My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that's what I try to do.
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One of my predecessors is said to have observed that in making his decisions he had to operate like a football quarterback - he could not very well call the next play until he saw how the last play turned out. Well, that may be a good way to run a football team, but in these days it is no way to run a government.
Leaders, true leaders, take responsibility for the success of the team and understand that they must also take responsibility for the failure.
A leader should give the credit of the success to the team members. But when failure comes, leaders should absorb the failures and protect the team members.
In 2006, Yahoo wanted to buy the company for a billion dollars and everyone on our management team wanted to sell it and the board tried to fire me and basically in the next year, everyone else on the management team left because I hadn't done a good job communicating. I don't want to blame them. I hadn't done a good job communicating the long-term vision because I didn't, I wasn't thinking about that at the time.
I would say that I'm blessed with a very, very good executive team that operates, reasonably autonomously, each of the companies.
But I noted with real satisfaction how well ex-footballers seemed to have leadership qualifications... I believe that football, perhaps more than any other sport, tends to instill in men the feeling that victory comes through hard - almost slavish - work, team play, self-confidence, and an enthusiasm that amounts to dedication.
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