The Hard Thing About Hard Things Book Summary - The Hard Thing About Hard Things Book explained in key points

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The Hard Thing About Hard Things summary

Name: The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Rating: 4.4 (358 reviews)
Author: Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz

Building A Business When There Are No Easy Answers

4.4 (358 ratings)

28 mins

Table of Contents

The Hard Thing About Hard Things
summarized in 13 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 13

What’s in it for me: find out how you can become a great CEO.

It’s lonely at the top.

CEOs face an immense struggle: they have sole responsibility for their company’s fate and must make life or death decisions about it every day. They may need to fire their best friends or lay off an entire factory, all the while accepting full responsibility and keeping their eye on the future.

In these blinks you’ll discover the lessons Ben Horowitz learned in the course of founding a company, being its CEO and then selling it for $1.6 billion.

You’ll learn how to fire people, when necessary, so that ill feelings are minimized.

You’ll also find out why hiring someone with a few weaknesses can be a good idea.

And finally, you’ll also discover what it takes to be a “wartime CEO.”

Every CEO must deal with the pressures and responsibilities that come with running a company.

Everyone who founds a company or runs one as the CEO has dreams. Usually these dreams revolve around building something beautiful and world-changing while having fun and making a lot of money.

Unfortunately, no company progresses smoothly along this path, as crises are an inevitable part of building a business; there are simply too many variables and things to go wrong for smooth sailing.

For example, every company is somewhat at the mercy of “macro” issues like financial crises and collapses which can scare away investors, as well as smaller “micro” issues such as making a wrong hiring decision or having your best customer go bankrupt.

This is where all CEOs meet The Struggle, which occurs when dreams of success meet reality.

The Struggle is an inevitable part of being in charge of a company, and it consists of the stress and the impossible decisions that come with the territory. The stress and weight of The Struggle will probably affect the CEO’s entire life, from her mental and physical well-being to her career choices and social relationships.

All this makes The Struggle extremely draining, but it is also where greatness arises. Ultimately, the CEO is responsible for negotiating the challenges the company faces, and thus it is she who will get credit for the company’s successes or be fired for its failures.

The Struggle can seem unbearable at times, but teamwork, creativity and a solution orientation help.

As you know, all CEOs must face The Struggle. Happily, there are a few strategies that can help you deal with it.

First of all, even though as the CEO the burden of The Struggle will fall more heavily on you than anyone else, try not to bear the weight alone. Instead, involve as many people as possible when you face a crisis.

Being honest about problems and bad news in your company will help you find solutions quickly.

No one likes giving bad news. But when you’re the CEO and your company is dealing with challenges, discussing them with your workforce openly and directly is crucial for success.

Why?

Nobody wants to lay people off, but if necessary, it must be done quickly and fairly.

One of the tasks every CEO dreads is having to lay people off. However, it is inevitable you’ll face this task, and how you handle it will have a great impact on the company.

First of all, when layoffs are needed, it’s important to be fast. As soon as the decision has been made, action must be taken – delaying layoffs that everyone knows are coming is like letting a wound fester.

When you fire an executive, take responsibility for the mis-hire and ensure continuity of the business.

When a company hits hard times, it is not only the workforce who may be laid off. Sometimes, CEOs must also fire executives, which is a much more difficult and serious task than firing anyone else because there is more at stake for the company both financially and culturally.

So how should you fire an executive?

Take care of the people in your company by training them well and building a good human resources structure.

Many companies emphasize in their communications that people are important to them, but not all seem to truly understand that a great organization really can only be achieved by taking good care of its people. They are more important than your products or your profits.

So how can you take better care of your people?

Hire people based on their strengths, not their weaknesses.

Anyone who has ever had to hire someone knows that selecting the right candidate is far from easy. Indeed, recruiting the right people is a matter of life and death for any company. So how can you do this well?

When recruiting, your first priority should be hiring people for their strengths, not rejecting them for their weaknesses. After all, the strengths are what will help the person excel at the job.

Build a good company where people want to work: dispense with politics.

Every CEO and founder wants their company to be a place where people are happy to work.

So how can you make this happen?

The key for leading an organization is knowing what to do and getting the organization to do it.

It’s no coincidence that the biographies of successful CEOs are in high demand; clearly it is a highly demanding role to fulfill.

So what constitutes a great CEO?

There are two different kinds of CEOs: decision makers and implementers.

No two great leaders are exactly alike. It is, however, possible to broadly categorize them based on their approach to leadership as either Ones or Twos.

Ones are leaders whose approach is more focused on defining a path for the organization to follow than on implementing it. Typically, founding CEOs are Ones. A classic example of a One is Bill Gates, who defined a compelling long-term vision for Microsoft.

Depending on a company’s circumstances, it needs either a Peacetime CEO or a Wartime CEO.

No doubt you’ve seen countless management books written by CEOs and business leaders. The problem is that most of these books relate to businesses where the direction to pursue is relatively clear and the business is focused on capturing market share from competitors.

But what these books forget is that many businesses find themselves in much more dire straits. The circumstances the company faces largely dictate the kind of management approach required. This means a company may need a Peacetime CEO or a Wartime CEO.

You can learn to be a great CEO though it will feel uncomfortable at first.

CEOs are mysterious creatures. When company boards or venture capitalists try to evaluate the quality of a CEO, they’re often at a total loss. They may wonder, for example, whether great CEOs are born or whether someone can grow into the role.

The truth is of course that CEOs grow into the job: to lead a company, they must develop the right characteristics and skills for that particular job. This means it’s almost impossible to tell if a CEO will be successful beforehand. Great CEOs do tend to exhibit certain general traits though, which you should also try to emulate.

Selling your company means you must surmount both emotional and rational obstacles.

Many entrepreneurs dream of one day selling their company and retiring. But when they finally receive an offer, they often waver, because by that time they feel deeply connected to the living, breathing entity they’ve created.

So how do you know if you should sell your company?

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What is The Hard Thing About Hard Things about?

These blinks explain why the job of a CEO is among the toughest and loneliest in the world, and how you can survive all the stress and heartache involved.

Who should read The Hard Thing About Hard Things?

Present or future CEOs and founders
Anyone who wants to understand how businesses are run successfully
Anyone who is ever in a position where they have to hire or fire someone

About the Author

Ben Horowitz is a founding partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Previously, he was a co-founder and CEO at the IT company Opsware, which he eventually sold to Hewlett-Packard in 2007 for $1.6 billion. His blog has over 10 million readers.

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