Notes : The hard thing about hard things

• Darwin project - all the employees coming together working 12 hours a day for 6 months. It sounds so intense and makes me remember the marathon(42 days of non stop work with almost impossible targets to achieve) we used to do in our office of GreyOrange. 
• Ask your employees - what are we not doing that we should be doing
• People, Product and Profit - in that order
• Make the company a good place to work, In worse times(and every company goes through it) people stick to a company mostly because it's a good place to work.
• Top 2 reasons why employees quit - 1) They hate their manager 2) There is no learning for them anymore
• No startup has so much time to do optional training for employee. Make it mandatory if your goal is to train people in something important
• Interviewing high level executive in a small startup - think really hard and know what you really want from this position
• Sometimes an organization does not need a solution, it needs clarity
• Minimize politics. If the conflict between 2 people is behavioral, then bring the complaining person and targeted person in the same room to discuss, it increases transparency. If the conflict between 2 people is competency related, fire the less competent if necessary 
• Organization design - It should be for the people. Change from monolithic design as it scales.
• Most difficult skill as a CEO is to keep your own psychology in check.
• Focus on where you are going than what you have to avoid.
• Peacetime CEO vs Wartime CEO - Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win.