When I work with entrepreneurs today, this is the main thing that I try to convey. Embrace your weirdness, your background, your instinct. If the key… - Ben Horowitz

Embrace your weirdness, your background, your instinct. If the keys are not in there, they do not exist.

Only a CEO who had been through some awful, horrible, devastating circumstances would know to give that advice at that time.

MANAGING STRICTLY BY NUMBERS IS LIKE PAINTING BY NUMBERS Some things that you want to encourage will be quantifiable, and some will not. If you report on the quantitative goals and ignore the qualitative ones, you won’t get the qualitative goals, which may be the most important ones. Management purely by numbers is sort of like painting by numbers — it’s strictly for amateurs. At HP, the company wanted high earnings now and in the future. By focusing entirely on the numbers, HP got them now by sacrificing the future.

Ability to achieve the vision This attribute can absolutely be learned; perhaps this is why Andy Grove’s tolerance for incompetence was legendarily low. Indeed, the enemy of competence is sometimes confidence. A CEO should never be so confident that she stops improving her skills.