Employees Are Replaceable Quotes

Talent is indispensable, although it is 'always' replaceable. Just remember the simple rules concerning talent: Identify It, Hire It, Nurture It, Reward It, Protect It. And when the time comes, Fire It.

Youth was the time for happiness, its only season; young people, leading a lazy, carefree life, partially occupied by scarcely absorbing studies, were able to devote themselves unlimitedly to the liberated exultation of their bodies. They could play, dance, love, and multiply their pleasures. They could leave a party, in the early hours of the morning, in the company of sexual partners they had chosen, and contemplate the dreary line of employees going to work. They were the salt of the earth, and everything was given to them, everything was permitted for them, everything was possible. Later on, having started a family, having entered the adult world, they would be introduced to worry, work, responsibility, and the difficulties of existence; they would have to pay taxes, submit themselves to administrative formalities while ceaselessly bearing witness--powerless and shame-filled--to the irreversible degradation of their own bodies, which would be slow at first, then increasingly rapid; above all, they would have to look after children, mortal enemies, in their own homes, they would have to pamper them, feed them, worry about their illnesses, provide the means for their education and their pleasure, and unlike in the world of animals, this would last not just for a season, they would remain slaves of their offspring always, the time of joy was well and truly over for them, they would have to continue to suffer until the end, in pain and with increasing health problems, until they were no longer good for anything and were definitively thrown into the rubbish heap, cumbersome and useless. In return, their children would not be at all grateful, on the contrary their efforts, however strenuous, would never be considered enough, they would, until the bitter end, be considered guilty because of the simple fact of being parents. From this sad life, marked by shame, all joy would be pitilessly banished. When they wanted to draw near to young people's bodies, they would be chased away, rejected, ridiculed, insulted, and, more and more often nowadays, imprisoned. The physical bodies of young people, the only desirable possession the world has ever produced, were reserved for the exclusive use of the young, and the fate of the old was to work and to suffer. This was the true meaning of solidarity between generations; it was a pure and simple holocaust of each generation in favor of the one that replaced it, a cruel, prolonged holocaust that brought with it no consolation, no comfort, nor any material or emotional compensation.

Onward and upward has been replaced by forward and toward.

For instance, in the design stages for a new mouse for an early Apple product, Jobs had high expectations. He wanted it to move fluidly in any direction—a new development for any mouse at that time—but a lead engineer was told by one of his designers that this would be commercially impossible. What Jobs wanted wasn’t realistic and wouldn’t work. The next day, the lead engineer arrived at work to find that Steve Jobs had fired the employee who’d said that. When the replacement came in, his first words were: “I can build the mouse.

I had to go back and reread the page a few times. As I read it, I kept drifting out of the book, out of the booth, and coasting on the green crest of the song, to the momentary idea that any point on Earth was mine for the visiting, that I'd lucked out living in the reality I was in. And I also got the feeling I was souring and damaging that luck by enjoying the contentment of pulling the shades on the sun, and shutting out my fellow employees and the world, and folding myself up in the construct of a brilliant novel like The Man in the High Castle, that all the reading I'd been doing up to this point hadn't enhanced my life, but rather had replaced and delayed it.

Where workers do lose their jobs due to automation, it’s not because they themselves are replaced by some piece of software. It’s often because the firms they work for fail. And the firms they work for fail because their management or shareholders are unwilling or unable to keep up with the new possibilities of technology. That failure often extends to failing to invest in the training that their employees need to implement the latest technologies.

The key insight behind Radical Candor is that command and control can hinder innovation and harm a team’s ability to improve the efficiency of routine work. Bosses and companies get better results when they voluntarily lay down unilateral power and encourage their teams and peers to hold them accountable, when they quit trying to control employees and focus instead on encouraging agency. The idea is that collaboration and innovation flourish when human relationships replace bullying and bureaucracy.

If you have to hold an employee accountable, replace that employee with a better one who takes responsibility so you don’t have to.

Even the best female employees can cause many problems if they don’t have the childcare issue taken care of. I’ll have to make sure her replacement is unmarried.

