Super Bowl winning coach and #1 New York Times best-selling author Tony Dungy has had an unusual opportunity to reflect on what it takes to achieve significance. He is looked to by many as the epitome of the success and significance that is highly valued in our culture. He also works every day with young men who are trying to achieve significance through football and all that goes with a professional athletic career—such as money, power, and celebrity. He is the author of Uncommon: Finding Your Path to Significance.
Positive Leadership Limited is a strategic leadership and corporate finance advisory firm. We use our considerable experience to provide unique perspectives and innovative solutions which help corporate leaders unlock maximum value from complex business challenges. There is no dress rehearsal for delivering answers to critical business challenges. When you are under intense pressure to succeed, we help deliver the vitally important marginal gains which let your business excel and win.
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Monday, May 03, 2010
What Hurts Large Companies
This interview with Omar Hamoui, founder and chief executive of the mobile advertising network AdMob, was conducted by The New York Times:
'Q. You’ve been involved mostly with start-ups, but you also spent some time working at Sony Pictures as a developer. So what did you learn about large corporations?
A. Two really key things. One was that insecurity is incredibly damaging in a corporate environment. You end up making really poor decisions, a lot of things you do are based on fear, and eventually it will fail. When people are playing defence and they’re primarily focused on their own jobs, it ultimately ends up being a sort of losing strategy.
The second thing is that there’s a lot of time wasted in conversations that don’t happen face-to-face. When there are backroom conversations and dealings — as opposed to direct conversations — it’s less efficient and you get poorer outcomes. People could spend weeks building these political coalitions rather than just having a direct conversation.'