there are only two ways for a manager to improve the output of an employee: motivation and training. - Ben Horowitz

Want to see a great company story? Read Jeff Bezos’s three-page letter he wrote to shareholders in 1997. In telling Amazon’s story in this extended form — not as a mission statement, not as a tagline — Jeff got all the people who mattered on the same page as to what Amazon was about.

أحد دروس الإدارة الأهمِّ للمؤسِّس/المدير التنفيذيِّ هو عدم الاعتماد كلِّيًّا على الحَدْس. إنَّ أعظم تحسينٍ شخصيٍّ حدث لي بوصفي مديرًا تنفيذيًّا، كان في اليوم الذي توقَّفتُ فيه عن كوني إيجابيًّا جدًّا.

The first thing to understand is that just because somebody interviewed well and reference-checked great, that does not mean she will perform superbly in your company. There are two kinds of cultures in this world: cultures where what you do matters and cultures where all that matters is who you are. You can be the former or you can suck. You must hold your people to a high standard, but what is that standard? I discussed this in the section “Old People.” In addition, keep the following in mind: You did not know everything when you hired her. While it feels awkward, it is perfectly reasonable to change and raise your standards as you learn more about what’s needed and what’s competitive in your industry. You must get leverage. Early on, it’s natural to spend a great deal of time integrating and orienting an executive. However, if you find yourself as busy as you were with that function before you hired or promoted the executive, then she is below standard. As CEO, you can do very little employee development. One of the most depressing lessons of my career when I became CEO was that I could not develop the people who reported to me. The demands of the job made it such that the people who reported to me had to be 99 percent ready to perform. Unlike when I ran a function or was a general manager, there was no time to develop raw talent. That can and must be done elsewhere in the company, but not at the executive level. If someone needs lots of training, she is below standard.