After the New Deal, economists began referring to America’s retirement-finance model as a “three-legged stool.” This sturdy tripod was composed of Social Security, private pensions, and combined investments and savings. In recent years, of course, two of those legs have been kicked out. Many Americans saw their assets destroyed by the Great Recession; even before the economic collapse, many had been saving less and less. And since the 1980s, employers have been replacing defined-benefit pensions that are funded by employers and guarantee a monthly sum in perpetuity with 401(k) plans, which often rely on employee contributions and can run dry before death. Marketed as instruments of financial liberation that would allow workers to make their own investment choices, 401(k)s were part of a larger cultural drift in America away from shared responsibilities toward a more precarious individualism. Translation: 401(k)s are vastly cheaper for companies than pension plans. “Over the last generation, we have witnessed a massive transfer of economic risk from broad structures of insurance, including those sponsored by the corporate sector as well as by government, onto the fragile balance sheets of American families,” Yale political scientist Jacob S. Hacker writes in his book The Great Risk Shift. The overarching message: “You are on your own.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER • As you survey your company-wide policies and procedures, ask: What is the purpose of this policy or procedure? Does it achieve that result? • Are there any approval mechanisms you can eliminate? • What percentage of its time does management spend on problem solving and team building? • Have you done a cost-benefit analysis of the incentives and perks you offer employees? • Could you replace approvals and permissions with analysis of spending patterns and a focus on accuracy and predictability? • Is your decision-making system clear and communicated widely?

Modern society is based on a modern idea: get the work done by replaceable cogs, by individuals programmed to do what they’re told, follow instructions and work cheap. The attraction of this system is evident by how easily ordinary organizations replace ordinary employees, and how eagerly schools indoctrinate their students.

The Struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place. The Struggle is when people ask you why you don’t quit and you don’t know the answer. The Struggle is when your employees think you are lying and you think they may be right. The Struggle is when food loses its taste. The Struggle is when you don’t believe you should be CEO of your company. The Struggle is when you know that you are in over your head and you know that you cannot be replaced. The Struggle is when everybody thinks you are an idiot, but nobody will fire you. The Struggle is where self-doubt becomes self-hatred. The Struggle is when you are having a conversation with someone and you can’t hear a word that they are saying because all you can hear is the Struggle.

So I am to be Robert’s replacement. On the one hand, there is no pressure, because it’s not like I am replacing the cool guy that left that everybody loved. But at the same time, the pressure is huge, because if I screw up, my coworkers will all say, “Jarod’s a terrible employee. He’s so bad that even the lifeless robot was better and more hospitable than him.” It’s man vs. machine, and I am the underdog. I need to go buy a “How to be Better than a Dummy for Dummies” book before tomorrow so I’m not the most recent victim in a long line of human defeats at the hands of machine.

Ninety-eight in New England was a summer of exquisite warmth and sunshine, in baseball a summer of mythical battle between a home-run god who was white and a home-run god who was brown, and in America the summer of an enormous piety binge, a purity binge, when terrorism—which had replaced communism as the prevailing threat to the country’s security—was succeeded by cocksucking, and a virile, youthful middle-aged president and a brash, smitten twenty-one-year-old employee carrying on in the Oval Office like two teenage kids in a parking lot revived America’s oldest communal passion, historically perhaps its most treacherous and subversive pleasure: the ecstasy of sanctimony.

In the factory era, the goal was to have the highest PERL. Think about it. If you can easily replace most of your workers, you can pay them less. The less you pay them, the more money you make. The city newspaper, for example, might have four hundred employees, but only a few dozen salespeople and columnists were hard to replace on a moment’s notice. The goal was to leverage and defend the system, not the people. So we built giant organizations (political parties, nonprofits, schools, corporations) filled with easily replaced laborers. Unions fought back precisely because they saw coordinated action as the only way to avoid becoming commodities. Ironically, the work rules they erected merely exacerbated the problem, making every union worker just as good as every other.

The Struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place. The Struggle is when people ask you why you don’t quit and you don’t know the answer. The Struggle is when your employees think you are lying and you think they may be right. The Struggle is when food loses its taste. The Struggle is when you don’t believe you should be CEO of your company. The Struggle is when you know that you are in over your head and you know that you cannot be replaced. The Struggle is when everybody thinks you are an idiot, but nobody will fire you. The Struggle is where self-doubt becomes self-hatred. The Struggle is when you are having a conversation with someone and you can’t hear a word that they are saying because all you can hear is The Struggle. The Struggle is when you want the pain to stop. The Struggle is unhappiness. The Struggle is when you go on vacation to feel better and you feel worse. The Struggle is when you are surrounded by people and you are all alone. The Struggle has no mercy. The Struggle is the land of broken promises and crushed dreams. The Struggle is a cold sweat. The Struggle is where your guts boil so much that you feel like you are going to spit blood. The Struggle is not failure, but it causes failure. Especially if you are weak. Always if you are weak. Most people are not strong enough. Every great entrepreneur from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg went through The Struggle and struggle they did, so you are not alone. But that does not mean that you will make it. You may not make it. That is why it is The Struggle. The Struggle is where greatness comes from.

