Excerpts from Accidental CEO – David Novak
Is ego every CEO’s biggest enemy?
Ego leads to arrogance and arrogance leads to blindness. So you have to create an environment where people keep your ego under check. I believe that you don’t look up or down when you deal with people. Just look straight at them.
Wisdom from Warren Buffet
The things that Warren said have definitely left a big impact and will have an even greater impact as we go forward. He said—‘Put your ego in your business performance, not your stock price’.
And he said, ‘Make sure you constantly do what’s right over the long term’ and ‘If you do the right thing, you’ll ultimately get rewarded in the marketplace’.
When I met him for the first time, I did not have much experience of dealing with Wall Street. So I asked him for advice on that. He said— ‘Tell people that you’re in a very competitive industry’. Be very honest about that fact. Tell them that you’re not going to be right everyday, but you’re going to be more right than wrong because your business is solid and you’re ultimately going to end up on a winning place.’
He said that in a retail business, you’ve got to be right every single day. There’s a day-to-day intensity associated with retail. He said to ‘just tell people the good, the bad and the ugly’, so we’re totally transparent with our investors. We tell them what’s working and what’s not. That was very, very helpful.
