The Weekly: Edition #91 - April 2nd, 2021
Leadership and Sacrifice
"The heart of good leadership is sacrifice." - John C. Maxwell
From an outside perspective, leading an organization may seem like flashy work. But most leaders will shudder at this perception, because leadership involves daily sacrifices and tradeoffs, most of which are not glamorous at all. Hiring, firing, correcting, promoting, demoting, steering, course correcting, strategizing, selling, training, shutting down, starting up, investing, divesting. Every choice for a leader comes with real tradeoffs and often personal sacrifice.
True leadership, according to John Maxwell in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership involves sacrifice at every turn. At times, this includes:
- Sacrificing your ego (is it worth arguing with this customer?)
- Sacrificing your time (doing the small things often results in big wins, but costs precious time)
- Sacrificing your control (it matters less how things are done, so long as they get done in a manner worthy of the organization's values)
- Sacrificing your finances (in tough times, are you willing to take a pay cut alongside your staff?)
Leadership decisions must be made in the interest of your team and moving your organization forward. But what is more - there is never a time where sacrifices can be put on hold, unless leadership responsibilities are relinquished. Most people believe that greater leadership comes with less responsibilities and more freedom. In reality, it normally comes with more responsibilities, less freedom, and greater sacrifice.
The cost of leadership is high and comes in different forms. Only you can determine whether the personal satisfaction of watching an organization grow and flourish is worth the sacrifice. Greater leadership requires greater sacrifice. There is a clear tradeoff between greater freedom and greater responsibility as more or less leadership responsibilities are assumed. Choose wisely and think hard about what you are willing (and are not willing) to sacrifice as a leader to grow your organization.
On the nature of CEO time allocation in an SME (Danny Qiao, AJ Wasserstein, Brent Beshore)
+ "Many MBA students harbor dreams of becoming an entrepreneur and CEO. These students channel their MBA coursework toward this goal, concluding from the popular media narrative that this is the career for them. Perhaps these students believe that entrepreneurs and CEOslive glamorous and exciting lives filled with thrilling activities like bare-knuckled negotiations, ponderous strategy sessions, and capital formation gamesmanship. Before MBA students andaspiring entrepreneurs commit themselves to this future, they should know exactly what a CEO does with their work hours—that is, how they allocate their time and what, precisely, they do all day long in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)."
Marketplace supply strategy: comprehensive, exclusive, or curated (a16z)
+ "The right supply strategy varies based on the product being offered and those customers’ needs. If users value consistency and predictability—like, say, UberX—the path to long-term success generally lies in being both better and cheaper than the competition. However, in most marketplaces, users value having a high variety of supply. For these marketplaces, there are three main strategies for supply differentiation: comprehensiveness, exclusivity, and curation."
The a16z top 100 marketplaces (a16z)
+ "The second edition of the Marketplace 100 offers a new perspective. The ranking is revealing not only in uncovering the top companies and categories of an unprecedented year, but also in showcasing certain startups’ consistency since 2019. You’ll see that data indicated by the rank change from last year."
The return of neighborhood retail and other surprising real estate trends (TechCrunch)
+ "I do think we will continue to see more ‘Apple store’-type retail experiences, where the focus is less on selling inventory and more on creating an environment for customers to physically interact with goods and experience the brand ethos beyond a website. Because I anticipate that retail rents are going to be meaningfully lower at the end of the pandemic, I actually think we will see even more experimentation than we did pre-COVID. It will be a very interesting period for retail."
Auto dealerships can’t keep up with new models. The global chip shortage is to blame. (Wall Street Journal)
+ "A monthslong shortage of semiconductors has forced auto makers to cut production of even their most-lucrative vehicles. Winter storms in Texas last month disrupted plastics production, leading to shortages of seat foam and other materials, car makers and suppliers have said. A backup at West Coast ports is delaying vehicle-part shipments from Asia."
A playbook on building systems for COO's & Chiefs of Staff (First Round Review)
+ "What are the core systems that are the manifestation of the culture that we want to build? At HashiCorp, we’ve grown from a few hundred to over a thousand people, so the goal is to build scalable systems that enable employees to do their best work and contribute to the outcomes of the company. For us, that’s shaped up into three specific systems: strategic planning, knowledge management, and communications."
A template for defining your company's brand (Jake Knapp, Google Ventures)
+ If you are looking for a little inspiration on defining what makes your company unique, this 'brand sprint' template walks through helpful exercises to zero in on your organization's brand. Here is a longer article on how to use the template.
Losing dollars by pinching pennies: when short-termism goes bad (Wall Street Journal)
+ "Pfizer is hardly the only company to be forced to figure it out on the fly: The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that supply chain woes have mounted world-wide for all sorts of businesses, thanks to the pandemic and other disruptions. The world is learning that a just-in-time inventory system and a short-term focus on maximizing return on investment is no match for a restive Mother Nature."
What happens to NYC’s 3.2 million tons Of trash (Business Insider)
+ "New York City is one of the most wasteful cities in the world. But none of its trash is actually processed in NYC. It's sent to waste-to-energy facilities and landfills as far away as Ohio and South Carolina. It takes a vast network of sanitation workers, trucks, trains, cranes, and barges — and $429 million a year — to get it there."
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