When people think about entrepreneurship, they often think of
Guy Kawasaki (http://www.guykawasaki.com), who is a Silicon
Valley venture capitalist and the author of nine books as of 2010,
including The Art of the Start and
The Macintosh Way. Beyond being a
best-selling author, he has been successful in a variety of areas,
including earning degrees from Stanford University and UCLA; being
an integral part of Apple’s first computer; writing columns for
Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine; and taking on
entrepreneurial ventures such as cofounding Alltop, an aggregate
news site, and becoming managing director of Garage Technology
Ventures. Kawasaki is a believer in the power of individual
differences. He believes that successful companies include people
from many walks of life, with different backgrounds and with
different strengths and different weaknesses. Establishing an
effective team requires a certain amount of self-monitoring on the
part of the manager. Kawasaki maintains that most individuals have
personalities that can easily get in the way of this objective. He
explains, “The most important thing is to hire people who
complement you and are better than you in specific areas. Good
people hire people that are better than themselves.” He also
believes that mediocre employees hire less-talented employees in
order to feel better about themselves. Finally, he believes that
the role of a leader is to produce more leaders, not to produce
followers, and to be able to achieve this, a leader should
compensate for their weaknesses by hiring individuals who
compensate for their shortcomings.
In today’s competitive business environment, individuals want to
think of themselves as indispensable to the success of an
organization. Because an individual’s perception that he or she is
the most important person on a team can get in the way, Kawasaki
maintains that many people would rather see a company fail than
thrive without them. He advises that we must begin to move past
this and to see the value that different perceptions and values can
bring to a company, and the goal of any individual should be to
make the organization that one works for stronger and more dynamic.
Under this type of thinking, leaving a company in better shape than
one found it becomes a source of pride. Kawasaki has had many
different roles in his professional career and as a result realized
that while different perceptions and attitudes might make the
implementation of new protocol difficult, this same diversity is
what makes an organization more valuable. Some managers fear
diversity and the possible complexities that it brings, and they
make the mistake of hiring similar individuals without any sort of
differences. When it comes to hiring, Kawasaki believes that the
initial round of interviews for new hires should be held over the
phone. Because first impressions are so important, this ensures
that external influences, negative or positive, are not part of the
decision-making process.
Many people come out of business school believing that if they
have a solid financial understanding, then they will be a
successful and appropriate leader and manager. Kawasaki has learned
that mathematics and finance are the “easy” part of any job. He
observes that the true challenge comes in trying to effectively
manage people. With the benefit of hindsight, Kawasaki regrets the
choices he made in college, saying, “I should have taken
organizational behavior and social psychology” to be better
prepared for the individual nuances of people. He also believes
that working hard is a key to success and that individuals who
learn how to learn are the most effective over time.
If nothing else, Guy Kawasaki provides simple words of wisdom to
remember when starting off on a new career path: do not become
blindsided by your mistakes, but rather take them as a lesson of
what not to do. And most important, pursue joy and challenge your
personal assumptions.
Based on information from Bryant, A. (2010, March 19). Just give
him 5 sentences, not “War and Peace.” New York
Times. Retrieved March 26, 2010, from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/business/21corner.html?emc=eta1;
Kawasaki, G. (2004). The art of the start: The
time-tested, battle-hardened guide for anyone starting
anything. New York: Penguin Group; Iwata, E. (2008, November
10). Kawasaki doesn’t accept failure; promotes learning through
mistakes. USA Today, p. 3B. Retrieved
April 2, 2010, from academic.lexisnexis.com/.
Discussion Questions
Describe how self-perception can positively or negatively
affect a work environment?
What advice would you give a recent college graduate after
reading about Guy Kawasaki’s advice?
What do you think about Kawasaki’s hiring strategy?