"Video Lecture _ Lecture 15 How to Manage”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVhTvQXfibU

  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.