Posts from life lessons

Today is my sixtieth birthday and I plan to goof off with friends and family all day and night in celebration. If I don’t respond to an email, text, or tweet, well that’s because I’m celebrating.

I’ve been told that turning 60 is a big one and to expect to feel a lot. I will make sure to do that but as many know, it is not my nature to do that. So I will have to work at it.

I have cut back on blogging a lot in the last year. Four posts a week on AVC is now a lot. Many weeks there are only three. I’m hoping that the quality has gone up as the quantity has come down. At least that is the goal.

I’ve caught a second (or maybe third or fourth) wind with my work in the last year. It is a combination of covid, climate, and crypto. The world is changing and there is so much energy being released from these changes that draws me back. At sixty, it is a different kind of work; less hustle and more conviction. I like that.

As the Gotham Gal and I enter our fifth decade together, I am struck by how much we have become one. We often say the same thing to each other at the same moment. A mind meld.

As I told my partner Albert this morning on text, I am a very fortunate person. Life has given me many blessings. I try to give them back as much as I can and AVC is an important part of how I do that.

With that, I am off to have fun with friends and family for the rest of the day.

I have watched countless companies and leadership teams manage transitions over the years and I have come to believe that companies and leaders should do everything they can to promote “leaving well.”

What I mean by “leaving well” is a smooth transition of a leader out of a role/company. This typically means that a departing leader gives a company a heads up that they are planning to transition out, that news is shared broadly internally, allowing for a transparent process to find a new leader. A similar process is used to transition a leader out when a new one is needed.

For this to work, companies need to do their part to facilitate this process. This means reacting well to the news that an executive would like to move on. It can also include a financial incentive to stick around during a transition. A culture that embraces leaving well puts everyone in a better place during transitions.

There are certainly times when leaving well is not possible. If an executive is terminated for reasons that require an immediate departure, there is no way to execute a smooth transition.

It is also the case that an executive could get an offer that requires an immediate start date that they feel that they have to accept. This is exactly the kind of thing a tradition and culture of leaving well is designed to prevent. Generally speaking, it is preferable to run a process to find your next role versus accepting an offer that comes in unsolicited. If a company has a culture of leaving well, executives will feel that they have the option of running a process versus accepting an offer that comes at them.

It is best to set this culture up at the very beginning. Precedent is powerful. If people see that others have been treated well on the way out, they will be more comfortable being open and honest. If people see the opposite, then they will be more mercenary in their actions.

Cultures that allow for open honest transitions are better places to work and easier companies to manage. Nobody likes a fire drill. Sometimes you have no choice, but if your company has them all of the time, it is a tough place to be.

The Gotham Gal and I are watching Succession after being told by so many friends and family members that we had to see it. We are in season two and last night we watched an episode where Logan Roy tries to acquire a family-owned media business. The selling family, led by the mother, tells him they will do the deal if he names his daughter Shiv as his successor. Logan explains that is not how he does things and that he will name his successor on his time and terms. The mother explains it is a requirement of the deal. And so Logan leaves the meeting without closing the deal.

On his arrival back in NYC Logan hears that the selling family has “caved” and will do the deal without a named successor.

The walk-away move is a bold one and does not always lead to winning on your terms. It can cause you to lose the deal.

But I am a fan of the walk-away move because it shows the other party that you are not going to move on your offer anymore and forces a hard decision instead of endless negotiating, which I personally don’t like.

I am often counseled to keep talking and relax. But I find walking away to be very effective if done at the right time and after being very reasonable until then. It is a very powerful way to send a message.

I am returning to a topic that I have talked a lot about on this blog.

A number of years ago at our annual CEO Summit, we had Angela Duckworth speak to our portfolio about Grit, the topic of her excellent book on the subject. In Angela’s research, she determined that the single greatest determinant of success was not talent. It was grit.

I was reminded of that last night as I watched Derrick Rose lead the New York Knicks to a must-win in game two of their series against the Atlanta Hawks. The Knicks were a mess for the first half of the game and Derrick Rose singlehandedly kept them in the game.

Derrick Rose was the first pick in the 2008 draft and by 2011 he became the youngest NBA player to win the Most Valuable Player award, something he accomplished at age 23. A year later he tore his ACL and he has struggled with injuries ever since.

In the middle of this season, the Knicks acquired Derrick Rose from the Detroit Pistons and soon thereafter he came down with Covid and missed several weeks.

But after Derrick Rose came back from Covid in the last seventeen games of the season, the Knicks won thirteen of those games and landed in fourth place in the East.

And last night, he was the heart and soul of the Knicks. He kept them in the game until his teammates woke up, and he led the team in scoring in a must-win.

Derrick Rose will never be the player he was at 23 when he could beat anyone off the dribble and score at will. He could have called it quits many times in the last nine years since he won his MVP. But he hasn’t quit, he’s worked his way back and he is leading an NBA team in the playoffs. It is really something to behold.

Not everything goes the way we are expecting it to go. We get dealt bad hands and have to play them. That is way things are in life. There are people out there, like Derrick Rose, who show that you can make the best of a tough situation, keep going, and win anyway. That’s grit.