If companies want to benefit from the advantages of social norms, they need to do a better job of cultivating those norms. Medical benefits, and in particular comprehensive medical coverage, are among the best ways a company can express its side of the social exchange. But what are many companies doing? They are demanding high deductibles in their insurance plans, and at the same time are reducing the scope of benefits. Simply put, they are undermining the social contract between the company and the employees and replacing it with market norms. As companies tilt the board, and employees slide from social norms to the realm of market norms, can we blame them for jumping ship when a better offer appears? It's really no surprise that "corporate loyalty," in terms of the loyalty of employees to their companies, has become an oxymoron.

For many years there have been rumours of mind control experiments. in the United States. In the early 1970s, the first of the declassified information was obtained by author John Marks for his pioneering work, The Search For the Manchurian Candidate. Over time retired or disillusioned CIA agents and contract employees have broken the oath of secrecy to reveal small portions of their clandestine work. In addition, some research work subcontracted to university researchers has been found to have been underwritten and directed by the CIA. There were 'terminal experiments' in Canada's McGill University and less dramatic but equally wayward programmes at the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Rochester, the University of Michigan and numerous other institutions. Many times the money went through foundations that were fronts or the CIA. In most instances, only the lead researcher was aware who his or her real benefactor was, though the individual was not always told the ultimate use for the information being gleaned. In 1991, when the United States finally signed the 1964 Helsinki Accords that forbids such practices, any of the programmes overseen by the intelligence community involving children were to come to an end. However, a source recently conveyed to us that such programmes continue today under the auspices of the CIA's Office of Research and Development. The children in the original experiments are now adults. Some have been able to go to college or technical schools, get jobs. get married, start families and become part of mainstream America. Some have never healed. The original men and women who devised the early experimental programmes are, at this point, usually retired or deceased. The laboratory assistants, often graduate and postdoctoral students, have gone on to other programmes, other research. Undoubtedly many of them never knew the breadth of the work of which they had been part. They also probably did not know of the controlled violence utilised in some tests and preparations. Many of the 'handlers' assigned to reinforce the separation of ego states have gone into other pursuits. But some have remained or have keen replaced. Some of the 'lab rats' whom they kept in in a climate of readiness, responding to the psychological triggers that would assure their continued involvement in whatever project the leaders desired, no longer have this constant reinforcement. Some of the minds have gradually stopped suppression of their past experiences. So it is with Cheryl, and now her sister Lynn.

Steve Jobs was famous for what observers called his “reality distortion field.” Part motivational tactic, part sheer drive and ambition, this field made him notoriously dismissive of phrases such as “It can’t be done” or “We need more time.” Having learned early in life that reality was falsely hemmed in by rules and compromises that people had been taught as children, Jobs had a much more aggressive idea of what was or wasn’t possible. To him, when you factored in vision and work ethic, much of life was malleable. For instance, in the design stages for a new mouse for an early Apple product, Jobs had high expectations. He wanted it to move fluidly in any direction—a new development for any mouse at that time—but a lead engineer was told by one of his designers that this would be commercially impossible. What Jobs wanted wasn’t realistic and wouldn’t work. The next day, the lead engineer arrived at work to find that Steve Jobs had fired the employee who’d said that. When the replacement came in, his first words were: “I can build the mouse.” This was Jobs’s view of reality at work. Malleable, adamant, self-confident. Not in the delusional sense, but for the purposes of accomplishing something. He knew that to aim low meant to accept mediocre accomplishment. But a high aim could, if things went right, create something extraordinary. He was Napoleon shouting to his soldiers: “There shall be no Alps!” For most of us, such confidence does not come easy. It’s understandable. So many people in our lives have preached the need to be realistic or conservative or worse—to not rock the boat. This is an enormous disadvantage when it comes to trying big things. Because though our doubts (and self-doubts) feel real, they have very little bearing on what is and isn’t possible. Our

