X : Any thoughts on using exec head hunters?
Me : Bizarre question. They'll tend to give you "safe" hands, middle of the road, rather dull choices i.e. no Jobs, Bezos, Zuckerbeg .... more Meh, Who, Snooze. That's ok, boring can be good and it's sometimes what you need.
Me : Bizarre question. They'll tend to give you "safe" hands, middle of the road, rather dull choices i.e. no Jobs, Bezos, Zuckerbeg .... more Meh, Who, Snooze. That's ok, boring can be good and it's sometimes what you need.
X : So less risk taking?
Me : Hmmm, risk is something we percieve. If you can think clearly about a space then what seems obvious to you looks like an incredible gamble to others. Fine for startups, less so for publicly traded large Corps ... loss aversion.
Me : Hmmm, risk is something we percieve. If you can think clearly about a space then what seems obvious to you looks like an incredible gamble to others. Fine for startups, less so for publicly traded large Corps ... loss aversion.
... so what is wanted is what is percieved as a "safe" pair of hands. Paradoxically, this is more likely to cause the company to fail if its product space is industrialising.
It's the difference between peacetime (safe hands, keep the ship steady etc) vs wartime CEO ... there are very few people capable of the wartime role and we almost never select for those capabilities.
X : It's about being able to cope with conflict?
Me : It's about clarity of thought, charting a direction in troubled waters and using all your resources to effect. Peactime CEOs in such positions tend to reach for cost cutting and cause the spiral of doom.
Me : It's about clarity of thought, charting a direction in troubled waters and using all your resources to effect. Peactime CEOs in such positions tend to reach for cost cutting and cause the spiral of doom.
... that's not necessarily a bad thing for investors. I'll often advise to invest in one company run by a wartime CEO for long term capital gains (future) but at the same time, in the same space other companies run by peacetime CEOs for short term capital return (sweat existing)
You can also maximise return by taking your capital out and shorting those peacetime CEOs as they approach the cliff whilst still keeping capital in the long term play.
Disaster cases are peacetime CEOs in an industry being industrialised who think they're capable of building a legacy rather than stick at what they're good at ... sweating the assets, revenue replacement through acquistion of other failing companies and then falling off a cliff.
The problem they cause is that capital that should be returned and invested in actual futures is wasted in vanity projects. Many billions can be lost on egos.
X : So Jobs was a wartime CEO?
Me : Not like Cook and nowhere near as good as Bezos. Jobs had clarity in a product space and quite a bit of luck.
Me : Not like Cook and nowhere near as good as Bezos. Jobs had clarity in a product space and quite a bit of luck.
X : Who is the greatest Wartime CEO?
Me : ... was. And that would be Deng Xiaoping. Followed by Sun Tzu.
Me : ... was. And that would be Deng Xiaoping. Followed by Sun Tzu.
