Top bosses can create/ruin more than a company’s culture, they can literally destroy the company.

How much damage can one person inflict?

Ask Adam Neumann, founder and ex-CEO of WeWork.

Just six weeks ago, the coworking giant WeWork was the US’s most valuable tech startup.

How valuable? Try $47 billion, based on it’s last funding round.

Then it tried to go public.

Almost immediately, all hell broke loose. A steady stream of rapid-fire headlines detailed Neumann’s self-dealing, mismanagement, and bizarre behavior. Within 33 days the offering was scuttled, WeWork’s valuation plummeted 70% or more, and Neumann, who believed he would become the world’s first trillionaire, was ousted as CEO. What was supposed to be Neumann’s coronation as a visionary became one of the most catastrophically bungled attempted debuts in business history.

Hard to believe, but it seems a lesson has been learned and the so-called magic of Silicon Valley is waning. Visions and charisma are no longer enough.

Investors, reporters, and analysts, chastened after seeing Theranos revealed as a massive fraud and watching Uber fail to live up to the hype, didn’t let another visionary founder pull the wool over their eyes.

Without new funding, and with the IPO shelved, WeWork could run out of money by Thanksgiving and be forced to file bankruptcy.

Founders and CEOs aren’t gods.

They are mere mortals; human beings just as capable of screwing up as anyone else.

There’s an old Italian proverb that says it all — after the game, the King and the pawn go into the same box.

Image credit: Phillip Pessar

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

If you heard only the following comment who would you think it’s about?

He was determined to succeed by any means necessary, subordinating questions of right or wrong to the good of his career and driving himself crazy with his hunger for power and control, his hypersensitivity to perceived threats to his independence and stature, and his overarching need to measure up.

Travis Kalanick? Howie Hubler? Parker Conrad?

Nope, none of the above.

What about this quote?

“It is a great profession. There is the fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standard of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer’s high privilege.”

Marc Benioff? Pierre Omidyar? Henry Ford?

Nope, none of the above.

Both the description and the quote are about the same man.

Someone lightly touched on at school, but not explored in any depth, as were those who held the same position at other times.

Certainly most of the information in the article KG shared was new to me and I’ll bet it would be new to most of you.

The person is Herbert Hoover, the 31^st President of the United States.

The book, published last year is “Hoover: An Extraordinary Life in Extraordinary Times” by Kenneth Whyte.

Read the article (if not the book); you’ll find it very enlightening.

Then choose which parts of Hoover are worth emulating.

Image credit: HikingArtist

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written.

Golden Oldies are a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

Considering the accusations/confessions, resignations, terminations, mea culpas, etc., I thought this post from 2009 and its supporting links should be front and center once again, since nothing has changed in the intervening eight years.

Read other Golden Oldies here.

Oh goody. Another CEO study. I haven’t seen the study, but David Brooks (NY Times) gives an overview (whatever you do, don’t miss the comments), while Dan McCarthy (Great Leadership laments the fascination with such studies.

I pretty much ignore them, except for their amusement value—sort of like all the food studies that tell us which food that was recommended last year will kill us this year.

Speaking of which, I wish someone would do a study like that on CEOs.

A ranking of CEOs who were lauded for x amount of time before they crashed and burned for the same traits that were their supposed strengths.

And a corollary ranking of all the pundits, gurus and executive coaches who did the lauding and how many have come forward to apologize for mistaking hubris for competence.

Of course, that would be a very long list.

Image credit: Beeeeezzz on flickr

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here.

Most of the tech/business/news-consuming world has been hearing about Uber’s latest, but doubtfully its last, scandal.

Uber showcases a culture where anything goes: sexual harassment; managerial threats, including physical violence.

A culture based on the overweening arrogance and MAP of CEO Travis Kalanick and fully supported by his top management and a subservient/ineffective/actively resistant HR.

So Kalanick did what all CEOs (and politicians) do when someone shines a light in their rat hole — he announced an internal investigation led by external, high profile lawyers and made promises at an all-hands meeting.

“What I can promise you is that I will get better every day. I can tell you that I am authentically and fully dedicated to getting to the bottom of this.”

This from the guy who two short years ago called his company “Boob-er” in GQ, because it was a chick magnet.

There’s an old joke that you should never trust anyone who says “trust me.”

The same can be said about the person who proclaims their authenticity.

Image credit: HikingArtist

A Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here

In the beginning the story of Mike Rothenberg, founder of Rothenberg Ventures, is the story of just how far a privileged background and pure chutzpah can take a 28 year-old.