So, absent the chance to make every job applicant work as hard as a college applicant, is there some quick, clever, cheap way of weeding out bad employees before they are hired? Zappos has come up with one such trick. You will recall from the last chapter that Zappos, the online shoe store, has a variety of unorthodox ideas about how a business can be run. You may also recall that its customer-service reps are central to the firm’s success. So even though the job might pay only $11 an hour, Zappos wants to know that each new employee is fully committed to the company’s ethos. That’s where “The Offer” comes in. When new employees are in the onboarding period—they’ve already been screened, offered a job, and completed a few weeks of training—Zappos offers them a chance to quit. Even better, quitters will be paid for their training time and also get a bonus representing their first month’s salary—roughly $2,000—just for quitting! All they have to do is go through an exit interview and surrender their eligibility to be rehired at Zappos. Doesn’t that sound nuts? What kind of company would offer a new employee $2,000 to not work? A clever company. “It’s really putting the employee in the position of ‘Do you care more about money or do you care more about this culture and the company?’ ” says Tony Hsieh, the company’s CEO. “And if they care more about the easy money, then we probably aren’t the right fit for them.” Hsieh figured that any worker who would take the easy $2,000 was the kind of worker who would end up costing Zappos a lot more in the long run. By one industry estimate, it costs an average of roughly $4,000 to replace a single employee, and one recent survey of 2,500 companies found that a single bad hire can cost more than $25,000 in lost productivity, lower morale, and the like. So Zappos decided to pay a measly $2,000 up front and let the bad hires weed themselves out before they took root. As of this writing, fewer than 1 percent of new hires at Zappos accept “The Offer.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw On a cool fall evening in 2008, four students set out to revolutionize an industry. Buried in loans, they had lost and broken eyeglasses and were outraged at how much it cost to replace them. One of them had been wearing the same damaged pair for five years: He was using a paper clip to bind the frames together. Even after his prescription changed twice, he refused to pay for pricey new lenses. Luxottica, the 800-pound gorilla of the industry, controlled more than 80 percent of the eyewear market. To make glasses more affordable, the students would need to topple a giant. Having recently watched Zappos transform footwear by selling shoes online, they wondered if they could do the same with eyewear. When they casually mentioned their idea to friends, time and again they were blasted with scorching criticism. No one would ever buy glasses over the internet, their friends insisted. People had to try them on first. Sure, Zappos had pulled the concept off with shoes, but there was a reason it hadn’t happened with eyewear. “If this were a good idea,” they heard repeatedly, “someone would have done it already.” None of the students had a background in e-commerce and technology, let alone in retail, fashion, or apparel. Despite being told their idea was crazy, they walked away from lucrative job offers to start a company. They would sell eyeglasses that normally cost $500 in a store for $95 online, donating a pair to someone in the developing world with every purchase. The business depended on a functioning website. Without one, it would be impossible for customers to view or buy their products. After scrambling to pull a website together, they finally managed to get it online at 4 A.M. on the day before the launch in February 2010. They called the company Warby Parker, combining the names of two characters created by the novelist Jack Kerouac, who inspired them to break free from the shackles of social pressure and embark on their adventure. They admired his rebellious spirit, infusing it into their culture. And it paid off. The students expected to sell a pair or two of glasses per day. But when GQ called them “the Netflix of eyewear,” they hit their target for the entire first year in less than a month, selling out so fast that they had to put twenty thousand customers on a waiting list. It took them nine months to stock enough inventory to meet the demand. Fast forward to 2015, when Fast Company released a list of the world’s most innovative companies. Warby Parker didn’t just make the list—they came in first. The three previous winners were creative giants Google, Nike, and Apple, all with over fifty thousand employees. Warby Parker’s scrappy startup, a new kid on the block, had a staff of just five hundred. In the span of five years, the four friends built one of the most fashionable brands on the planet and donated over a million pairs of glasses to people in need. The company cleared $100 million in annual revenues and was valued at over $1 billion. Back in 2009, one of the founders pitched the company to me, offering me the chance to invest in Warby Parker. I declined. It was the worst financial decision I’ve ever made, and I needed to understand where I went wrong.

Mr. Nelson Morris, twenty-six years old, endowed with a salary of $75,000, admitted that neither he nor Mr. Ferris, who determined employees' wages, ever visited their homes. Mr. Morris said he had never looked over a budget showing the cost of living for a laboring man with a family. The plain truth is that this newer generation of industrial lords grew up in luxury, apart from the toilers who earn their profits for them. To them the workers are like machinery, to be bought at the cheapest price attainable, to be run at the highest possible speed the longest number of hours, to be scrapped when worn out and replaced by new" [New York Evening Mail, ca. 1918].

The Struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place. The Struggle is when people ask you why you don’t quit and you don’t know the answer. The Struggle is when your employees think you are lying and you think they may be right. The Struggle is when food loses its taste. The Struggle is when you don’t believe you should be CEO of your company. The Struggle is when you know that you are in over your head and you know that you cannot be replaced. The Struggle is when everybody thinks you are an idiot, but nobody will fire you. The Struggle is where self-doubt becomes self-hatred. The Struggle is when you are having a conversation with someone and you can’t hear a word that they are saying because all you can hear is the Struggle. The Struggle is when you want the pain to stop. The Struggle is unhappiness. The Struggle is when you go on vacation to feel better and you feel worse. The Struggle is when you are surrounded by people and you are all alone. The Struggle has no mercy. The Struggle is the land of broken promises and crushed dreams. The Struggle is a cold sweat. The Struggle is where your guts boil so much that you feel like you are going to spit blood. The Struggle is not failure, but it causes failure. Especially if you are weak. Always if you are weak. Most people are not strong enough. Every great entrepreneur from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg went through the Struggle and struggle they did, so you are not alone. But that does not mean that you will make it. You may not make it. That is why it is the Struggle. The Struggle is where greatness comes from.

The sad conclusion is that when you’re most fit to realize your dreams, you don’t have the money or leisure time for them, and when you have the most time and money on hand, you no longer have the physical stamina. Shouldn’t this system be replaced with one that allows employees to redraw those lines to square the life cycle with a career cycle? Let’s shift some of the strengths of youth to the days of old age, and vice versa, and use the business organization to do it.

Uh, hello? Hello, hello! Uhm, there has been a slight change of company policy, concerning you and the suits. Uhm, so, after learning of an unfortunate incident at the sister location involving multiple and simultaneous spring lock failures, the company has deemed the suits temporarily unfit for employees. Safety is top priority at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, which is why the classic suits are being retired to an appropriate location, while being looked at by our technicians. Until replacements arrives, you'll be expected to wear the temporary costumes provided to you. Keep in mind, they were found on very short notice, so questions about appropriateness/relevance should be deflected. I repeat, the classic suits are not to be touched, activated or worn. That being said, we are free of liability, do as you wish. As always, remember to smile. You are the face of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.

Have you never met anyone who works in a record store? There’s no greater repository of unjustified arrogance in the world. I’d poison my employees if I thought I could find replacements.

Take “Respect, Integrity, Communication and Excellence,” which was Enron’s motto. If execs at Enron had decided to replace those concepts with something different—perhaps Greed, Greed, Lust for Money, and Greed—it might have drawn a few chuckles but otherwise there would have been no impact. On the other hand, one of Google’s stated values has always been to “Focus on the User.” If we changed that, perhaps by putting the needs of advertisers or publishing partners first, our inboxes would be flooded, and outraged engineers would take over the weekly, company-wide TGIF meeting (which is hosted by Larry and Sergey, and where employees are welcome to—and often do—voice their disagreement with company decisions). Employees always have a choice, so belie your values at your own risk.

Do you spend much time with Davis?” “A fair amount, but he’s very busy, especially since Everett keeps giving him new projects to complete every day, even though the peacock enclosure is far from being finished.” The gleam was replaced with calculation. “Are these projects Everett gives Davis completely necessary?” “Well . . . I suppose they must be or else why would Everett assign them?” Lucetta ignored the question. “And you said that Everett had been behaving downright charming to you, but then . . . completely out of the blue, he began acting somewhat surly?” “I think distant rather than surly might be a better way to describe him at the moment.” “Interesting” was all Lucetta said as she turned her head and looked out toward the ocean. “What’s interesting?” Lucetta considered the ocean a moment longer before she finally looked back to Millie. “I might be completely off the mark, but have you ever considered the idea that Everett might be slightly . . . intrigued by you? And because you seem to get along so well with Davis, Everett’s been behaving distantly toward you because he’s . . . jealous?” Amusement was immediate. “You’re delusional, especially since Everett is a gentleman who embraces his role within society. Because of that, he’d never look at a member of his staff as anything other than an employee, and he certainly would never allow himself to become intrigued by anyone on his staff.” Lucetta crossed her arms over her chest. “Why else would he be maintaining a careful distance from you? He certainly can’t blame you for the whole peacock fiasco or for getting stuck up in that tree. Besides, gentlemen enjoy rescuing damsels in distress. It makes them feel manly.” “I

The key to affording higher wages (we’re talking frontline employees, not senior leadership) is a lower total wage cost as a percent of revenue. You have to remain competitive, and the best companies know that one great person can replace three good ones. Through rigorous selection (i.e., Topgrading), they get the absolute best talent in the door, pay employees above-market rates, and then invest heavily in training and development to make them more productive.

