Curt Doolittle

Category: Business, Organization, and Management

  • EMPIRICAL CEO ADVICE 2: Never regret doing your best if you exhausted all possib

    EMPIRICAL CEO ADVICE 2:

    Never regret doing your best if you exhausted all possible sources of information. Most of the time, the worst that happens is you learn something. But if you do not exhaust all sources of information, and you ask people to trust your judgement then the worst does happen: people lose trust in you. The best way to preserve your trust is to involve others in the decision process and to exhaust all possible sources of information. If you fail, the group will preserve their trust in you – if only because they shared in trying to solve the problem. Most of the time if you try to take a discount on risk and effort it is by not exhausting all sources of information. There are no discounts on diligence.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-12 13:41:00 UTC

  • EMPIRICAL CEO ADVICE 1: Don’t do anything yourself that provides a learning oppo

    EMPIRICAL CEO ADVICE 1:

    Don’t do anything yourself that provides a learning opportunity for the people who work for you unless it presents intolerable or unsurvivable risk. It is a wasted opportunity cost for you and deprives them and the business of the the increase in knowledge capital. If it does present intolerable and unsurvivable risk, then you failed already and you must take the responsibility for either the success or the fall. )

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-12 11:26:00 UTC

  • Adding profile shots to the web site. According to Kirill, every photo of Max Ro

    Adding profile shots to the web site.

    According to Kirill, every photo of Max Romanenko includes a microphone, an alcoholic beverage, an inebriated expression, a compromising position, or a pair of sunglasses.

    We can’t decide whether to be appalled or jealous.

    😉

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-09 06:39:00 UTC

  • APPLE MICROSOFT. My prediction was that Microsoft would fail to take control of

    APPLE MICROSOFT.

    My prediction was that Microsoft would fail to take control of its future and reform before apple’s dependence upon the iPhone would run its course. And that in search of profits, Apple would chase the desktop out of necessity rather than preference.

    With microsofts release of a branded high end laptop; the reversal of the Windows 8 and vista catastrophes; the decision to bring gaming back to the PC; then all that is left is to (a) adopt apple’s admin UI scheme, (b) start work on replacing the “digital equipment” era kernel running long processes, with a Linux like kernel running temporary processes.

    I dunno.

    Using Windows still makes me angry. But I see a glimmer of hope after a two decades of tragedy.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-08 13:05:00 UTC

  • DEAL DESTROYERS AMONG US!!! Yeah. Common catastrophe: failure to research the in

    DEAL DESTROYERS AMONG US!!!

    Yeah. Common catastrophe: failure to research the interests of every decision maker on the other side. (Ignorance) usually caused by Selfishness. Laziness. Wishful Thinking. (and outright lack of intellectual capacity.)

    Lawyers are the WORST at f__king up deals by the opposite means. On the scale of risk protect us from likely scenarios, but do not burden us with constraints. This is unwise. Stop them.

    Middle (and senior) management folks are too often enthusiastic imbeciles trying to stroke their egos and careers and get attention by demonstrating their ‘value’. This is unwise. Stop them.

    Most of the time ignore your lawyer, and listen to your finance guy (assuming he’s skeptical). Your finance guy will try to show his cunning by seeking extra profit somehow. This is unwise. Stop him.

    Ask your sales people (not marketing). Even though they are largely blabber-mouths, sales people are in the business of determining incentives.

    Learn basic Austrian economics (incentives of rational choice: marginalism, subjective value) and micro-economics, as well as finance and the first two years of basic accounting.

    Learn how to write your own contracts. It’s just like programming really. There are design patterns, functions, objects, etc. “Simple-er is better-er”. Give lawyers your draft to start from. Try to cut everything they add unless they can justify it to you.

    In a business deal, if you do not want it on the front page of the NYT, then don’t do it. It will f__king haunt you, and you deserve it. My position is to hold the moral high ground no matter what. We all screw up. But there is no down side to doing the right thing.

    EMPHASIS ON M&A DEALS:

    Furthermore the secret to M&A deals:

    (a) companies have no objective value – none. Numbers are meaningless.

    (b) the price of a business is what it requires to tip the decision makers.

    (c) very often that price is lower if liquid, higher if not, and more often money is a secondary concern.

    (d) the cost is determined by the impact of the effort to merge the business cultures and processes.

