The Hard Thing About Hard Things

All decisions are objective until the first line of the code is written. And then they are emotional.

The most important decisions test courage far more than intelligence.

Don’t waste time explaining why things are going wrong, spend it on trying to make them right.

A good startup CEO has the ability to focus andmake the best move when there are no good moves.

If anytime someone raising a concernabout marketing is attacked by VP of marketingthen marketing topic will stop showing up in the meetings.

You cannot let him keep his job, but you absolutely can let him keep his respect.

If you don’t treat the people who are leaving fairlythen those who stay back would never trust you again

The right kind of ambition is ambition for the company’s success and the individual’s own success being a by-product of it.

The further away people are in the organizational chart, the less they will communicate.

In any human interaction, required amount of communication isinversely proportional to the level of trust.

Hiring should be for strengths not for the lack of weakness

Layoffs destroy morale of the employees which are left. Unless they are done right.

We needed to change the rules by which entrepreneurs evaluated VCs.

If you are going to eat shit, don’t nibble.

The company would live or die by the quality of my decisions.

The Struggle is when you don’t believe you should be CEO of your company.

In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust.

The good of the individual must be sacrificed for the good of the whole.

There are no silver bullets for this, only lead bullets.

Being a good company doesn’t matter when things go well, but it can be the difference between life and death when things go wrong.

Training is, quite simply, one of the highest-leverage activities a manager can perform.

How can you ever sell out your dream? How can you walk away from total financial independence for yourself and every member of your close and distant family?

The world is full of bankrupt companies with world-class cultures. Culture does not make a company.

The Law of Crappy People states: For any title level in a large organization, the talent on that level will eventually converge to the crappiest person with the title.

The Peter Principle is unavoidable, because there is no way to know a priori at what level in the hierarchy a manager will be incompetent.

If you want to build an important company, then at some point you have to scale.

The act of judging people in advance will retard their development.

Great CEOs face the pain. They deal with the sleepless nights, the cold sweats, and what my friend calls 'the torture.

Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution; it just needs clarity.

Shock is a great mechanism for behavioral change.

Nothing motivates a great employee more than a mission that’s so important that it supersedes everyone’s personal ambition.

Investing in courage and determination was an easy decision for me.

Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly.

There is no such thing as a great executive. There is only a great executive for a specific company at a specific point in time.

The first rule of the CEO psychological meltdown is don’t talk about the psychological meltdown.

Focus on where you are going rather than on what you hope to avoid.

A high-quality human resources organization cannot make you a well-managed company with a great culture, but it can tell you when you and your managers are not getting the job done.

The surest way to turn your company into the political equivalent of the U.S. Senate is to hire people with the wrong kind of ambition.

As CEO, you must consider the systemic incentives that result from your words and actions.

When your head of sales interviews for her next job, she won’t want to say that despite the fact that she ran a global sales force with hundreds of employees, her title was 'Dude.

Start with an extremely crisp definition not only of the responsibilities at each level but also of the skill required to perform the duties.

If one of your big dogs destroys communication on your staff, you need to send her to the pound.

The best kind of multilayer leadership possible, because directions are clear and decisions are made rapidly with precision.

Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win.

A company without a story is usually a company without a strategy.

Great decisions come from CEOs who display an elite mixture of intelligence, logic, and courage.

If you find yourself as busy as you were with that function before you hired or promoted the executive, then she is below standard.