读书笔记 - The Ride of a Lifetime (3)

 Lessons to lead by

• Now more than ever: innovate or die.
• The relentless of perfection.
• Take responsibility when you screw up.
• Be decent to people. Treat everyone with fairness and empathy.
• True integrity - a sense of knowing who you are and being guided by your own clear sense of right and wrong.
• Value ability more than experience, and put people in roles that require them.
• Ask the questions you need to ask, admit without apology what you don't understand.
• Don't start negatively, and don't start small.
• If you want innovation, you need to grant permission to fail.
• Don't be in the business of playing it safe.
• Don't let ambition get ahead of opportunity.
• As a leader, if you don't do the work, the people around you are going to know, and you'll lose their respect fast.
• Good leadership is about helping others be prepared to step into your shoes.
• A company's reputation is the sum total of the actions of its people and the quality of its products.
• Handle micromanagement properly.
• You can't communicate pessimism to the people around you. Pessimism leads to paranoia.
• Optimism emerges from faith in yourself and in the people who work for you. It's about believing in your and others' abilities.
• With enough thoughtfulness and commitment, the boldest ideas can be executed.
• You have to convey your priorities clearly and repeatedly.
• You can do a lot for the morale of the people around you. This is where we want to be. This is how we're going to get there.
• It should be about the future, not the past.
• Treating others with respect.
• If something doesn't feel right to you, it won't be right for you.
• As a leader, you are the embodiment of that company. What people think of you is what they'll think of your company.
• When hiring, try to surround yourself with people who are good in addition to being good at what they do.
• If you're in the business of making something, be in the business of making something great.
• You have to approach your work and life with a sense of genuine humility.
• Hold on to your awareness of yourself, even as the world tells you how important and powerful you are. 

 

读书笔记 - The Ride of a Lifetime (2)

Starting at the bottom

• Excellence and fairness don't have to be mutually exclusive. 
• Think about what I can do differently. 
• Strive for perfection, and care about both the product and the people.

Betting on talent

• His energy and optimism were infectious, and crucially, he knew what he didn't know. 
• They trusted in their own instincts, they treated people with respect.

Know that you don't know (And trust in what you do)

• You have to be humble.
• True authority and true leadership come from knowing who you are and not pretending to be anything else.
• Empathy is a prerequisite to the sound management of creativity, and respect is critical.

Enter Disney

• You have to be attentive.
• You have to learn and absorb.
• You have to hear out other people's problems and help find solutions.
• It is all part of being a great manager.

Second in line

• As a leader, you should want those around you to be eager to rise up and take on more responsibility, as long as dreaming about the job they want doesn't distract them from the job they have. 
• You can't let ambition get too far ahead of opportunity. 

Good things can happen

• The success or failure of something so often comes down to the details.
• What was invaluable in my own education is to see the big picture as well as the granular details at the same time, and consider how one affected the other.
• Optimism sets a different machine in motion. Especially in difficult moments, the people you lead need to feel confident in your ability to focus on what matters, and not to operate from a place of defensiveness and self-preservation. No one wants to follow a pessimist.

It's about the future

• I can't do anything about the past. We can talk about lessons learned, and we can make sure we apply those lessons going forward.
• Priorities are the few things that you're going to spend a lot of time and a lot of capital on. You only get three.
• You have to convey your priorities clearly and repeatedly. 
• The decision marking has to be straighter and faster.
• We'll never get the admiration or the public unless we get it from our own people first. And the way to get the people working for us to admire the company and believe in its future is to make products they're proud of. It's that simple.
• I couldn't let the negativity being expressed by people who knew little about me affect the way I felt about myself.
• It's easy to be optimistic when everyone is telling you you're great. It is much harder, and much more necessary, when your sense of yourself is being challenged, and in such a public way.

The power of respect

• Don't let your ego get in the way of making the best possible decision.
• If you approach and engage people with respect and empathy, the seemingly impossible can become real.
• If they can't figure out what pricing should be, they shouldn't be in their jobs. But if we believe they should be in their jobs, then they should be in charge of pricing.

