BOOK REVIEW — The Hard Thing About Hard Things

The Hard Thing About Hard Things has been on my reading list for about six months. I’ve had countless people recommend it to me and I can see why. It’s refreshing to hear real lessons from someone who has been there and done it rather than just the theory behind why we should do something. I really enjoyed Ben’s honest tone throughout, it’s refreshing to know even those people that look like they’ve got all their sh*t together, don’t have the answers either.

WHY I THINK YOU SHOULD READ IT

• You’ve just started your own company and you want some real honest advice. Not the usual stuff you get from leadership books but something that tells you what to do when you’ve already f*cked something up.
• You want honest stories about how bad it can get
• You want some actionable advice that talks you through difficult situations

KEY THEMES & QUOTES

‘Self-help and management books are fine but they aren’t really tackling the hard stuff. It’s not about setting big hairy audacious goals it’s about what you have to do when you don’t hit them. ‘

• ‘The problem with these books is that they attempt to provide a recipe for challenges that have no recipes.’
• Sharing a story, not answers or a formula.
• ‘….share experiences in the hope of providing clues and inspiration for others who find themselves in the struggle to build something out of nothing.’

The struggle is real

• ‘Every entrepreneur starts her company with a clear vision for success. You will create an amazing environment and hire the smartest people to join you. Together you will build a beautiful product that delights customers and makes the world just a little bit better. It’s going to be absolutely awesome. Then, after working night and day to make your vision a reality, you wake up to find that things did not go as planned.’ Perhaps your company didn’t unfold how you thought it would, your product has bugs, the market isn’t where you need it, you are running low on cash, you lose a battle — then you questioned whether you are good enough. THIS IS THE STRUGGLE — THIS IS WHAT SO MANY OF US ARE FACING — WE ARE NOT ALONE IN THIS!
• ‘The struggle is where greatness comes from.’ (MY NEW DAILY MANTRA!)
• ‘Some stuff that may or may not help’
• ‘Don’t put it all on your shoulders’
• ‘This is not checkers; this is motherfucking chess’
• ‘Play long enough and you might get lucky’
• ‘Don’t take it personally’
• ‘Remember that this is what separate the women from the girls’
• ‘When you are in the struggle, nothing is easy and nothing feels right.’

‘Spend zero time on what you could have done and devote all your time on what you might do.’

• ‘Because you see, nobody cares. When things go wrong in your company, nobody cares. The media don’t care, your investors don’t care, your board doesn’t care, your employees don’t care, and even your mama doesn’t care. Nobody cares. And they are right not to care. A great reason for failing won’t preserve one dollar for your investor, won’t save one employee’s job or get you, one new customer. It especially won’t make you feel one bit better when you shut down your company and declare bankruptcy. All the mental energy you use to elaborate your misery would be far better used trying to find the one seemingly impossible way out of your current mess. Spend zero time on what you could have done and devote all your time on what you might do. Because in the end, nobody cares, just run your company.’

‘Take care of your people, your products, the profiles — in that order’

• ‘“Taking care of the people” is the most difficult of the three by far and if you don’t do it, the other two won’t matter. Taking care of people means that your company is a good place to work.’
• You should want to make sure your startup is a good place to work.
• Invest in your people — the easiest thing to say as a startup is that you don’t have time or money but don’t do it. Train your people.
• Just a few reasons why you should train people
• Productivity
• Performance management
• Product quality
• Employee retention

Always minimize politics

• Don’t let accusations fester. Be clear how you feel about the accusation and get to the bottom of the motivation behind it.
• ‘As CEO, you must consider the systemic incentives that result from your words and actions. While it may feel good at the moment to be open, responsive and action-orientated, be careful not to encourage all the wrong things.’

Ensure you are surrounded by (and you are fostering) the right kind of ambition

• You can’t have a management team all driven by money, what about purpose, overall vision. They need to have the right ambition to help the company move forward.

