1: “Why does everybody hate Ben so much?”

That was the question asked by Loudcloud CEO Ben Horowitz‘s mother-in-law.

Ben called an all-company meeting, which his wife Felicia typically attended.

“This time her parents were in town, so they came, too,” Ben writes in The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

It was the year 2000, and Ben was in a difficult spot.

A year earlier, his start-up, Loudcloud, … continue reading

1: “When written in Chinese, the word ‘crisis’ is composed of two characters – one represents danger and one represents opportunity,” John F. Kennedy once said.

Yesterday, we explored how the best CEOs create a small team of senior leaders to deal directly with the crisis.  This prevents the CEO from becoming all-consumed by the situation and enables the rest of the organization to continue to get work done.   … continue reading

1: “It’s ten years out, and Netflix is a failed firm. Estimate the probabilities of the different causes.”

That’s the exercise Netflix CEO Reed Hastings poses to his leadership team. 

“Let’s say one cause is that a plane crash takes out Netflix’s headquarters,” Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram Malhotra write in their book  CEO Excellence: The Six Mindsets That Distinguish the Best Leaders from the Rest.… continue reading

1: It was January of 2014. Mary Barra was in her early days as CEO of General Motors when a major crisis hit. The carmaker had been implicated in a number of fatal crashes due to faulty ignition switches.

“When you have a crisis, it’s not like you know the significance of it immediately,” she recalls in CEO Excellence by McKinsey consultants Carolyn Dewar, Scott Keller, and Vikram … continue reading