
photo credit: Fotografik33 – cc
I should start by saying I don’t know Mr. Gross, I’ve never met him, I never deal with him in business, he’s in a totally different domain. But the behavior described is completely typical of any highly successful, high-functioning organization in any field I’ve ever seen.
@pmarca Advice I rec'd early. "If you want to make it in this business, u need to grow a thick skin". At high levels, business is intense.
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Ralph Witherell (@withere) February 25, 2014
High-functioning business organizations aren’t Disneyland. There’s always stress, conflict, argument, dissent. Emotion. Drama. This exact same behavior or pattern is often found in both the best-performing companies in any space and in the worst-performing.
I often see young people entering business think it’s all going to be patty cake happy land and if not, something must be wrong. So I read this story and I literally think to myself, boy, that sounds like Apple, Oracle, Intel, Cisco, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Moral of the story? Business is stressful. There’s constant conflict, emotion, even anger. Building a company is an intense experience, period. Harnessed properly, this is the crucible out of which high performance and great results emerges. Satisfaction of overcoming challenges.
To quote Jim Barksdale:
This isn’t a family and I ain’t your daddy. But together, we can build great things and make our grandkids proud.
@pmarca totally agree, business is not a smooth line... there are many bumps along the road. http://t.co/qBQWWQEQSE
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Vinay Patankar (@vinayp10) February 25, 2014
Source: Andreessen’s tweets on High-Functioning Business Organizations Are Not Disneyland: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12