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Comment by mehulashah | Hacker News Reader

Eric - I've worked for NASA, ATT, IBM, HP, Amazon, and Google, not to mention a couple of startups that I started in between. None of them (except the startups, but they were brief) stayed true to their original mission. I haven't read your new book, but IMO, it's because the founders leave and the next leadership don't share the vision or values of the founders in the same way. After all, a company is a collaboration among people who want to make a contribution. When the people change, the company changes. It's inevitable.

That said, you seem to have archetypes above Costco, Patagonia, and Novo Nordisk that avoided it.

Can you comment on not what it takes to build such a company, but rather how to transform companies like those that I worked for into ones that resist gravity? Or is it too late?

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One of the sad truths that the book tries to confront about the world we live in today: that most companies simply fail the test of succession. This does not have to be the reality that we live in. It is absolutely 100% possible to build organizations to resist gravity and even to transform organizations that have fallen into its clutches. The fact that this is rare tells you something about the incentive design and values of our current financial system. This is not a law of nature.

I don't really think there's a short way for me to answer this question without having to summarize the entire book. This is what it's about. I'll simply say that the second part of the book, what I call "The Blueprint," is about both the governance and leadership tools that we have available to us to turn these organizations into the long-term, mission-driven, incorruptible places we all want to work at.

Like a lot of things, bad actors only have to get you to fail the test of succession once while the company has to succeed at it every time. Time is not on any companies side here and the longer it goes the more failing that test of succession starts to look like a law of nature.

Ultimately, nothing lasts forever and entropy takes all.

Thinking about this problem and extending the average company life seem like worthwhile endeavors while we're trapped on this ball of mud.

amen

That's true, and yet the evidence shows that some companies have been able to do it. I think there's something to be learned by studying those companies as a data set.

They have been able to "so far". This isn't to say that we shouldn't learn from them how to push the failure date as far into the future as you can. I just don't think you can truly make something incorruptible.

It’s perhaps idealistic, but maybe we’ll figure out a way to limit the blast radius of any failures by driving a culture that rewards those that push out the future date as you say

incorruptible does not mean immortal, fwiw

I appreciate you engaging with the argument in good faith and I look forward to hearing what you think of the book if you do decide to read it.

That's where competition and creative destruction comes to play.

I've always admired Nintendo (NCL) for adequately managing their various successions, even in the case of sudden death (Satoru Iwata). I wish there were deep dives into their practices but they're very secretive.

I would love to learn more about it, too

To be clear: yes, it’s possible, it’s not too late. Read the book.

For NASA I don't know but all others that are private companies the "mission" is never "the mission". The mission is "making more money" and everything else, including the change in culture, is the result of how single focused "good" (according to the market) companies are.

I was pondering about a piece of wisdom people often say, roughly going like "Oh yes, invest in stocks, the market always goes up!" and even though technically true they forget to mention that it's the case because losers get kicked out. A company that doesn't performed is removed from the indices so sure, market goes up BECAUSE losers leave.

This isn't a moral stance by the way, just highlighting mechanisms to participate, and survive, in those environments.

I don't know why this comment is downvoted. You raise some interesting points.

First, for-profit vs non-profit. This is a great point. I have only worked for huge for-profits orgs my whole career. On the other hand, my mother worked as a first grade teacher (teaching children to read) for 35 years. The difference in our view of the workplace is night and day: She views it as much more benevolent because other teachers are your peers and are genuinely friendly and helpful. My more grizzled view is like the jungles during Viet Nam War: Live to fight another day.

Second: Again, another good point. When most people say "the market", they usually mean one or two big indices, like Dow Jones Industrial Average, or NASDAQ 100, or S&P 500. You are right: As a result of their (mostly) rules based system to periodically re-balance the index, losers fall out and winners arrive.

Sincerely appreciate you took the time to reply and clarify.

Honestly I don't care for downvotes but I admit it's frustrating that somebody believes I'm wrong (perfectly fine! I'm wrong very VERY often.) but doesn't try to make me understand how (not fine, it's depriving me from a potential opportunity to see flaws in my reasoning or understanding).

So yes, thanks!

+9000

It is a personal vendetta of mine to upvote reasonable comments that have been downvoted without comment. It is so irritating and childish on HN. Fortunately, it is a tiny fraction of downvotes!

    > I'm wrong very VERY often.

I love you for saying this. Honestly, I am too afraid to say it myself! This is pretty much a(n) OG/GOAT comment on HN. Anyone who has "strong beliefs, but weakly held" is normally loved on HN. It is a fundamental belief of Paul Graham.

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