Sunday, April 17, 2011

Permanent War



You’re lucky that I ain’t the president
Cause I’ll push the f*#king button and get it over with
F&$k all that waiting and procrastinating
And all that goddamn negotiating
Bushwick Bill, Fuck a War




TOM HAGEN Mike, why am I out?
MICHAEL CORLEONE You’re not a wartime consigliere. Things may get tough with the move we’re trying.
—Scene from The Godfather


Capitalism is two things: it is creative destruction. It is like when they pull a building down in Manhattan because they need to put up a bigger, better thing in the same location. Capitalism at its best is permanent war.

Larry Page At The Helm
I Will Not Miss Eric

Politics is war by other means, Churchill said that. I am saying business is politics by other means. It is still war.

Larry Eyeing HP Now
Larry Ellison Cracks Me Up
Putting My Money On Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison
Larry Is Not Done Yet
If Apothepo Is Innocent, Why Is He Hiding?
The Leo Apotheker Is Human Drama
Larry Ellison's Personal Life
Larry Ellison's 1995 Network Computer Vision

"I believe in being nice, but that does not apply to my enemies."
- Larry Ellison

The Proverbial White Male

This was me in the thick of a political revolution: The Art Of War, Bruce Lee.

If business were not politics by other means, I would not be good at it. I got as sound political instincts as just about anyone on the planet. I will lock horns with the best of the best. I shake hands with the very best.






Ben Horowitz: Peacetime CEO/Wartime CEO: Eric Schmidt was much more than Google’s front man; as Google’s peacetime Chief Executive, he led the greatest technology business expansion in the last ten years. Larry Page, in contrast, seems to have determined that Google is moving into war and he clearly intends to be a wartime CEO. This will be a profound change for Google and the entire high-tech industry...... In wartime, a company is fending off an imminent existential threat. Such a threat can come from a wide range of sources including competition, dramatic macro economic change, market change, supply chain change, and so forth. The great wartime CEO Andy Grove marvelously describes the forces that can take a company from peacetime to wartime in his book Only The Paranoid Survive. ...... a classic wartime mission was Andy Grove’s drive to get out of the memory business in the mid 1980s due to an irrepressible threat from the Japanese semiconductor companies. In this mission, the competitive threat—which could have bankrupted the company—was so great that Intel had to exit its core business, which employed 80% of its staff. ...... most management books describe peacetime CEO techniques while very few describe wartime. For example, a basic principle in most management books is that you should never embarrass an employee in a public setting. On the other hand, in a room filled with people, Andy Grove once said to an employee who entered the meeting late: “All I have in this world is time, and you are wasting my time.” ....... In wartime, by contrast, the company typically has a single bullet in the chamber and must, at all costs, hit the target. The company’s survival in wartime depends upon strict adherence and alignment to the mission. ....... When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the company was weeks away from bankruptcy—a classic wartime scenario. He needed everyone to move with precision and follow his exact plan; there was no room for individual creativity outside of the core mission. ..... Wartime CEO violates protocol .... Wartime CEO cares about a speck of dust on a gnat’s ass if it interferes with the prime directive. ..... Wartime CEO lets the war define the culture. ..... Wartime CEO is paranoid. ..... Peacetime CEO strives not to use profanity. Wartime CEO sometimes uses profanity exclusively. ...... Wartime CEO thinks the competition is sneaking into her house and trying to kidnap her children. ...... Peacetime CEO aims to expand the market. Wartime CEO aims to win the market. ..... Wartime CEO is completely intolerant. ..... Wartime CEO heightens the contradictions. ...... Wartime CEO neither indulges consensus-building nor tolerates disagreements. ..... Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand. ...... Peacetime CEO trains her employees to ensure satisfaction and career development. Wartime CEO trains her employees so they don’t get their ass shot off in the battle. ...... Peacetime CEO has rules like “we’re going to exit all businesses where we’re not number 1 or 2.” Wartime CEO often has no businesses that are number 1 or 2 and therefore does not have the luxury of following that rule. ..... Steve Jobs, who employs a classical wartime management style, removed himself as CEO of Apple in the 1980s during their longest period of peace before coming back to Apple for a spectacular run more than a decade later during their most intense war period. ...... other than the books written by Andy Grove, I don’t know of any management books that teach you how to manage in wartime like Steve Jobs or Andy Grove.

Larry Elllison on stage.Image via Wikipedia
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