"Video Lecture _ Lecture 15 How to Manage”
This blog post discusses the main ideas of the
15th lecture about 'How to Manage ' by Ben Horowitz. Some information about the lecturer: Benjamin
Abraham "Ben" Horowitz is an American businessman, investor, blogger,
and author. He is a high technology entrepreneur and co-founder and general
partner along with Marc Andreessen of the venture capital firm Andreessen
Horowitz. As B. Horowitz mentioned he just wrote a three hundred page book on
management. So that book was entirely too long. In this case, to be short and
effective he tried to concentrate on one topic: management concept and covers
all details.
The
principal assumption is that before a leader makes a decision, they need to
consider the decision from the different perspectives and of multiple
stakeholders. Lecturer's advice assists to make right choices. He said, “When
you’re making a critical decision, you have to understand how it’s going to be
interpreted from all points of view.” Therefore, he illustrated the management
concept using four examples:
- · Demoting someone or firing them
- · Giving a raise to someone who asks for it
- · Commenting on a post written by Sam Altman
- · Talking about the Haiti leader: Toussaint who he considers being the expert in this skill.
In the first example which is
demoting/firing someone, he explained the situation and described what might be
a logical path of progress. Next, B. Horowitz brought the perspective through
generally other employees who do not appear, at first, to be impacted on by the
decision. Thus, it becomes obvious that the logical course of action may not be
so rational and could have a negative and long-reaching influence. He said,
“Not just your point of view, not just the person you’re talking to, but the
people that aren’t in the room. Everybody else.” The idea is clear: put
yourself into the shoes of a wider group of stakeholders than just yours and
those of the immediate party involved. In the second example, you should try
and understand how they would inspect the decision and what might be the
resulting actions. Mashauri - Toussaint had a good exemplar which is giving a
raise to someone who asks for it, however; the consequence may be unhappiness
or a protest for raises from other employees to name two. So, sometimes on employees asking for
raises, it occurs that the bigger you
get, the harder this gets because of the more aggressive the people willing to
work for you. In the third example lecturer considered exercising options. It
also describes the principal as well as gives some very valuable and useful
insights into the advantages and disadvantages of owning options in a startup.
Some of the problems arise when you attempting to exercise them. Finally, in
the 4th example, he spoke about François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture who
also known as Toussaint L'Ouverture or Toussaint Bréda, was the best-known
leader of the Haitian Revolution. His military and political acumen saved the
gains of the first Black insurrection in November 1791. This is a clear example
of using idea exceptionally that led the slave revolution in Santo Domingo and
forming the success and development of the future Haiti. Furthermore, the most successful founders end
up being the CEO of their organization. By virtue of the speed of development
and growth of these businesses, it is common for these leaders not to have
picked up many of the management techniques that someone who works their way up
through a more traditional corporate route will have done. As such, this type
of advice is invaluable – and the lecturer uses real examples that the new CEO
is expected to face at some time. Therefore if you fit in this category or are
likely to do so, it would be worth to consider the examples and their
explanation. B. Horowitz believed that the most important thing you can learn
as CEO- one of the hardest things to do is; you have to discipline yourself to
see your company.
In conclusion, this lecture was imperceptibly diverse from the other
lectures, here Ben Horowitz effectively focused on just one lesson throughout
his talk. However, he provided a great example of excellent leadership, by
sharing Touissaint L’Ouverture story of overcome slavery and his unique
approach to dealing with his ‘enemies’. Moreover, all his quotes have viral
importance and made you think deeper about a certain thing.
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