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Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution; it just needs clarity.

Ben Horowitz

For example, the vast majority of security break-ins occur as a result of problems with known fixes. With an automated system, you can keep up to date.
BEN HOROWITZ

Date Example Majority Problem Result
Don’t punk out and don’t quit.
BEN HOROWITZ

Inspirational Motivational Quit
It turns out that is exactly what product strategy is all about—figuring out the right product is the innovator’s job, not the customer’s job.
BEN HOROWITZ

Customer Figuring Jobs Product Strategy Turns
How do you make your company a good place to work in general? That’s a really really really large and complex set of skills.
BEN HOROWITZ

Jobs Skills Training
Early in my career as an engineer, I’d learned that all decisions were objective until the first line of code was written. After that, all decisions were emotional.
BEN HOROWITZ

Career Decision Emotional
A manager can’t act like a role model. They need to BE a role model.
BEN HOROWITZ

Manager Models Needs Role
Planning is valuable, tho the plan is usually useless.
BEN HOROWITZ

Planning Useless Valuable
Relationships built from a business do better than the reverse.
BEN HOROWITZ

Better Built Relationship Reverse
Your employees know each other better than they know you.
BEN HOROWITZ

Employee Knows Management
Volatility and length, that’s the value on an option. 10 years on a startup stock, that’s a big valuable thing.
BEN HOROWITZ

Length Management Years
You can take somebody’s job, you have to take their job, but you don’t have to take their dignity.
BEN HOROWITZ

Dignity Jobs Management
There are no silver bullets.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bullets Growth No Silver
When you’re making a critical decision, you have to understand how it’s going to be interpreted from all points of view. Not just your point of view, not just the person you’re talking to, but the people that aren’t in the room. Everybody else.
BEN HOROWITZ

Critical Decisions Talking Views
I emphasize to C.E.O.s, you have to have a story in the minds of the employees. It’s hard to memorize objectives, but it’s easy to remember a story.
BEN HOROWITZ

Mind Remember Stories
It’s quite possible for an executive to hit her goal for the quarter by ignoring the future.
BEN HOROWITZ

Executive Goal Quarters
There is no silver bullet. There are always options and the options have consequences.
BEN HOROWITZ

Bullets Consequences Silver

Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution; it just needs clarity.

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Sometimes an organization doesn’t need a solution; it just needs clarity.

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Popular Authors

More Ben Horowitz Quotes