Religion allies itself with auto-suggestion and psychotherapy to help man in his business activities. In the twenties one had not yet called upon God for purposes of “improving one's personality.” The best-seller in the year 1938, Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People, remained on a strictly secular level. What was the function of Carnegie's book at that time is the function of our greatest bestseller today, The Power of Positive Thinking by the Reverend N. V. Peale. In this religious book it is not even questioned whether our dominant concern with success is in itself in accordance with the spirit of monotheistic religion. On the contrary, this supreme aim is never doubted, but belief in God and prayer is recommended as a means to increase one's ability to be successful. Just as modern psychiatrists recommend happiness of the employee, in order to be more appealing to the customers, some ministers recommend love of God in order to be more successful. “Make God your partner”, means to make God a partner in business, rather than to become one with Him in love, justice and truth. Just as brotherly love has been replaced by impersonal fairness, God has been transformed into a remote General Director of Universe, Inc.; you know that he is there, he runs the show (although it would probably run without him too), you never see him, but you acknowledge his leadership while you are “doing your part.

These were the horror stories I’d heard from job candidates coming from other companies. I interviewed veterans who’d worked for eight years in top studios and never shipped a game because of cancellations and changes from marketing. Some publishers didn’t allow their developers to play games, even after-hours (this was especially strange to us, since Blizzard encouraged this, stocking its hallway game cabinets with free copies of games for people to check out on a first-come, first-served basis). Yet some studios considered familiarity with other games bad for morale and prevented their employees from hanging posters from other projects or properties (including movies) because they didn’t reinforce “team spirit.” Many studios were highly structured, politically driven machines where argument was frowned upon and decisions were made by a small number of people. But the most common flaw in the industry at the time was its shortsighted nature—treating employees as temporary or easily replaced assets. Dev teams were often rebooted between projects, wiped before they ever established a rhythm or voice of their own. It was no wonder Blizzard retained its employees longer than other companies.

Mary Foy was only eighteen years old when she was hired to replace Connolly. While it is surprising that such a young person would have been considered for the position, the bigger surprise was that this young person was a woman, since in 1880 the library was still an organization run by, and catering to, men. Women were not yet allowed to have their own library cards and were permitted only in the Ladies’ Room. No library in the country had a female head librarian, and only a quarter of all American library employees were women. The feminization of librarianship was still a decade away.

Having been an employee all his life, and trapped in the mental, maximum security prison known as job security, he did not know how to recover from his failures or learn from his mistakes, much less how to start over to replace his paycheck and his pension.

In an open letter to RIM’s senior management team in June, a writer identified as an unnamed high-level RIM employee began: “I have lost confidence.”4 The writer anguished over internal chaos and delays, lack of discipline and accountability, and called on the CEOs to make drastic changes, including finding “a new, fresh thinking experienced CEO” to replace them. When RIM responded with an upbeat, everything-is-under-control message later that day, the blog was flooded with e-mails from past and present RIM employees about the company’s travails.

Within ten to twenty years, I estimate we will be technically capable of automating 40 to 50 percent of jobs in the United States. For employees who are not outright replaced, increasing automation of their workload will continue to cut into their value-add for the company, reducing their bargaining power on wages and potentially leading to layoffs in the long term.

Many of the AI companies I’ve invested in are looking to build a single AI-driven product that can replace a specific kind of worker—for instance, a robot that can do the lifting and carrying of a warehouse employee or an autonomous-vehicle algorithm that can complete the core tasks of a taxi driver. If successful, these companies will end up selling their products to companies, many of whom may lay off redundant workers as a result.

