Last fall, Tim Ferriss interviewed Ben Horowitz, the co-founder of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. The initial topic was Ben’s new book What You Do is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture. For anyone who wants to nerd out on ancient history and how it connects to building a company today, this talk will be very informative.
Highlights:
“One of the key insights from Bushido is that a culture is not a set of beliefs, it’s a set of actions.”
How do you distinguish between leadership and management? Leadership is the art of getting people to follow you (and as Colin Powell said, if only out of curiosity.) Have a vision, be inspiring, create a feeling among people that you care about them, their goals and objectives. Management is about operationalizing that vision that you articulated and communicating with the right people to get things done. Leadership is a little more on the creative side, management requires a little more discipline and systematization.
