Mark Attila Opauszky
I have been a Canadian tech CEO for over 20 years. There are always obstacles; some of them are worth it. I want to share what I can.
Even if your mission statement is close to your heart and crafted like a fine haiku, it can still fail to be strategically useful, or worse hold you back.
Sometimes you realize you are not ready to diagnose a situation; at least not in a way you really believe - so there is no point trying to push for a change
It’s critical to inject an opinion into everything - even it’s it’s simply to ensure people around you fight you to make it better.
There will be things you can control and things you can’t. Being calm about the things beyond your control and clear about the things within your control - and not confusing the two - is pretty important.
“When a company starts to lose its major battles, truth is usually the first casualty”.
Ben Horowitz - the hard thing about hard things
Keeping your eyes fixed on the horizon while your ship is running into rocks and being attacked by sea monsters and pirates may sound heroic, but usually it’s just plane insane.
If you like being a hammer, then everything is in danger a being a nail to you ... it happens even to the most principled of us hammers.
We talk about planning and strategy and BHAGs and the like, but then act like the choice of game is already set and non-negotiable. It’s not; you get to choose. In fact, you need to choose
The tough part is that you actually need to learn everything you can about running three companies.
There is a probability of success. While this probability is properly unknowable, everything you do will either increase the probability or will eat away at your chances that things line up the way you need them to.
I'm pretty interested in this problem and have been for a long time. The way I see it, there remains an unfathomable level of wasted time and effort on both sides of the B2B selling and buying process.
Like a good axe, a company may have just a few standout capabilities that help it win consistently at its purpose.
We act as if these questions are new and complicated because the technology is new and complicated; and so we can't possibly be expected to work it all out.
The criticisms we expect and are somewhat prepared for are normally not a big deal. It’s the criticism we believe we don’t deserve and don’t expect, that often affect us the most.
Once you establish that a goal is worthy, how do you know if you are truly going after it, or just generating a bunch of smart sounding activity?