“What if you could combine the service-model approach of Andreessen Horowitz, and the founder-first community building offline and online approach of First Round Capital, with the processing power and reach of Silicon Valley Angels, and the discretion of Floodgate and the judgment of Sequoia? No one else can make the claim that they are even building those pieces. That’s what we’re doing.”

But a lousy manager according to his people.

…a demanding boss who needed to sign off on all decisions including investments, yet rarely made himself available to do so.

Four years later it’s the story of how fast a privileged background, super-size chutzpah, plenty of swagger, negligent management skills and questionable actions can bring you down.

And the very gifts that enabled Rothenberg to start his fund and carve out a name for himself in the crowded valley venture scene — his youth, his Stanford and Harvard degrees, and his dense social network and splashy events — may have set the course for his fiasco.

Read the story.

Look in the mirror.

Review your track record and actions.

Eradicate any similarities.

Hat tip to Anand Sanwal for pointing me to this story.

Image credit: Hiking Artist

It’s amazing to me, but looking back over more than a decade of writing I find posts that still impress, with information that is as useful now as when it was written. Golden Oldies is a collection of what I consider some of the best posts during that time.

CEOs, their words, actions, and egos, have been fodder for academics, coaches, consultants, pundits, the media and numerous others for decades. I’ve never believed that stardom (at any level) travels well. I wrote this three years ago and since then I believe that egos have gotten bigger even faster than CEO skills have shrunk. Read other Golden Oldies here.

In a celebrity-driven culture and considering the hype around global startup salvation, you might start believing that founders are, indeed, some kind of superhero, different from the rest of us, and worthy of adoration.

But you would be wrong.

“Throughout history, narcissists have always emerged to inspire people and to shape the future. The ones who lead companies to greatness are those who can recognize their own limitations.” –Michael Maccoby (2000 Harvard Business Review article about the pros and cons of narcissistic leaders.)

A Fortune article, with heavy input from Zachary First, managing director of The Drucker Institute, does a good job kicking holes in the idea.

Star CEOs grow dangerous when they see their success as destiny, their place at the head of the pack as the only path possible, rendering all of their choices justified. The best leaders might enjoy the red carpet, that’s fine, as long as they understand that being the best fit for the CEO job is a relative status — relative to the needs of the rest of the people in an organization at a specific moment in time.

And fame, no matter how great it may feel, does not equal infallibility.

Steve Jobs is considered a star CEO, but it’s questionable whether he would be if he hadn’t brought in John Sculley, been dumped and then come back.

While it’s not good to believe you’re the smartest person in the room it is far worse to actually be the smartest.

There are many things you can do if you want to stay grounded; here are the basics.

• Hire people who are smarter than yourself;
• encourage feedback and don’t dismiss it;
• listen and hear what you’d rather not;
• build a culture with sans fear where the messenger is never killed; and
• don’t believe your own hype or drink your own Kool-aid.

And above all, stay aware.

Be sure to join us tomorrow for KG’s take on leadership strength, vulnerability — and asking questions.

Flickr image credit: Cory Doctorow

“Brian” is an entrepreneur — an entrepreneur whose company just shut down after burning through $140K friends and family cash.

He burned through it as the result of a combination of overconfidence and ‘underdiscipline’.

It’s not the first time.

Nor the second.

His uncle, “Connor,” is a friend of mine and I asked why he keeps investing.

He said that he the ideas and plans sound solid and he does in depth due diligence, but something always happens.

Connor’s wife thinks Brian is a con artist.

Connor disagrees; he says there is a fundamental difference between the two.

“The difference between entrepreneurs and con artists is that entrepreneurs truly believe in the dreams they are selling — con artists are focused on the money.”

I told him so did pathological liars, who usually  exhibit above average verbal skills as opposed to performance abilities.

Which sounds exactly like Brian.

The takeaway is caveat emptor, whether the entrepreneur with the vision is family, friend, warm intro or cold.

Flickr image credit: Scott Akerman

his year’s Vator Splash Health, which took place at Kaiser HQ in Oakland, was Startup focused and well worth the price of admission.

As we’ve come to expect, it featured a very impressive line-up of panelists and speakers dealing with extremely relevant topics ranging from opening remarks (kidding), tackling cancer with technology, to patient-centered healthcare, to telemedicine and patient engagement, to protecting yourself as the founder, to uncovering new data from API’s and platforms, to big picture items, such as the future of healthcare altogether.

