Need someone to lead product management at your software company? I create software for people that create software and I'm looking for my next opportunity. Check out my resume and get in touch.

Measuring a CEO's mind

Freshness Warning
This blog post is over 15 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

Fred Wilson is running a series of quotes from a book about the father of venture capital, Georges Doriot. Today’s is from Dennis Robinson, CEO of one of Doriot’s portfolio companies, High Voltage Engineering.

At early board meetings, I would try to give an accurate accounting of the profit and loss. He would look through me and ask what I really thought about when I was shaving.

Fred asked if people were enjoying the quotes because he hadn’t received any comments. I commented that short quotes are like candy. They’re fun but without substance. They’re empty calories. What I’d really like is to talk about what the quote means, tie it to some examples, and start a conversation around it.

Doriot was looking for the true picture of an early stage company. What the numbers look like is important, sure, but in a very early company, what what Doriot wanted to know is what was occupying the CEO’s thoughts. Not everything that’s important can be measured. Not everything that can be measured is important.

I had dinner with a friend last night and we were swapping war stories from the dot com meltdown. He was working for one of the big interactive shops, running the technology projects for the company. He’d often attend analyst presentations and related how they’d share new projects or interesting technologies with the financial analysts. The analysts didn’t care. They simply wanted to know how many new seats the company was adding. How quickly is headcount growing.

Because the analysts were basing their recommendations on this measurement, the company was leasing space like mad. Their stock price tracked closely to how many square feet of expensive downtown Manhattan office space they leased. They were being judged on measurements that weren’t important.

What occupies a CEO’s mind can show you where a company is heading. What issues are being faced. Where the strengths and weaknesses of the company are. And where the strengths and weaknesses of the CEO are. In an early stage company, these questions are critical. What’s more, during down time, you’re more likely to think about philosophical questions. Big thoughts without tidy answers. Things that are important but not measurable.

Recently Written

Mastery doesn’t come from perfect planning (Dec 21)
In a ceramics class, one group focused on a single perfect dish, while another made many with no quality focus. The result? A lesson in the value of practice over perfection.
The Dark Side of Input Metrics (Nov 27)
Using input metrics in the wrong way can cause unexpected behaviors, stifled creativity, and micromanagement.
Reframe How You Think About Users of your Internal Platform (Nov 13)
Changing from "Customers" to "Partners" will give you a better perspective on internal product development.
Measuring Feature success (Oct 17)
You're building features to solve problems. If you don't know what success looks like, how did you decide on that feature at all?
How I use OKRs (Oct 13)
A description of how I use OKRs to guide a team, written so I can send to future teams.
Build the whole product (Oct 6)
Your code is only part of the product
Input metrics lead to outcomes (Sep 1)
An easy to understand example of using input metrics to track progress toward an outcome.
Lagging Outcomes (Aug 22)
Long-term things often end up off a team's goals because they can't see how to define measurable outcomes for them. Here's how to solve that.

Older...

What I'm Reading

Contact

Adam Kalsey

+1 916 600 2497

Resume

Public Key

© 1999-2024 Adam Kalsey.