ChangeThis: Issue 85
August 03, 2011
Sober Entrepreneurship: Why Modern Entrepreneurs Won’t Succeed Under the Influence by Carol Roth "If we are going to hang our hat on entrepreneurship, we need to ensure more successes, avoid the number of true failures and make sure that we have the right people pursuing the right opportunities at the right time with the right preparation. Friends don’t let friends start businesses under the influence. ” Adapt: The Benefits of Safe Mistakes by Tim Harford “We cling on to the idea that successful business people are talented leaders running objectively brilliant corporations.
"If we are going to hang our hat on entrepreneurship, we need to ensure more successes, avoid the number of true failures and make sure that we have the right people pursuing the right opportunities at the right time with the right preparation. Friends don't let friends start businesses under the influence."
"We cling on to the idea that successful business people are talented leaders running objectively brilliant corporations. But the world is far too complex and changes far too rapidly for us to have any confidence that this fondly held idea
is true."
"While I may have started out building a chain–mindful that a chain is only as strong as its weakest link—I came to see that interweaving the threads of a rope came much closer to meeting my goal of a cohesive, interactive team."
"Investors have heard many decry the decade of the 2000s as the 'lost decade.' A dollar invested in the S&P 500 on the first trading day of 1999 saw it worth just 65 cents a decade later. This "underperformance" is seen by many as a failure of the U.S. economic engine. If we look at the Top 20 performers of the S&P 500 during that same time period, we see a vastly different story."
"The next quantum leap will occur when a critical mass of people realizes that one of the major purposes of life is JOY. Until then, most people will accept an ersatz, an imitation, or a roundabout way of creating joy."
"Your job as a leader isn't to eliminate dissonance–your job is to make conflict productive. Right Fights enable you and your team to stop fighting about everything that doesn't matter and start fighting, in a high-minded manner, about what really matters."