    (e) use relationship building, time to comfortably adapt, and abstract goals to do it rather than micro management and detailed top down planning.

    (f) every manager’s opinion of staff is the opposite of factual value, since managers are mostly dead weight and rely on staff for upward processing of information. Mergers are good opportunity to give hidden talent room to innovate. Look for it.

    (g) a low end venture capitalist is looking to create addicts. They will very often burn shareholders, staff, management and founders. You are a ‘drug user’ they are trying to hook while you are in startup mode. Once you have value you are a debtor (addict). They will treat you like one the moment they prefer to exit. (No, not the big players, which is why you want them, but many of the rest. Selling money in an investment hierarchy and selling drugs in a distribution hierarchy are similar business models. )

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-06 09:39:00 UTC

  • CEO LEADERSHIP: SOCIOPATHY OR TRUST? 😉 When you are way out in front, impossibl

    CEO LEADERSHIP: SOCIOPATHY OR TRUST? 😉

    When you are way out in front, impossible to understand, and incapable of conveying your ideas across the chasm, you develop means of building trust that compensates for comprehension.

    This is mistakenly called sociopathy by analysts of successful entrepreneurs: the progressives cannot imagine the severity of the dunning Kruger effect as you move downward in the talent pool.

    The most effective means I have found for developing trust is accessibility, participation, and over-communication. If you answer enough ‘why’ questions honestly then they just start trusting you. And to maintain that trust merely publicly admit to failures now and then and explain why you were mistaken.

    As a consequence you teach your organization to use the same patterns as you do, and to come to similar conclusions.

    I am unable and unwilling to micro manage. So it is the only option available to me.

    But I can also move an entire organization in a different direction in ninety days precisely because I force my people to manage themselves, and the don’t need me to micro manage.

    There are serious negative externalities to my method that have repeatedly caused me catastrophe: these people tend to think they are better than they are and not dependent on my direction and counsel.

    And when I leave a company the consequence is always the same.

    Decline.

    I wish I knew how to fix it.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-05 09:55:00 UTC

  • My job as CEO appears to include the role of chief productivity reducer, and mis

    My job as CEO appears to include the role of chief productivity reducer, and mischief maker.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-05 05:16:00 UTC

  • WHAT I LIKED ABOUT BUILDING CONSULTING COMPANIES A consulting company is little

    WHAT I LIKED ABOUT BUILDING CONSULTING COMPANIES

    A consulting company is little more than an intelligence organization that collects information from various organizations and uses it to sell solutions to different organizations where they gain new information and repeat the process.

    I love it because I learned so much every day. You get paid to do basic research on the operations of various companies. You are paid to collect information that most companies work to hide from the outside world.

    The price is volatility. You have to be able to tolerate that visibility. Consulting companies react early to economic fluctuations expanding quickly in booms and contracting quickly in recessions.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-05 02:51:00 UTC

  • BLANK: A STARTUP IS A SEARCH FOR A BUSINESS MODEL (1) SEARCH: Search for a busin

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RTcXwJuCaUSTEVE BLANK: A STARTUP IS A SEARCH FOR A BUSINESS MODEL

    (1) SEARCH: Search for a business model (Founders from dysfunctional families have an edge in the search for a business model.) BUT: The day your company finds that business model, the VCs see you as valuable, and they want to know if you’re the executive to take them to liquidity – operating execs.

    (2) BUILD An operating exec knows how to scale a company from startup to scaled production. Build out the team.

    (3) EXECUTE: Execute on your business model.

    These may be three different people.

    FOUNDERS RUN PATTERN RECOGNIZERS

    At the end of the day it is not a spreadsheet problem. We are looking for opportunities to develop patterns. It is not about execution based upon numbers, but it is at finding and SEIZING opportunities, and turning them into business models.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-05 02:42:00 UTC

  • (GtG influenced me heavily. I invested heavily in maturing internal staff over o

    (GtG influenced me heavily. I invested heavily in maturing internal staff over outside hires: exec university.

    Source date (UTC): 2015-10-03 16:16:58 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/650343797944119296

    Reply addressees: @johann_theron @amerika_blog

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/650315156875014145

    IN REPLY TO:

    @johann_theron

    @amerika_blog @curtdoolittle Stable Evolution (constant change management based on Risk Management). Example Collins’s “Good to Great” book

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/650315156875014145