Find the very best people

• ‘One excellent way to develop a high standard is to interview people who you see doing a great job in their field. Find out what their standard is and add it to your own.’
• ‘Hiring the first senior people into your company may feel like selling your soul, and if you are not careful, you may well end up selling the soul of your company. But if you want to make something from nothing, you have to take risks and you have to win your race against time. This means acquiring the very best talent, knowledge, and experience even if it requires dealing with some serious age diversity.’
• ‘…. I understood the importance of hiring for strength rather than for the lack of weakness., and I understood the meaning of ‘fit’. There are lots of smart people in the world, but smart is not good enough. I needed people who were great where I needed greatness. I needed people who believed in the mission.’

Consciously build your culture (and know what it is and isn’t)

• ‘Ask ten founders about company culture and what it means and you’ll get ten different answers.’
• ‘So what is culture? Does culture matter? If so, how much time should you spend on it? Let’s start with the second question first. The primary thing that any technology startup must do is build a product that’s at least ten times better at doing something than the current prevailing way of doing that thing. The second thing that any technology startup must do is to take the market. If it’s possible to do something ten times better, it’s also possible that you won’t be the only company to figure that out. Therefore, you must take the market before somebody else does. ….. If you fail to do both of those things, your culture won’t matter one bit. The world is full of bankrupt companies with world-class culture. Culture does not make a company.’
• ‘When I refer to company culture, I am not referring to other important activities like company values and employee satisfaction. Specifically, I am writing about designing a way of working that will:
• Distinguish you from competitors
• Ensure the critical operating values persist such as delighting customers or making beautiful products
• Help you identify employees who fit with your mission
• ‘Designing a proper company culture will help you get your company to do what you want in certain important areas for a very long time.’
• ‘There are two kinds of cultures in this world: a culture where what you do matters and cultures where all that matters is who you are. You can be the former or you can suck.’

Leading as a CEO (particularly when you don’t have the answers/know where you are going)

• ‘… Investing in courage and determination was an easy decision for me.’
• ‘Perhaps the most important thing that I learned as an entrepreneur was to focus on what I needed to get right and stop worrying about all the things I did wrong or might do wrong.’
• Learning to manage your own psychology.
• ‘Generally, someone doesn’t become a CEO unless she has a high sense of purpose and cares deeply about the work she does.’
• ‘When people in my company would complain about one thing or another being broken, such as the expense reporting process, I would joke that it was all my fault. The joke was funny because it wasn’t really a joke. Every problem in the company was indeed my fault. As the founding CEO, every hire and every decision in the company ever made happened under my direction. Unlike a hired gun who comes in and blames all of the problems on the prior regime, there was literally nobody for me to blame.’
• ‘Given this stress, CEOs often make one of the following two mistakes:
• They take things too personally
• They do not take things personally enough.’
• It’s a lonely job.
• Techniques to help:
• Make some friends — talk to people who have been through similarly challenging decisions and times
• Get it out of your head and onto paper
• Focus on the road, not the wall

Focus on your leadership (skills)

• There is no prototype for the perfect CEO.
• ‘Perhaps the most important attribute required to be a successful CEO is leadership.’
• ‘For our purposes, we can generalise this to be the measure of the quality of a leader: the quantity, quality and diversity of people who want to follow her.’
• ‘So what makes people want to follow a leader? We look for three key traits:
• The ability to articulate the vision
• The right kind of ambition
• The ability to achieve the vision’
• ‘The first thing that any successful CEO must do is get really great people to work for her. Smart people do not work for people who do not have their interests in mind and in heart.’
• ‘Truly great leaders create an environment where the employees feel that the CEO cares more about the employees than she cares about herself. In this kind of environment, an amazing thing happens: A huge number of employees believe it’s their company and behave accordingly.’
• ‘A CEO should never be so confident that she stops improving her skills.’

WRAP UP

‘Embrace your weirdness, your background, your instinct.’

There isn’t one set way to do anything, so stop looking for a formula. Find your tribe, believe in yourself — you’ve got this!

ADDITIONAL READING LIST MENTIONED IN THE BOOK

• High Output Management — Andrew S. Grove
• Good Product Manager, Bad Product Manager — Ben Horowitz