I was starting to understand a truth about the inherent suffering required to get the words right. Writing is like running: If you run your best, it will always hurt. It never gets easier; you only get better.

Mentorship—being a mentor and being mentored—is a relationship, not a transaction.

Do you have Jorge Paulo’s dilemma? Do you have too many great young and talented leaders, too many ambitious and capable and driven people? If you create this “problem” for your company, you’ll be forced to go for the next big dream; otherwise, the best ones will go find something else to do.

Vision forms the basis of extraordinary human effort. Vision provides a context for strategic and tactical decisions. Shared vision creates cohesion, teamwork, and community. Vision lays the groundwork for the company to evolve past dependence on a few key individuals.

Atchity hit the point perfectly in his book A Writer’s Time: If your work is successful, it generates more work; as a result, the concept of “finishing your work” is a contradiction in terms so blatant and so dangerous that it can lead to nervous breakdowns—because it puts the pressure on the wrong places in your mind and habits.

Lemann and his partners focused on building a “People Machine” to hire and train an ever-larger pool of aggressive, ambitious, young leaders for eventual deployment. Their ultimate “strategy” was to find passionate, driven young people; put them in an intense meritocratic culture; challenge them with audacious goals; and give them a stake in the ou

CHOICES—DECISIVENESS REVISITED Setting priorities requires making tough choices as to what is really important. One reason so many people have such a difficult time getting focused is that they also have a difficult time making decisions: they balk at choosing which items will be left off their priority list. And you must be willing to take items o

And what’s that metric? The percentage of key seats on the bus filled with the right people for those seats. Stop and think: What percentage of your key seats do you have filled with the right people? If your answer is less than 90 percent, you’ve just identified your number one priority. To build a truly great company, you’ll need to strive for ha

After the company reached a plateau of success (at about $15 million in revenues and 75 employees), M refused to move forward with anything new, bold, or risky. The company stagnated. Ambitious people left.