Do you care enough to swallow your pride, summon up your courage, commit your resources, and take the time to pick up the phone?
Most fortunes are built by entrepreneurs who started with nothing and generally got fired once or twice in their careers. And throughout history, the vast majority of great writers, artists, musicians, dancers, jurists, and athletes have come from the less financially secure families. The CEOs of many Fortune 500 companies went to to State U rather than Ivy League schools. Could it be that good “prenatal intelligence” (the ability to pick the right parents) is possessed by those born into poor families as opposed to those who are children of the rich? Or that the traditional prerequisites of success are not terribly important today?
The rewards almost always go to those who outwork the others. You’ve got to come in early, stay late, lunch at your desk, take projects home nights and weekends. The time you put in is the single most important controllable variable determining your future.
Why fly? I like it when you have to do what you say you’re going to do. You must “walk the walk,” not just “talk the talk.” Instrument pilots make a formal agreement with Air Traffic Control as to what they’ll do under all circumstances. Everyone else in the clouds has done the same. You take off, go into a storm that’s just three hundred feet above the ground, fly for two hours, and come out of the clouds just above the treetops, perfectly lined up for a runway hundreds of miles from where you started. This works even when you lose all your radios on the way. There’s something about arriving safely that’s very satisfying. You must do exactly what you agree to do or you might die. You apply all those rules and concepts you learned. You use those numbers, techniques, gizmos, and gadgets on the instrument panel; they really mean something.
There’s no hypocrisy, no “fudging.” What you say is what you do! All pilots learn to make a commitment and stick to it, follow the book, and depend on others to do the same. Those who don’t, don’t survive. Consistency in thought and conduct in the aviation world is required to live.
He had been one of my best friends, but after a decade apart, we had little in common. We’d moved into very different worlds. I never saw him again until our thirty-year college reunion. A great guy, but a lot of friendship is built on common experience. End the commonality and you tend to drift apart.
After school was finished, my first ten years working in New York were “play hard / work hard” times. As a bachelor who traveled with a big expense account, I had a girlfriend in every city, skied in every resort, ate in every four-star restaurant, and never missed a Broadway play. Nor did I ever pass up a chance to have one more business dinner with a visiting client, tour one more customer’s office, or make that next overseas call in the middle of the night. With bachelor friends, I set new records in “burning the candle at both ends.” There was never enough time in the day to do it all - but I always did.
There are defining moments in one’s life, discrete events we all remember as turning points: graduation, marriage, births, deaths, career changes. But even more lasting impact comes from experiences that stretch over long time periods. Like one’s home life. From my years growing up to my family life today, I’ve been shaped by the people around me.
Until she died at age 102, I called my mother first thing in the morning when I got to work.
Yet even as industries get more technologically complex, the skills needed in the new economy center far more on critical thinking than technical know-how. In the office or on the production line, tool selection and use is the key, not how each aid is constructed. Being well-rounded, inquisitive, perceptive, logical, and communicative is more valuable than knowing a given sequence of buttons to push. In the future, technical details will matter less - big picture, more.
Positioning ourselves to respond is what competition is all about. Since Bloomberg was always up against companies many times our size, we had to enter each commercial fight with an advantage. I don’t believe that business battles should be even. Remember the math: the chance of coming out ahead in a fair contest is one in two. In consecutive tests, that chance becomes one in four, one in eight, and so on. In other words, the likelihood that we will prevail five times in a row in a fair fight is only about 3 percent. At Bloomberg, we don’t want fair fights. We want to go into contests with an advantage.
Working harder and being smarter give us a head start. So does thinking clearly about what we want and which compromises are acceptable before we make business decisions. Quicker decision making, less self-delusion about our capabilities and limitations, and the discipline of sticking to what we do well all give us a leg-up advantage over our rivals.
In the 1990s, experts told us these trends would revolutionize the workplace. I never believed it - and I still don’t. While working from home is a central tenet of the professional futurist’s mantra, there has only been only a small increase in office-in-the-home lifestyles. As the competition for employment heats up, people have more need than ever to be where the action is and where the politics played out, at the office or factory. Tougher, more competitive times are not suited to reduced interaction with fellow workers or more lax supervision. Those arguing that email, chat, and videoconferencing are replacements for gathering around the watercooler must be academics. For a handful of professions, the home is a fine workplace. But for most other occupations, the downside of lost interaction at the office are substantial. They can be mitigated with frequent visits to the office. But they cannot be eliminated.
Some think computer expertise is required for future success. I don’t. Thinking and interpersonal communication skills have been, are, and will be keys to survival. Technology’s not going to change that. To prosper, work on your people-to-people relations. Take a psychology course and one on how to use the Scientific Method rather than a computer science course. We exchange ideas more than information, and we do most of that orally. Having text and visuals to add to understanding is nice. But we’re men and women, not machines. Face to face, or over electronic media, we need to transmit and receive sound.
Generally, real builders are so focused (aka one-dimensional) and dedicated, they’d have a nervous breakdown after two weeks of sitting around. Their challenge - even their reason for living - would be gone. Why swap fun, influence, challenge, and more money than you could even spend - for only a multiple of more money than you can ever spend?
Being the spokesperson for the company in an important part of running any organization, and perhaps the hardest do delegate. Everyone wants to hear the top person’s views (even if someone else wrote the speech). Guests want to shake the boss’s hand (even though no one remembers who was who after the meeting). If you want to exchange business cards or have a picture taken jointly, no one else but the top boss will do. So, while the senior manager may have other pressing duties, he or she has to set a high priority on accessibility to the press, the stockholders, the employees, and the customers. At Bloomberg, I handled all our firm’s internal and external public relations until we got so big that I could no longer do it.
Then there’s old-fashioned leadership. It’s the top person’s policies, personal and professional deportment, and working hours that the organization tries to emulate. While the only difference between stubbornness and having the courage of one’s convictions may be the results, it’s a natural reaction to attribute superior strength, knowledge, and consistency to those we follow. (But the slightest sign of vacillation can kill that image forever.)
Say something as CEO and the organization responds. It may only be by analyzing, criticizing, ridiculing, or specifically deciding to ignore the pronouncement, but notice it they will. You go to the other side of the world and find a nonsensical business policy instituted by our most remote office - perhaps everyone wearing hats indoors. Why? “Well, years ago you said in a memo to keep your head covered.” Yes, perhaps you did as a throwaway line, without much thought, outside on a very cold day, applied to a totally unrelated situation you’ve long since forgotten. But the CEO is the parent, teacher, clergyman, politician. Everyone’s watching all the time. Wanting to believe, aching to follow. Are you not comfortable with leading the company twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week? Then step down.
The CEO is also the company’s morale officer. He must promote an atmosphere in which ordinary people who try new things that fail are encouraged to try again. Projects that succeed always get support and provide their proponents sufficient adulation. It’s the failures the timid watch. A belief that trying new things could jeopardize one’s career stifles creativity. Lose the contribution of the average employee and you lose the war.
Last, there’s the “who’s in charge” function. THE BUCK STOPS HERE was a sign President Truman had on his White House desk. He didn’t make most decisions, but he did bear responsibility for his staff’s actions. (Something modern politicians disgracefully walk away from. “A mistake was made” has become a euphemism for no one taking responsibility.) It’s the same with the corporate CEO. He or she can get help, delegate, farm out, get advice, and so on. But in the end, it’s one person’s decision, one person’s responsibility. A major part of the CEO’s responsibility is to be the ultimate risk taker and decision maker. Truman had it right.