A Quote by Jason Fried
The reality is that companies are full of things that are left unspoken. And even when they are out in the open, the CEO is almost always the last to know.
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Another thing I've observed is how critical the role of the CEO is when a technology truly is disruptive. In looking back on companies that have successfully launched independent disruptive business units, the CEO always had a foot in both camps. Never have they succeeded when they spin something off in order to get it off the CEO's agenda. The CEOs that did this had extraordinary personal self-confidence, and almost always they were the founders of the companies.
One of the big failures for the big auto companies is that even the CEO and the top management often don't understand design and manufacturing. As a CEO, you have to make decisions; you need to have knowledge.
The last paragraph in which you tell what the story is about is almost always best left out.
The last paragraph, in which you tell what the story is about, is almost always best left out.
Since I became CEO, 87 percent of the companies in the Fortune 500 are off the list. What that says is that companies that don't reinvent themselves will be left behind. I also think that's true of people. And I think it's true of countries.
Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go.
I am in the Aleph, the point at which everything is in the same place at the same time. I'm at a window, looking out at the world and its secret places, poetry lost in time and words left hanging in space...sentences that are perfectly understood, even when left unspoken. Feelings that simultaneously exalt and suffocate.
Today, if the CEO thinks it's a good idea, it's done everywhere; if the CEO thinks it's a bad idea, it's done nowhere. We ought to be more agnostic and open to learning things that we didn't expect - and the only way to do that is to try things and be open-minded about how well they are working. And third, evidence-based management involves reading and learning - just like doctors do - and to do so not just in school but afterward, as well.
I just always believed we would succeed. Even when everyone else said my ideas were ridiculous. Even when we were almost out of money. Even when the metrics were all upside down. I always have confidence that I'll figure something out. I just have that confidence that things are going to work out fine.
It is restful, tragedy, because one knows that there is no more lousy hope left. You know you're caught, caught at last like a rat with all the world on its back. And the only thing left to do is shout - not moan, or complain, but yell out at the top of your voice whatever it was you had to say. What you've never said before. What perhaps you don't even know till now.
At 25, I made many companies. I was thinking more like a businessman or entrepreneur than a CEO. I created many companies, small companies, medium companies. I tried to be involved in many kinds of activities, in finance, in real estate, in mining.
More and more, and especially over the last two decades, we've found out how many conspiracies there actually are. We really don't know the exact truth about a lot of things. We know there are big things going on involving huge companies and industries, whether it's money involved or oil or things in their own country, but there are personal interests at play and it's a very well woven network that's hard to break down. Sometimes it is hard, for us, to know who is telling the truth.
I'm not sure I was a typical head of a company. Most people that run big companies come out of sales and they come out of marketing and they're quite serious and they have MBA's from very good schools and things like that. I'm an accidental CEO, thank the Disney Company.
My next film is always shaped by the last one... by the things I feel I didn't get right, or the things I like and want to try to develop further, but it always comes out of the last picture.
The problem with my shoulders was something I inherited from my dad. The left one would pop out and then pop back in - absolute agony - during almost every game last season, so I had surgery to put it right last summer.
As a former CEO and senior executive, there was a time when I did not quite understand the profound impact a CEO has on the culture of a company, even though I always knew culture was important.
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