Yes. Were you in here earlier today?” “I was with my parents, yeah. We came first thing in the morning to check out the new releases in the video game section for my dad.” “Okay,” said Hawk. “And did the lasers touch any part of you when you guys checked out?” Emily thought for a moment, and then remembered she had played with it before her father paid for the game. “Yeah, it did. The employee let me run my hand over the lasers a few times before she scanned the game. She told me there were lasers that read the price of the game and I didn’t believe her, so she let me put my hand over them. All the little laser lights formed a grid on my palm. It was pretty cool.” Cuddly laughed. “Pretty cool, and pretty enchanted!” “You mean those lasers are what brought me here?” Emily asked. Hawk turned to face her. “We believe that’s probably what did it. While none of us in the store are entirely sure, we do know it’s how you can get home and back to your normal size though.” “That sounds crazy. There’s no way that’s even possible,” said Emily. “You’re right,” said Cuddly sarcastically. “I guess the talking teddy bear and toy elf don’t know what they’re speaking about, is that it?” Emily remained silent. “Listen,” said Hawk as he walked toward her. “We only have a short journey ahead of us, and most of the time it’s easy to get people back to their homes. This happens quite often, you’d be surprised. But this time, it’s a little more difficult because you woke Officer Onslaught.” “What’s his deal?” Emily asked. “His deal is that he maintains the facility of Prelude. He’s actually a necessity for the business because he keeps a lot of the rodents out. Every now and again, we’ll get a rogue toy in here trying to sabotage the store, and he helps keep them out too.” “So he’s just doing his job,” said Emily. “Right,” said Cuddly. “He’s a robot though, so thinking ain’t exactly his strong suit. He’s can’t think independently. Just a cog in the machine, and you’re technically not supposed to be here so he’s trying to rid the store of you.” “What’s ‘a cog in the machine’ mean?” “It means he’s just a moving part to this store. He’s only valuable as long as he keeps up with the work he’s assigned. He’s a replaceable toy. The second he breaks down, one of the other Officer Onslaughts will take his place, maintaining the status quo.

The Struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place. The Struggle is when people ask you why you don’t quit and you don’t know the answer. The Struggle is when your employees think you are lying and you think they may be right. The Struggle is when food loses its taste. The Struggle is when you don’t believe you should be CEO of your company. The Struggle is when you know that you are in over your head and you know that you cannot be replaced. The Struggle is when everybody thinks you are an idiot, but nobody will fire you. The Struggle is where self-doubt becomes self-hatred.

Recognize people for actions and results: completion of special projects, achievement of company goals, demonstrations of company values. Replace “Employee of the Month” with “Achievement of the Month.

Salaried employees took over production during a strike of hourly employees. The manager of a department reported that he found machines out of order, some sadly so, some badly in need of maintenence, one a candidate for outright replacement. Production doubled up when he tuned up the machines. Were it not for the strike, he should never have known about the sad state of the machines, and production would have continued at half the capability of the process. "Well, Hal," I said, "you know whose fault it was, don't you?" Yes, he knows. It won't happen again. From now on, there will be a system by which employees may report trouble with machines or with materials and by which these reports will receive attention.

Anneke, I don't know what the FUCK just got into you, but if you want to have a job here, I suggest you go home now and think about what you want to say to us tomorrow to make us want to keep you." I look him dead in his beady little eyes and with a deep sense of calm, I unload, pretty as you please with honeyed tones. "You don't have to worry, Murph. I don't want to have a job here. I'm tired of the bullshit kowtowing to entitled crap-buckets like the Mannings. I'm tired of you and Mac never giving me my due or having my back. I'm tired of you feeding all the good stuff to your obsequious cousin Liam and leaving me all the shit. I'm tired of your endless series of talentless legs and boobs and hair extensions that you like wandering around here despite their general incompetence. I'm finished. I'm the best you had and the only one you should have trained to replace you in three years when you want to retire and still draw income. And you've never once done anything to show that you know it. So, since it's clear that you will always take the word of the client over someone who has been a valuable employee for nearly a decade, I am fucking done." I never raise my voice; the smile never leaves my face. I deliver this blow with as much grace as I can muster, throw my bag over my shoulder, grab the small box of my personal effects, and push past him before he can even close his gaping jaw. I head out of my office, feeling flushed and nervous, but also giddy. Liam is standing next to the front desk, chatting up Pinky Tuscadero Barbie. "That's a lot of yelling back there, Annamuk." He leers at me. "That time of the month?" The Barbie giggles. "Hey, Liam? A word to the wise. That fancy truck? Doesn't mean you don't HAVE a tiny little dick. It just means that you want the WHOLE WORLD to know it." And with that, I open the door wide, letting the frigid wind blow through, leaving them both gape-jawed in a tornado of papers.

A timeless leader practices the art of voluntary elimination. He knows what activities - physical or mental - must be given up so that an organization becomes more productive. A new organization is born in the womb of the old organization. A new generation of new recruits is forever striving to replace an old generation of employees. It is a war of sorts: a clash of perspectives and worldviews. This kind of war is inevitable. We cannot shy away from it.

