Transcription
There's nothing you can say to me to offend me because I'm just trying to do a better job. That's all for the client, for the country, for community.
We’re writing a new weekly column to CEOs.
Nice, so I read your first one. It was very good. What is the number one piece of advice you'd give anyone in a C-suite?
Oh, be open-minded. Read everything. Analyze everything over and over. Oh, your management team, makes the whole management team knows about it. It's not like I play a secret. I know you do this, that everyone talks about everything. It's all debatable, it's all open. Have the CEO have a little grit. You better say, okay, we finished that conversation. Have a great decision making process. People sometimes think that decision making is, I've heard everything, I go home and I think. No, it's usually iterative. I come in the next day and say, Jim, I thought about that. What about X? Let's do another analysis and eventually you find the answer. They always say have great people around you and I know a lot of people, they think they do, but you can see that they're not. Great to me means they're open-minded and have fun.
Get out there. I'm writing my chairman letter this year, but one of the things I occurred that culture is real, but that word is so misused. Sometimes people think, oh, I run an open place. Every issue is raised, but you go to their meetings and people are afraid to talk and other people, it's complete open conversation and it's because the leader wants it to be open.
There's nothing you can say to me to offend me. There's nothing you can say to me to offend me because I'm just trying to do a better job. That's all for the client, for the country, for community. That's all for the client, for the country, for community and they know how to delegate. They know when not to delegate. That's what I wanna write about. It's a wide bucket of things. I've made a lot of mistakes and a lot of what I learned was by making a mistake, like acting out of anger, allowing yourself to be weaponized, having an opinion before you had the right to have an opinion. Not getting the right person in the room, not working through the issue. Jeff Bezos talks about the, the one way door versus the two way door. Better to be more careful. Like when you hire people, generally if they're gonna be close to my operating committee, everyone in the operating committee interviews them, not just two people. and so we have a talk, but we're trying to do is the right thing we're trying to do. Management is fun.
Great quote, someone said, "Being a CEO would be great "if you didn't have customers or employees."
Truth, brother.
What's a piece of business advice you hear people give?
Have a legacy.
Where you'll be dead.
Just do what you do really well and then when you're gone people say he or she made the world a better place as opposed to I've gotta come up with something unique and different so I can make a name for myself. I always say if a CEO says they have to have a legacy, sell the stock.