BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company

Clearly, it is virtually impossible to lead a company and have only one “to do” on your list. But you should be spending the bulk of your time on your number one priority, concentrating your efforts on that priority until it is complete.

If you have people who are unsuited to anything except the specific idea or business strategy you have in mind, what happens when that idea fails and you need to move on to the next idea and the next one after that?

“If we believe in our culture,” they said to themselves, “why not bet big on it?” So, they bought a retail company, Lojas Americanas, and a beer company, Brahma. Their thesis proved correct: If they had the right people with the right cultural DNA, they could deploy those right people into acquired businesses and win big. Lemann and his partners fo

One core value that Bill instilled in me is the sacred nature of commitments. “Be very careful what you commit to,” Bill advised. “Because there’s no honorable way to fail a commitment freely made.”

Bill imbued me with the idea that living to core values is often inconvenient, sometimes costly, and always demanding. It is indeed the hard stuff. I remain imperfect in living to all of my core values all the time. But I behave much more consistently with my values because of Bill’s teaching and example.

work is infinite; time is finite. Work expands to fill whatever time is allotted to it. To be productive, therefore, you must manage your time, not your work. The key question to ask yourself is not “What am I going to do?” but “How am I going to spend my time?”

We have no sympathy for managers who don’t back their words with actions. Granted, no one is perfect, and we all fail to live 100% up to our ideals. But some company leaders don’t even live up to 25% of their ideals. Their talk is rhetoric. Their insincerity is nauseating. They don’t deserve to be leaders. And, indeed, they certainly will not build

Some love to give speeches; others are nervous in front of a crowd. Some are charismatic; others are not. (Do not confuse leadership with charisma. Charisma does not equal leadership, and some of the most effective leaders have very little charisma.)

Not that these are bad questions, but they’re secondary to the question of who. Put a right who in charge of foreign policy, and you’ll get good policy. Choose a right who for your founding team, and you’re more likely to come up with good ideas and make them work. Come upon a right who to be mentored

The percentage of key seats on the bus filled with the right people for those seats.