Bad News
“Sometimes, I think my most important job as a CEO is to listen for bad news. If you don’t act on it, your people will eventually stop bringing bad news to your attention and that is the beginning of the end.” – Bill Gates, former world richest and Microsoft founder Someone should tell Gates that Ballmer is bad news. In Silicon Valley, “IPO” has been replaced by “pivot” as the most popular and over used word. Pivoting is changing the direction or even the product a company offers when it becomes painfully apparent that the original concept isn’t selling. Some pivots are minor, such as retargeting to new segments. Others are major, like when I assisted one post-IPO company transition from being a hardware vendor into a software supplier. Nearly every pivot is instigated by bad news. Something within the product-to-customer pipeline gets stuck, meeting friction or outright resistance. Sometimes … Continue reading →