Large organizations are made of clusters of smaller org teams inside that larger one Outside of a shared identity with the label (e.g., Facebook), they're relatively unrelated Thus, there's a pedigree to the name, but the work itself is based on how the middle managers manage ## politics [Many companies aren't prepared to replace underperforming CEOs | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33471314) [Many Companies Aren't Prepared to Replace Underperforming CEOs | Stanford Graduate School of Business](https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/many-companies-arent-prepared-replace-underperforming-ceos) [what is a skip manager?](https://www.teamblind.com/post/what-is-a-skip-manager-Vp4S6Qi3) - the extra mgr role above and the labor/mgrs below can make life VERY complicated ## low job security [Excess management is costing the U.S. $3T per year (2016) | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34290539) [Excess Management Is Costing the U.S. $3 Trillion Per Year](https://hbr.org/2016/09/excess-management-is-costing-the-us-3-trillion-per-year) ## deal-making NOTE: THIS DOVETAILS WITH ENTREPRENEUR PERSONALITY Most self-made billionaires have preferred to focus on more lucrative activities. By swinging more deals and overcoming the leveling effect of competition, they have become far wealthier than managers who were much more adept at handling the details. "He's only interested in the chase of the deal-at the point he feels he has it locked up, he loses interest in the details." Associates of consummate deal maker Wayne Huizenga describe him in similar terms. ## innovative Group-thinkers have not cracked the Forbes 400 in significant numbers for one simple reason: Doing the same thing in the same way as everyone else is decidedly not the way to overcome the leveling effects of competition. Outorganizing the competition, in contrast, is one proven method of breaking away from the pack. The opportunity arises precisely because of certain maladies that give the word "organization" a negative connotation. Companies that exhibit the following sorts of behavior become sitting ducks for rivals that can respond quickly and effectively to an evolving competitive environment: • Long lines of communication keep senior management unaware of changes in the marketplace. • Fear of rocking the boat discourages employees from coming forward with worthwhile ideas. • Primary focus on avoiding mistakes deters managers from taking risks. • Obsession with defending turf diverts managers from capitalizing on business opportunities. ## magnanimity What makes the self-made billionaires' knack for building effective companies distinctive has little to do with the formal elements, such as organizational charts and performance measurement. It is more a matter of giving their organizations the stamp of their invariably strong personalities. ## releasing control It would be inaccurate to characterize the subjects of How to Be a Billionaire as hands-on managers. Getting bogged down in operational details would have diverted their attention from the more essential task of amassing personal wealth. Instead, they have focused on three essential aspects of management: organization, recruitment, and motivation. • Attract managers with enough self-confidence to challenge your own judgment on matters. • Delegate authority to detail-oriented executives who can free you to concentrate on billion-dollar ideas. • Stay close enough to operations to be aware of problems and opportunities, making sure that your lieutenants follow up on suggestions for improvement. • Constantly reinforce a focus on controlling costs. • Use equity incentives to provide your managers and other key employees a realistic chance to become millionaires. • Show genuine, personal concern for people within your organization. • Promote morale by maintaining a sense of fun along with seriousness of purpose. Branson motivates employees to excel by putting them into slightly higher positions than they expect. Like Kirk Kerkorian, Branson has no difficulty delegating day-to-day operations, much preferring to spend his time on new ventures. As long as a business is doing well, he does not bother to meet with management, while making himself available for crises. ## scaling the political ladder When a transportation officer admitted he did not know the whereabouts of a customer's overdue shipment, Moyers snarled, "Well, you'd better know tomorrow or you won't have a job." Soon after arriving at Southern Pacific, Moyers called together 27 vice presidents and told them that within two months many of them would be gone. The meeting was over. The transaction created the nation's largest railroad and left Phil Anschutz as its largest shareholder. Now it was time for him to go into high gear by applying the billionaires' principle "Keep on Growing." An ordinary entrepreneur might have simply declared victory after parlaying $90 million into $1.4 billion, but not Anschutz. While cashing in his railroad investment, he held on to a fiber-optics operation he had constructed along the Southern Pacific's rights-of-way. The company, Qwest Communications International, went public less than a year after the Union Pacific-Southern Pacific merger cleared its last regulatory hurdle. Within six months, the stock had risen by about 175 percent. The 85 percent stake that Anschutz retained was valued at $3.5 billion; his initial investment