Category Archives: Doing Business

Etc., Leadership

Behind the Split Between FB and WhatsApp’s Founders

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How ugly was the breakup between Facebook Inc. FB -1.65% and the two founders of WhatsApp, its biggest acquisition? The creators of the popular messaging service are walking away leaving about $1.3 billion on the table.

The expensive exit caps a long-simmering dispute about how to wring more revenue out of WhatsApp, according to people familiar with the matter. Facebook has remained committed to its ad-based business model amid criticism, even as Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg has had to defend the company before American and European lawmakers.

The WhatsApp duo of Jan Koum and Brian Acton had persistent disagreements in recent years with Mr. Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, who grew impatient for a greater return on the company’s 2014 blockbuster $22 billion purchase of the messaging app, according to the people.

More at WSJOnline

Doing Business, Etc., Leadership, Management

44 Favorite Books of High Achievers

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5. Turn The Ship Around by L. David Marquet
“Turn the Ship Around isn’t a typical business book. It’s not about business at all, but it offers a fundamentally critical lesson for all leaders and managers. The key premise is that when people come to you for permission to do something, they rarely consider all the outcomes and rarely take on full accountability. The author, an experienced Navy officer, took commission and control of the USS Santa Fe, a nuclear-powered submarine, and overhauled the performance of the crew–leading them from last place in the fleet to first place. Instead of having his crew ask permission and seek orders, he told them to come to him with intent. Instead of ‘Captain, may I turn the ship starboard 10 degrees?,’ he wanted people to come to him and say ‘Captain, I’m going to turn the ship starboard 10 degrees.’ The difference seems minor, but the effect is enormous. ‘May I’ puts the responsibility on the manager or leader. ‘I’m going to’ puts the responsibility on the person taking action. By stating intent, that person must live with the consequences of their action and will think more completely about the action and its consequences. This small change turns followers into leaders, and as I’ve seen in my own company, works incredibly well in business.”

–Ross Kimbarovsky, founder and CEO of crowdSPRING, one of the world’s leading marketplaces for crowdsourced logo design, web design, graphic design, product design, and company naming services

More at Inc.com

Etc., Leadership, Management

…Start by Building Your Tribe

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But here’s the catch. We can’t achieve and hold onto a masterful self on our own. Both cohorts of people that my colleagues and I studied took pride in their mastery, and took care to cultivate relationships that helped them endure and enjoy their independent and mobile working lives. They might have been nomads, but they needed a tribe.

Most of them swore by the value of networking, but they saw it as a necessary evil. They were constantly aware that they needed to keep doing it, and that every new conversation might help advance their work or set it back, turn into a source of revenues, support, or disappointment. This uncertainty kept them on edge.

In contrast to their expansive networks, the people we studied often described having a tight community, often a handful of people, who took the edge off their working lives. With those people, they were neither on show nor for sale.

Instead of demanding conformity in exchange for safety, such communities keep our working lives exciting and us stable, ultimately helping us master our working lives. Without them, those same lives might make us bored or too anxious.

More at HBROnline