Tag: the hard thing about hard things

• What you do is who you are

  I very much enjoyed Ben Horowitz’s last book called, The Hard Thing About Hard Things. In fact, five years later, I still find myself going back to it in my mind, particularly the bits about high quality decision making.

  So I am looking forward to his latest book about how to create and sustain the kind of business culture that you want. It’s called, What You Do Is Who You Are, and that should give you a sense of where this is going.

  Here’s an excerpt from Ben:

  Because your culture is how your company makes decisions when you’re not there. It’s the set of assumptions your employees use to resolve the problems they face every day.

  It’s how they behave when no one is looking. If you don’t methodically set your culture, then two-thirds of it will end up being accidental and the rest will be a mistake.

  Your culture is who you are. Who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say at an all-hands. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe.

  It’s what you do. What you do is who you are. My new book aims to help you do the things you need to do so you can be who you want to be.

  If you’d like to pre-order a copy, you can do that here. 100% of the proceeds will go to anti-recidivism and to Haiti.

  2019.10.11

• The hard thing about urban debt

  I’m in the midst of reading Ben Horowitz’s new book called “The Hard Thing About Hard Things.” You may have noticed all of the random quotes I’m posting over on my tumblog. It’s good stuff.

  At one point, he talks about two types of metaphorical debt: technical debt and management debt. Technical debt is when you write shitty (computer) code that addresses the short-term, but eventually needs to be rewritten in the future. Similarly, management debt is when you make bad and short-term management decisions that don’t serve you well in the longer term. In both cases, the debt compounds and, when you eventually pay for it, it’s got a lot of interest on it.

  This got me thinking: Is there an equivalent for cities? Is there such a thing as urban debt? I figured there must be since we’re an impatient society obsessed with instant gratification.

  I then remembered a great quote that I saw either on Twitter or Tumblr that I think can be credited to Lewis Mumford:

  Adding highway lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity.

  Neither solution is sustainable and eventually you’re going to have to pay the consequences. In the case of cities, I think the answer is transit.

  And transit (disinvestment) is actually a really good example of what might be considered urban debt, because it requires long term planning—something that often conflicts with our political system. Politicians want quick wins.

  But I think it’s important to keep in mind that when we fail to make the hard decisions today, they only become more costly to deal with tomorrow. Quick wins might make for good politics, but they often don’t make for great city building. 

  2014.03.18