I was rooting for Phil Mickelson all weekend to win the PGA at age 50. I’ve watched Phil for thirty years and I’ve seen all of the highs and lows and there have been many. He plays the game of golf with a level of creativity that can often lead to problems. He is a risk-taker which isn’t always the best way to approach a golf course.

But this weekend at the PGA, he was simply better than anyone else. He hit the ball as far as players thirty years younger than he is. And he showed off his incredible short game.

We have now seen this a few times, where athletes who are “past their prime” continue to be better than anyone else, at least for a game or a long weekend.

Some of this is due to the better conditioning that today’s athletes are in. Some of it is that they are older and wiser and have been there before and understand how to handle the moment. And some of it is that they are the best of their generation and that level of talent goes a long way.

I think us “old timers” can take some lessons from Phil and other athletes who are outperforming well beyond their prime. We can stay in the game to start. We can figure out what our version of learning how to hit the ball as far as the youngsters is. And we can take comfort in the fact that we have been in this moment before and know how to take a breath, calm down, and make the right decision. And win again!

Last night I watched the NY Knicks win their fourth straight game on the road in New Orleans. They are now 29-27 and have a fighting chance of being a .500 team this season with only 16 regular season games left.

This is essentially the same team that went 21-45 last year. Elfrid Payton, RJ Barrett, Julius Randle, Mitchell Robinson, Taj Gibson, and Reggie Bullock were all on that 21-45 team.

What changed?

The coach is what changed. Tom Thibodeau came in and has instilled an entirely different approach and culture. The Knicks are the league’s best defensive team, allowing the least points per game. Last year, they were 18th in defense.

This Knicks team is competitive in every game, even if they don’t win them all. Last year, we would regularly walk out of the Garden down 20 points in the fourth quarter.

I am going to the Garden on Sunday for the first time in fourteen months and I am excited at the opportunity to be at a game that will hopefully be competitive down the stretch.

Watching Thibs at work is a lesson in leadership. He sets the tone, expectations are high, players that don’t put in the effort don’t play, no matter who they are. Everyone knows what is expected of them.

I have seen this in companies too. The same team, with the same product, in the same market, can be completely transformed by a new leader. Leadership matters. A lot.

I do a lot of “bulk emailing” but I hate sending bulk emails. I prefer to personalize emails and send them one by one so that the recipient understands that the email came from me.

What that has meant is that I take google sheets full of email addresses and I cut and paste a message into my gmail for each and every email address. That is incredibly slow, dull, repetitive, and painful.

About a year ago, we started using Hubspot for our family’s philanthropic efforts and it was a revelation to me. Hubspot connects to my gmail account and the emails I send from it appear to the recipient like I sent them personally from my gmail.

But behind the scenes, I can collaborate with my colleagues on templates and lists for various bulk emails that I need to send. When it is time for me to send the emails, I simply work my way through the list, selecting a new name, adding the template, making any little changes to personalize the message, and then I hit send.

It is still a fair bit of work to do that for twenty or thirty or forty names, but I can do it in ten to twenty minutes and the recipient gets a personalized email from me which as we all know increases the open and reply rate by orders of magnitude.

If you are looking for a great way to do bulk emailing, I highly recommend Hubspot.

One of the gifts that I got was the ability to stay positive. I am grateful to my parents, my wife, and my genes (and anyone else responsible too). It is such a superpower.

I don’t just mean optimism. I mean saying nice things about people. I mean keeping a smile on your face. I mean positivity in all things. I do have my moments of negativity, but they come infrequently and go away quickly.

I saw Magic Johnson say something nice about the Lakers last night and I texted my son that I appreciate how Magic is always so positive. He always has a smile on his face. He is always saying nice things. I am sure he was a vicious competitor on the court, but he did it nicely.

I recall when David Karp was building Tumblr, he refused to have comments. He refused to have downvotes. The only user engagement was a heart and a repost. He told me he wanted to emphasize positivity and de-emphasize negativity. And Tumblr was a very positive place to be during its heyday.

For every negative thought, there is a positive counter thought. If you don’t like the Celtics, maybe you like the Knicks. If you don’t like Trump, maybe you like Biden. If you don’t like Bitcoin, maybe you like Ethereum. It is a pretty simple move, and also a very powerful move, to focus on what you like versus what you don’t like.

Doing this not only can change how others feel about you, it can change how you feel about yourself. I highly recommend it. I hope it becomes a trend. We would all be happier and nicer. Social media would be tolerable. Life would be better.

The last two months have been challenging in NYC. It has been cold, rainy, and snowy. There has not been a lot of sun. And the pandemic has things locked down. I know so many people who have found the last few months very challenging.

At the same time, more and more friends and loved ones are getting vaccinated. I hope to be able to do that soon myself. So there is light at the end of the tunnel, but we are still in the tunnel.

The other thing about the pandemic is it feels like we work all the time as there is little else to do. One one hand it is comforting to have something to occupy the time. On the other hand, working all of the time is not healthy.

The Gotham Gal and I decided to take some mental health time with some of our family and go skiing for a few weeks. I am looking to getting out in the fresh air, sun on my face, wind in my hair, and not working all of the time.

Decompressing is important. I am excited to do it and hope that all of you can find some time to do the same while we wait this thing out.