There were supercharged Splash competition presentations featuring three of Health Tech finalists creating an opportunity for new businesses to effectively message their product.

Participating vendors were easily accessible; including Bloom Technologies, DocDelta, Lighthouse, from the American Diabetes Association, Lab Sensor Solutions, Carrum Health, and Crediyo.

Event partners included KPMG, SAP Startup Focus, Bread & Butter, Artis, Scrubbed, Stratpoint, and Healthiest.

On the agenda throughout the day were fireside chats with the likes of Helmy Eltoukhy, founder & CEO, Guardant Health and Vator founder/CEO Bambi Francisco.

Other splash talk topics showcased — when software eats bio, funding the science behind healthcare, Who’s financing the digital health ecosystem?, and Are You in Kaiser’s Line of Sight: A Buyer’s Perspective.

Big data was discussed at length, crystallizing the notion that it is the current ability, made accessible by modern technology, to put meaningful patterns together that are deployable that will affect outcomes and achieve objectives.   

An additional topic or two that I was pleasantly surprised by was the acknowledgement by Dave Schulte, Managing Director at McKesson Ventures, of the importance of the virtue of humility, in admitting “not knowing”. Kudos to Dave because this, of course, comes against the backdrop of Silicon Valley’s famed hubris. 

Leading to another interesting point in that, at a minimum, the possibility (if not certainty) exists, that there will be a falling away or clearing of many of the startups and downturn both in investment activity and new business creation.

A sober but fair assessment and reminder of the unavoidable cyclical nature of business that correctly tempers expectations. 

More than simply being a fun event, populated by interesting shakers and market makers, with good,  healthy food (a very pleasant change), it was a phenomenal networking forum and that, perhaps, is its most intrinsic value.

Paul Graham is a poster boy for many of the things wrong in Silicon Valley — unlike Y Combinator president Sam Altman.

Graham says he won’t fund people with strong accents or women with young kids or who are planning on having kids, whereas Altman believes that eliminating gender bias is very important.

It seems that Graham’s arrogance knows no boundaries.

January 27, Graham took to Twitter to condemn Shark Tank, and shows like it.

Startups: Instead of appearing on Shark Tank, spend that energy fixing whatever makes your product so unappealing you think you need to.

 Mark Cuban, a Tank investor, was not amused.

@paulg you mean like the sense of entitlement and arrogance they get when they become part of a YC class ? It’s hard to wash it out

Chris Sacca, a guest this season, chimed in.

@paulg Yeah, because a free 10-minute pitch to 7 million Americans is something every startup should turn down.

Beyond the sheer arrogance, it’s obvious Graham has never watched the show. He also doesn’t believe time should be wasted on marketing.

The entrepreneurs aren’t just in tech; they span multiple industries and many of them have already built their business and are at the point that they need not just money, but enterprise-strength expertise, which the Sharks offer.

Cuban hit it on the head when he said “arrogant and entitled.” Not to mention where he sees Y Combinator’s future.

@paulg the real question is why does a startup become part of YC any more ? The good old days of YC are just that

Read the whole thread here.

Image credit: Sarah Harlin via Wikipedia

Wally Bock recently compared high flying CEOs to Icarus and provided three classic examples.

In case you’ve forgotten, Icarus’ wings melted when he flew too near the sun.

Icarus’s father warns him first of complacency and then of hubris, asking that he fly neither too low nor too high, so the sea’s dampness would not clog his wings or the sun’s heat melt them.

Unfortunately, both traits often find a home in founder MAP.

Hubris: extreme pride or self-confidence… Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one’s own competence, accomplishments or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power.

Sound like anyone you know or have read about lately?

Complacency seems more unlikely in a hard charging founder.

While Wikipedia considers it synonymous with contentment, Merriam-Webster provides a more accurate and commonly accepted definition.

Complacency: self-satisfaction especially when accompanied by unawareness of actual dangers or deficiencies; an instance of usually unaware or uninformed self-satisfaction

That probably brings a number of people to mind.

The synonyms listed will surely clarify any questions you have, but what’s most interesting are the antonyms: humbleness, humility, modesty.

But here’s the real kicker. A new study finds that the most effective leaders by several different measures are those exhibiting the antonyms.

As you might expect, leaders who overestimated their own competence were the least effective. But the surprising finding was that leaders who underestimated their own competence were the most effective. Likewise, leaders who underestimated themselves had the most engaged employees.

Now you not only have a choice, you have enough information for it to be an informed choice.

Flickr image credit: Dan Moyle