placed.

  • Let’s look at this one attribute at a time:

     
     
    • Articulation of the vision—There is no question that some people are much better story tellers than others. However, it is also true that anybody can greatly improve in this area through focus and hard work. All CEOs should work on the vision component of leadership.
     
    • Alignment
      Alignment of interests—I am not sure if the Bill Campbell Attribute is impossible to learn, but I am pretty sure that it is impossible to teach. Of the three, this one most fits the bill “born not made.”
     
    • Ability to achieve the vision—This attribute can absolutely be made; perhaps this is why Andy Grove’s tolerance for incompetence was legendarily low. Indeed, the enemy of competence is sometimes confidence. A CEO should never be so confident that she stops improving her skills.
  • • Articulation of the vision—There is no question that some people are much better story tellers than others. However, it is also true that anybody can greatly improve in this area through focus and hard work. All CEOs should work on the vision component of leadership.
     
    • Alignment of interests—I am not sure if the Bill Campbell Attribute is impossible to learn, but I am pretty sure that it is impossible to teach. Of the three, this one most fits the bill “born not made.”
     
    • Ability to achieve the vision—This attribute can absolutely be made; perhaps this is why Andy Grove’s tolerance for incompetence was legendarily low. Indeed, the enemy of competence is sometimes confidence. A CEO should never be so confident that she stops improving her skills.
     
     

    In the end, some attributes of leadership can be improved more than others, but every CEO should work on all three.

  8 more annotations...

• 

  Vincent Chan
  • we favor founders running the company
  • Perhaps the most important attribute required to be a successful founding CEO is leadership. So what is leadership and how do we think about it in the context of the CEO job? Are great leaders born or made?
  • “You have achieved excellence as a leader when people will follow you anywhere if only out of curiosity.”
  • the quantity, quality and diversity of people who want to follow her.
  • • The ability to articulate the vision
     
    • The right kind of ambition
     
    • The ability to achieve the vision
  • The ability to articulate the vision—The Steve Jobs Attribute
  • Can the leader articulate a vision that’s interesting, dynamic, and compelling?
  • The right kind of ambition—The Bill Campbell Attribute
  • executives have “the right kind of ambition”: ambition for the success of the company rather than the “wrong kind of ambition”: ambition for the success of themselves.
  • The first thing that any successful CEO must do is get really great people to work for her. Smart people do not want to work for people who do not have their interests in mind and in heart.
  • a huge number of the employees believe that it’s their company and behave accordingly. As the company grows large, these employees become the quality control for the entire organization. They set the standard of work that all future employees must live up to.
  • If you talk to people who worked in any of the many organizations that Bill has run, they refer to those organizations as “my organization” or “my company.” A huge part of why he has been so unbelievably strong on this dimension of leadership is that he’s totally authentic.
  • He would happily sacrifice his own economics, fame, glory, and rewards for his employees.
  • Ability to achieve the vision—The Andy Grove Attribute
  • If I buy into the vision and believe that the leader cares about me, do I think she can actually achieve the vision?
  • He earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, wrote the best management book that I’ve ever read (High Output Management), and tirelessly refined his craft.
  • Not only did he write exceptional books on management, he taught management classes at Intel throughout his tenure.
  • So, are great leaders born or made?
  • There is no question that some people are much better story tellers than others. However, it is also true that anybody can greatly improve in this area through focus and hard work. All CEOs should work on the vision component of leadership.
  • A CEO should never be so confident that she stops improving her skills.

  18 more annotations...

• 07 May 10
  

  Christophe Claude

  • what makes people want to follow a leader? We look for 3 key traits:

     
     
    • The ability to articulate the vision
     
    • The right kind of ambition
     
    • The ability to achieve the vision
  • The first thing that any successful CEO must do is get really great people to work for her. Smart people do not want to work for people who do not have their interests in mind and in heart.

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