Disney-Pixar and a new path to the future

• As CFO, he had a responsibility to the board and our shareholders, which meant not always going along with whatever the CEO had in mind.
• A few solid pros are more powerful than dozens of cons.
• Steve was great at weighing all sides of an issue and not allowing negatives to drown out positives, particularly for things he wanted to accomplish. 

Marvel and massive risks that make perfect sense

• It doesn't make any sense for us to buy you for what you are and then turn you into something else.
• I felt comfortable we could manage the brands respectfully and separately, that they could exist side by side and neither would be negatively affected by the other.
• Surround yourself with people who are good in addition to being good at what they do.

Star wars

• The worst thing you can do when entering into a negotiation is to suggest or promise something because you know the other person wants to hear it, only to have to reverse course later.
• Projecting your anxiety onto your team is counterproductive.

If you don't innovate, you die

• It was the old lesson all over again about the need to constantly innovate.
• Speed was of the essence.
• I referred to a concept I called "management by press release" -- meaning that if I say something with great conviction to the outside world, it tends to resonate powerfully inside our company.
• Being present for your people -- and making sure they know that you're available to them -- is so important for the morale and effectiveness of a company.
  

No price on integrity

• Demanding quality and integrity from all of our people and of all of our products is paramount, and there is no room for second chances, or for tolerance when it comes to an overt transgression that discredits the company in any way.
  

Core values

• Are high quality branded products likely to become even more valuable in a changed marketplace?
• How do we deliver our products to consumers in more relevant, more inventive ways?
• What new habits of consumption are being formed, and how do we adapt to them?
• How do we deploy technology as a powerful new tool for growth?

 

读书笔记 - The Ride of a Lifetime (1)

Robert Iger summarized lessons he learned from 15 years as CEO of the Walt Disney company. In the prologue, he outlined ten principles that strike him as necessary to true leadership. 

Optimism

One of the most important qualities of a good leader is optimism, a pragmatic enthusiasm for what can be achieved. Even in the face of difficult choices and less than ideal outcomes, an optimistic leader does not yield to pessimism. Simply put, people are not motivated or energized by pessimists.

Courage

The foundation of risk-taking is courage, and in ever-changing, disrupted businesses, risk-taking is essential, innovation is vital, and true innovation occurs only when people have courage. This is true of acquisitions, investments, and capital allocations, and it particularly applies to creative decisions. Fear of failure destroys creativity.

Focus

Allocating time, energy, and resources to the strategies, problems, and projects that are of highest importance and value is extremely important, and it's imperative to communicate your priorities clearly and often.

Decisiveness

All decisions, no matter how difficult, can and should be made in a timely way. Chronic indecision is not only inefficient and counterproductive, but it is deeply corrosive to morale.

Curiosity

A deep and abiding curiosity enables the discovery of new people, places, and ideas, as well as an awareness and an understanding of the marketplace and its changing dynamics. The path to innovation begins with curiosity.

Fairness

Strong leadership embodies the fair and decent treatment of people. Empathy is essential, as is accessibility. People committing honest mistakes deserve second chances, and judging people too harshly generates fear and anxiety, which discourage communication and innovation. 

Thoughtfulness

Thoughtfulness is one of the most underrated elements of good leadership. It is the process of gaining knowledge, so an opinion rendered or decision made is more credible and more likely to be correct.

Authenticity

Be genuine. Be honest. Don't fake anything. Truth and authenticity breed respect and trust.

The Relentless Pursuit of Perfection

This doesn't mean perfectionism at all costs, but it does mean a refusal to accept mediocrity or make excuses for something being "good enough". If you believe that something can be made better, put in the effort to do it. If you are in the business of making things, make things great.

Integrity

Nothing is more important than the quality and integrity of an organization's people and its product. A company's success depends on setting high ethical standards for all things, big and small.