I don't remember why I said that at the moment. I guess I'll read it again.
Your response is gracious nonetheless. Some people really like longform writing though, the more meandering and reflective the better. Each has its place IMO.
If you think the internet is a soapbox for you to vent your frustrations out and have people go 'yeah, me too', then you don't need to change anything at all.
If your intent was to actually give meaningful advice, then you could start with giving credentials for what qualifies you to be giving CEOs advice, followed by sharp, concise bullet points - since CEOs don't have the time to read pages of text.
Ah ok.
> If you think the internet is a soapbox for you to vent your frustrations out and have people go 'yeah, me too', then you don't need to change anything at all.
I don't think that was the gist of it, yes, it was partially written out of frustration but at the same time my inbox seems to indicate that you're the one that is missing the point here.
> If your intent was to actually give meaningful advice, then you could start with giving credentials for what qualifies you to be giving CEOs advice
If you actually are the CEO of a company you no doubt already know that my credentials don't matter even a little bit, in the end the only thing that matters is what your own counsel will tell you. And that's one of the key points there: it doesn't matter who you trust, you should verify whatever it is that you take into consideration.
> since CEOs don't have the time to read pages of text.
That's going to be tough then when the time comes to sign some important contract. Guess what, I've actually heard that excuse.
Just like another poster here already commented: if you don't like it feel free to write your own version and link it, I'll be happy to vote it up.
My argument certainly wasn't meant as proving to you that there are 'me too's in my mailbox. It was meant - in case that wasn't clear - that what I wrote already served to help some people in a very concrete manner and as such that's a > 0 result. Which is the only reason I went through the trouble of writing this up in the first place, if it so much as gets one person on the planet to find the handbrake before it is too late then it was worth doing.
You on the other hand have merely wasted some bits with this exchange. Now take up my challenge and do something better or get of your high horse.
> what bothers me is that in many of these cases the company is much sicker than it has to be, the wounds are to a large extent self inflicted and if only someone had had the presence of mind to change direction when it was still possible the company might have survived
Better punctuation:
> what bothers me is that, in many of these cases, the company is much sicker than it has to be. The wounds are, to a large extent, self-inflicted, and, if only someone had had the presence of mind to change direction when it was still possible, the company might have survived.
Also, I, too, would appreciate an email with context, as something feels missing now.
The writing in the article is very good, and generally speaking, the usage of commas is spot on throughout, in my opinion. But FWIW I did actually have to stop to parse one sentence that needed a comma to signal the intended meaning of the sentence. I wouldn't have even considered posting on the topic of commas were this thread not here, so, apologies.
I read the whole thing again twice, and couldn't find the sentence I tripped on, but I found a couple of examples to make my point, which is that the main reasons to care about commas are the non-stylistic scenarios where adding a comma changes the meaning of the sentence.
> Even so, no matter who advises you and no matter how insistent they are in the end the decisions are yours and yours alone and if there is a conflict between the direction that you think the company should go in or if there is second guessing of your decisions in the end your word is the one that matters.
This could easily be read:
> no matter how insistent they are in the end, the decisions are yours
But you probably were thinking:
> no matter how insistent they are, in the end the decisions are yours
Another one:
> If you are both a shareholder and a CEO note that these are two different roles
Since there's a condition followed by a suggestion, I would expect a separator between the clauses.
> If you are both a shareholder and a CEO, note that these are two different roles
Ok.
Will drop you a line.
> what bothers me is that, in many of these cases, the company is much sicker than it has to be. The wounds are largely self-inflicted, and the company might have survived if only someone had had the presence of mind to change direction when it was still possible.