in the venture amounted to only $55 million. An analysis of the great fortunes founded since the nineteenth century showed you that they greatly improved their chances by focusing their energies in high-growth industries. You then studied the nine fundamental strategies that the self-made billionaires pursued: - Take Extraordinary Risks - Do Business in a New Way - Dominate Your Market - Consolidate an Industry - Buy Low - Thrive on Deals - Outmanage the Competition - Invest in Political Influence - Resist the Unions The billionaires' stories showed you the extraordinary power of the following key principles: - Pursue the Money in Ideas - Rules Are Breakable - Copying Pays Better Than Innovating - Keep on Growing - Hold on to Your Equity - Hard Work Is Essential - Use Financial Leverage - Keep the Back Door Open - Make Mistakes, Then Learn from Them - Frugality Pays - Enjoy the Pursuit - Develop a Thick Skin Overcome the leveling effects of competition by applying superior management skills or investing in political influence. Genuinely resolving to become a billionaire means committing yourself wholeheartedly to the goal. It requires a dedication no less intense than training to swim the English Channel. Making up your mind to be superrich means subordinating other goals to an all-consuming quest for wealth. You will not prosper by performing any activity in a perfunctory way, regardless of whether it has to do with making money. Far from distracting you from the goal of becoming superrich, intensely applying yourself to other aspects of your life will cultivate the habit of excelling. Bill Gates's intensity extends beyond the workplace. When he was dating Ann Winblad, another pioneer in the computer software industry, the couple chose motifs for the brief vacations they could spare the time to take. On a physics-themed vacation, for example, they read as many books on the subject as they could pack and listened to recordings of a lecture series by Richard Feynman. ### Cross-selling (2) - Matt Levine That said, the idea is not a bad one. Good investment bankers understand that, while their client is the _company_, the path to a good client relationship runs through befriending and helping out the company's _executives_. Sometimes this means helping them out with good corporate-finance ideas that will impress the board or their bosses, but other times it means helping them out in their personal capacity. Classically this means taking them golfing. Sometimes it means referring executives to new jobs, which can be good for the new employer and also make the executive more loyal to the banker. And sometimes hooking an executive up with a really good private wealth adviser — if you happen to have one — _is_ good client service. The question is just how confident the investment bankers are that their bank's private wealth managers are really good ones. Bloomberg's Heather Perlberg [caught up a while back](https://link.mail.bloombergbusiness.com/click/35377662.266794/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmxvb21iZXJnLmNvbS9uZXdzL2FydGljbGVzLzIwMjQtMDUtMTQvZHJleGVsLXMtZG9uLWVuZ2VsLWhhcy1kaWVkLWhpcy10YWxlcy1vZi13YWxsLXN0cmVldC13b21lbi1hbmQtd2VhbHRoLWxpdmUtb24_Y21waWQ9QkJEMDUxNDI0X01PTkVZU1RVRkYmdXRtX21lZGl1bT1lbWFpbCZ1dG1fc291cmNlPW5ld3NsZXR0ZXImdXRtX3Rlcm09MjQwNTE0JnV0bV9jYW1wYWlnbj1tb25leXN0dWZm/60e87ce39a995a4b1a2deb96B8ea73d61) with Don Engel, a former Drexel Burnham Lambert investment banker who died earlier this year. He seems to have specialized in winning corporate financing business by helping executives in their personal capacity: > Engel was quick to admit that he was never one of the financial brains at Drexel. He worked in the corporate finance department but he didn't have an MBA. What he did have, however, was an almost preternatural sense for what clients really wanted. That sense, Engel insisted, could be at times more useful than numbers and business school case studies ever could. CEOs have lonely jobs, he told me. So, he set out to become a kind of therapist-in-residence at Drexel — the guy CEOs and corporate raiders could turn to in confidence to talk through personal problems. Marriages and affairs, current or prospective, were usually at the top of the list. … > > "In most cases, the CEO has no one to talk to," Engel said. "He can't tell people what's going on with his wife, with his girlfriend. He can't tell them about what's going on with his mistress.'' > > He went on: "He is imploding, and there I am, because I understand all this. So then, once you start to understand that person, then you have a relationship. And that's what I did best." If your investment banking job consists of talking to CEOs about their mistresses, might you also get into the ancillary business of referring potential mistresses to the executives? Engel absolutely did, is the point of the rest of the article. --- it's legitimately lonely at the top - when that happens, you can only survive if you either have no morals or get out of the grindbox - this is NOT easy, and it can slowly TURN us into Cluster B if we stay there too long ## fall guy [Load 'em up and throw 'em under the bus | Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35088478) [Load 'em up and throw 'em under the bus](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2023/03/09/bus/) ## executives [What do executives do, anyway? - apenwarr](https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190926)