The cliche “managers do things right; leaders do the right thing” is spot on. And it’s a bitter lesson to many startups founders who don’t scale to lead instead of managing and watch their business crumble (or get ousted as CEOs).
Why do so many entrepreneurs struggle making this transition? They are by nature problem-solvers, scrappers, master-tacticians, people who get things done quick and dirty; survivors who scrape by. A crucial skill to get a business off the ground and prove a concept; the wrong skill to scale (at least on its own).
One of the hardest things for a founder is to let themselves to step back, let others do the management so they can focus relentlessly on one thing and one thing along: figuring out the right next step for their business. And leading their organization by focusing everything and everyone around them to that destination.
I must have read dozens of books and probably hundreds of articles or blog posts on this topic. But the best single source of material to me on Leadership is this movie: IKE, Countdown to D-Day which shows a captivating close up of the events just before the Invasion of Normandy in World War 2. More than a factual recount the film is a telling of the psychological dynamic that the leaders of the Invasion and in particular Supreme Commander Dwight Eisenhower (played brilliantly by Tom Selleck) in the run up to the event. It displays true leadership at its best.continue reading »
To capture how much the web has evolved picture the first Mosaic or Netscape browser page on a dial up connection. (Sadly I am old enough to have witnessed that first hand). Fast forward to today, a world dominated by ever growing in-browser capabilities on a growing number of ever more mobile devices. The web is not just more mobile and more powerful. It’s a damn lot prettier. (I cant resist to pimp our Pinterest page here as its so so cool
Design is in many ways at the driving seat of today’s technology. Innovation is increasingly turning outside in rather than inside out. And by that I mean they start from an idealistic interaction with the customer – a dream experience, an imagined world, and we walk backwards to execute on the imagined dream.continue reading »
Starbucks doesn’t just make coffee. It serves as a global standard for the service economy. Much like the Big Mac index is back of the envelope (yet surprisingly accurate) reflection of the purchasing power parity (PPP) between countries, in other words what would it cost you in dollar terms to get a Big mac in country A versus Country B once exchange rate is factored in? It’s a measure of how much a dollar can take you in those respective countries.
With my frequent travels recently the idea of a services power parity hit me. A cappuccino at Starbucks is a very much a standard committee across the world. Yet go to New York, London, Athens, Dubai and watch and measure the time it takes to make the same commodity. In my case – truth be told – I do give them a somewhat of a hard time, with my extras duper uber dry cappuccino with an extra shot. Even more so: the speed of comprehension and execution of my customized order is a – again surprising due to its simplicity – reflection of the efficiency of the service economy in these cities. As is the baristas reaction to a customize order in the first place. This is what I’ve called ‘The Starbucks Index”.
So next time you travel, try going to a Starbucks and ordering the exact same coffee you have in your home town and watch the difference. In some countries you will quickly realize how much needs to be done to get them back to a productive state. It has happened to me that I had to wait for the barista in one city to finish a phone conversion on his mobile phone (and believe me it did not sound like a conversation with his boss!)
In a recent Google Hangout which I now hold regularly with our users, one of the features that was requested was the ability to dive into your activity as a Buyer and a Seller separately. This was launched on the site yesterday. Just navigate to the top of the header and click on your avatar to drill into your activity as shown by the screenshot below
Other features to follow soon re an enhanced Inbox with inbuilt search facility and much easier navigation to drill into your messages. Again – requested by PPHers. Stay tuned!
Einstein said “God doesn’t play dice with Man”. Does He not? I’m not sure myself. I think in the very least He tries to. But not everyone plays back.
One of my biggest fascinations in life is how random unpredictable events can – in a split second decision that could have gone so many different ways- have such a drastic impact on our lives. It’s like the ‘butterfly effect’ in chaos theory in mathematics. The flap of a butterflies wings in Japan (chosen randomly) can cause a hurricane in Mexico through a series of domino effects that amplify to huge proportions.continue reading »
