📖 To access Travis' complete book list, visit his storehere
Speaker 2:
this is on what I was gonna say, should we start with a boom?
Speaker 1:
we'll just start with everyone pound the table. Welcome to unleashing leadership. I'm your host, travis moss. We're on season five. We've got Dave Nertsch, our co-host, with us. We're talking about the book the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, and today we're going to get into.
Speaker 1:
If you don't like choosing between horrible and cataclysmic, don't become a CEO. So, as Dave has pointed out right before the show, this is like a me episode. This is. I got some. I got some ideas on this one. So we'll, as we've been doing, dave, we'll let you talk first, to make sure you can get your words in edgewise.
Speaker 1:
Before we let you talk, though, we're going to bring our sponsor in it's Cutthroat College Podcast, trying to help you and your kids avoid going broke because of the cost of college. Check them out on nqrmediacom. It is a podcast. You can find them any place where there's podcasts. They're everywhere, and if you do check out their podcast, subscribe to them, give them a like, give them a review, give them a comment, send it to your friends. That is a really cool show because it just focuses on how to help people, how to help the kids get to the right school and not spend more money than you need to doing it, so check it out. All right, dave, if you don't like, you got horrible and cataclysmic. You got two options. Which one do you choose?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, Well, when I when I read this one, I think you know these kinds of situations are going to come up If you're the CEO of a company where you have to make decisions that are not favorable at all. Right, or it's kind of like a lose-lose type of situation. But you got to make the decision and I think that's not as easy said as done. Right, Like you can say that, oh, we got to choose between the two bad options, but when you got people's livelihood on the line, or just the company overall, anything like that, that takes a lot to be able to make those decisions and you can't avoid it. I don't think it's unavoidable to be in those situations if you're running a company where it's going to come up, so you're going to have to make those choices.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it's kind of like a bad. Well, it doesn't have to be a bad movie, but a movie where somebody's in a situation and they've got to cut off a body part in order to survive, like Saw. I've never seen Saw, but I'll take your word for it. But it's like that. It's like the business. I have a decision that I have to make and either I let the whole place burn or a bunch of people are going to have a horrible day, and I think I think one of the where this gets in the book.
Speaker 1:
The point in the book is when he was transforming the business and it was going from, I think, producing the software to licensing or something like that, and he had to lay off most of the employees that had been with him and been on this journey and he was going to end up with like 30 or 50 employees left over. We've got three months of talking points here. So it's I'm starting to forget the book a little bit exactly to the nuance. But the point is is they had to, they had to transform the company and he had to go in and he had to tell hundreds of people who've been with him that for the whole ride. I'm sorry, we're pivoting, we're going in another direction and the reason is is because if he didn't go in the other direction, that there was going to be no company left. And the CEO's job is the company, believe it or not, it's not their. Their fiduciary responsibility is to the company and so you know he's making a decision. So the company, the company, and so you know he's making a decision, so the company can survive and has to tell you know tons of people that he's become close with. I'm sorry, but you're not part of the future here. So that's what catastrophic is. We're not going to be open next week and horrible is, you know, breaking connections and relationships and that's what it feels like at the time.
Speaker 1:
I think a lot of people come to a certain type of understanding over time, but you know really devastating emotional kind of trauma that comes with having to make that type of decision of affecting that many lives with one decision, and it doesn't have to be that many, it could just be one person. He talks a lot about co-founders and co-founders finding different types of positions and things like that within the organization and he talks about the emotional trauma that you go through and it's a horrible decision to have to do that, to say to somebody look, you've been here since the beginning, but we need you to move to a different position. But, at the same time, the business won't survive if you don't do it Right. And so those are the types of things he's talking about.
