When things go well, the reasons to stay at a company are many: Your career path is wide open because as the company grows lots of interesting jobs n… - Ben Horowitz

Results against objectives Once you’ve set a high standard, it will be straightforward to measure your executive against that standard.

It taught me that being scared didn’t mean I was gutless. What I did mattered and would determine whether I would be a hero or a coward.

If you investigate companies that have failed, you will find that many employees knew about the fatal issues long before those issues killed the company. If the employees knew about the deadly problems, why didn’t they say something? Too often the answer is that the company culture discouraged the spread of bad news, so the knowledge lay dormant until it was too late to act. A healthy company culture encourages people to share bad news. A company that discusses its problems freely and openly can quickly solve them. A company that covers up its problems frustrates everyone involved. The resulting action item for CEOs: Build a culture that rewards — not punishes — people for getting problems into the open where they can be solved.