Speaker 1:
And if you haven't experienced that in business and you are in leadership or you are a manager, there will be a point where you do probably experience that, unless you're in kind of like a token position where you know, and there's these out there where people are in these management or leadership positions but they don't really make any decisions right, they're just like they're a cog in the wheel. You know that's one thing, but the types of people who go on and find Starbucks or Tesla or Apple or Amazon or enterprise or you know any, any other private companies that do incredibly well, um, they've run into those points where you know they've got to decide do I cut off my arm, do I cut off my leg or do I die?
Speaker 2:
So those type of choices are going to happen, right, that's what we just talked about. So then, what happens after that? Like, what is then the feeling? Like was there like an evolution of like, like a feeling or something that like how you handle it better, or how you move forward, how you recreate the vision for the people who are still there. This is, this is where this is.
Speaker 1:
This is where the, this is where the hard things come in.
Speaker 1:
It's just fucking hard right. It doesn't ever. You don't ever make. If you're the type of person that people will follow, those decisions don't ever come easier. I don't think. I think what you learn how to do is how to deliver those decisions better. You know, I don't know if it's charisma or elegance or empathy or whatever it is, but you learn next time I have to tell somebody this, or next time we have that situation. Here's the type of conversation I have to have and the way to have the conversation. You know they call it. You know, wisdom with old age type of thing it's like it's not. Wisdom with old age is wisdom because it's a lesson learned, because I went through it one time and I had to reflect on the fact that that hurts so bad If there's a better way to do it. So so I inflict less damage. That's what I want to do next time.
Speaker 1:
But it, it, the, the, the person who has to make the decision. I don't think that person ever feels better about the decisions, and I don't think you should. I think, if you get to the point where it doesn't matter to you when you fire somebody. I don't know why people would follow you If you're that callous. If you've been callous to that point, it doesn't mean that you don't fire people or don't have layoffs or don't let people go, or something like that, or tell somebody they can't have a promotion or you know they have to take a different position, take a pay cut or something like that. It doesn't mean you don't do that stuff, but it just means that there should be some empathy there, there should be some feeling and emotion there and you'll get harder over time, Like it won't impact you as much because you'll know you'll, you'll, you can get, you know you'll get through it. But it doesn't mean that the sting's not there, I guess. Yeah, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:
Um, the way you deliver. It could help with with the, I guess. I guess you know how you feel about it. But then even the outcome right If it's delivered better than you know, the employee you had to have the conversation with or the group.
Speaker 1:
With a reflection on it. Yeah, yep, yeah, like I know companies that you see this periodically go back to the 2008 financial crisis and probably like the five years after that, there was a lot of layoffs with a lot of different companies and a lot of companies. The layoffs, like right before christmas. You know, if you had people who really cared about the employees and the reputation of the company, somebody would have said that's not a good idea, right, um, unless you absolutely had to do it at that time period, at that moment, and then you would have thought about the delivery of it a lot better, because I, you know, I'm thinking of particular companies and delivery was very poor to the employees. So, yeah, I think your point is right. When you look back on how you've done something, if you've done it poorly or hurts a little bit more, right, because you know that you could have done it better, um, and that that's a type of, I think, pain that I there's a there's a sharpness to that I'm not necessarily certain it ever goes away Like you don't sit there and wallow in the pity of it, but you go. I wish for their sake. I could have done it better and I'm going to hold myself accountable to this going forward to make sure that I tried to do it better. I mean, that's, that's how you grow as a person, and then you know when, when, when people, when people aren't in leadership or management, it's easy to point the finger and say they have the easiest job.
Speaker 1:
Why do they get paid so much? You know, one of the reasons why they get paid so much is because they have to make that decision. Sometimes, right, do I have to fall on my sword for the company, for the betterment of the company? Because on one hand, I can take the blame and get stabbed in the gut. On the other hand, the company can suffer dramatically and everybody else here is going to suffer, right? So when you're at the top of the food chain, you eat first, but you also pay first, and when you look at some of these decisions, that's the guy who's got to live with those skeletons in the closet. You know those, those little demons, that kind of follow along and said did I handle that right? Did I not handle it right? But that's also where they learn from it and why they can continue to progress you.