Another company came up with an even more brilliant idea --- that nobody could own their own cubicle -- designing the system such that those who showed up to work earliest in the morning could claim the ones closest to the windows. None of the cubicles had anything but a desk, a place to connect a computer, and a chair. No one could establish a sense of connection to their workspace. Ultimately, by setting the atmosphere this way, the company communicated to the employees that they are valued only for their direct productivity and that they are easily replaceable.

At least in normal conditions of inter-patch peace and harmony, every Patchwork realm should positively exude rectitude and benevolence. This will of course infect its corporate culture. Perhaps it is possible to imagine Disneyland committing genocide. But it would have to be a very different Disneyland than the one we have right now. They would certainly have to replace at least half the employees.

it is this lack of trust that is often the root cause of complaint in any corporation. When employees are not trusted, they don’t feel empowered, and when they don’t feel empowered, they become resigned, and when they become resigned they either resign (costing the company thousands of dollars to retrain their replacements) or they retract, further feeding the complaint monster.

One company I know took the art of using cubicles to kill motivation to a higher level. They found out that employees had all kinds of personal mementoes on their desks, so the management redid the cubicles and made them 20 percent smaller, with less space for anything personal, but more space for more people. Another company came up with an even more brilliant idea that nobody could “own” their own cubicle, designing the system such that those who showed up to work earliest in the morning could claim the ones closest the windows. None of the cubicles has anything but a desk, a place to connect a computer, and a chair. No one could establish a sense of connection to their workspace. Ultimately, by setting the atmosphere this way, the company communicated to the employees that they are valued only for their direct productivity and that they are easily replaceable.

Strategy has moved from controlling unique internal resources and erecting competitive barriers to orchestrating external resources and engaging vibrant communities. And innovation is no longer the province of in-house experts and research and development labs, but is produced through crowdsourcing and the contribution of ideas by independent participants in the platform. External resources don’t completely replace internal resources—more often they serve as a complement. But platform firms emphasize ecosystem governance more than product optimization, and persuasion of outside partners more than control of internal employees.

Western Buddhism’s association with the sixties counterculture is being replaced not only by science but by corporations that deploy it in order to enhance their brand, promote “wellness,” reduce sick days and other inefficiencies among their employees, and, of course, create profitable, Buddhist-themed products. This corporate adoption of Buddhism was made safe by science. The business world’s understanding of meditation - and especially the practice of “mindfulness” - is driven not by traditional Buddhist ideas and ethics, but by neuroscience.

Welch and Conaty had implemented a 20-70-10 performance ranking system, where GE employees were sorted into three groups: the top 20 percent, the middle 70 percent, and the bottom 10 percent. The top workers were lionized and rewarded with choice assignments, leadership training programs, and stock options. The bottom 10 percent were fired. Under Immelt, the forced distribution was softened and the crisp labels of “top 20 percent,” “middle 70 percent,” and “bottom 10 percent” were replaced with euphemisms: “top talent,” “highly valued,” and “needs improvement.

Today’s average employee spends close to 30 percent of their work hours on email and receives 120 messages per day. But online correspondence—whether on email, group chat, text, TikTok, or whatever new technology has already replaced all of these things since we wrote this sentence—doesn’t need to be soul-sucking.

Valujet flight 592 crashed after takeoff from Miami airport because oxygen generators in its cargo hold caught fire. The generators had been loaded onto the airplane by employees of a maintenance contractor, who were subsequently prosecuted. The editor of Aviation Week and Space Technology “strongly believed the failure of SabreTech employees to put caps on oxygen generators constituted willful negligence that led to the killing of 110 passengers and crew. Prosecutors were right to bring charges. There has to be some fear that not doing one’s job correctly could lead to prosecution.”13 But holding individuals accountable by prosecuting them misses the point. It shortcuts the need to learn fundamental lessons, if it acknowledges that fundamental lessons are there to be learned in the first place. In the SabreTech case, maintenance employees inhabited a world of boss-men and sudden firings, and that did not supply safety caps for expired oxygen generators. The airline may have been as inexperienced and under as much financial pressure as people in the maintenance organization supporting it. It was also a world of language difficulties—not only because many were Spanish speakers in an environment of English engineering language: “Here is what really happened. Nearly 600 people logged work time against the three Valujet airplanes in SabreTech’s Miami hangar; of them 72 workers logged 910 hours across several weeks against the job of replacing the ‘expired’ oxygen generators—those at the end of their approved lives. According to the supplied Valujet work card 0069, the second step of the seven-step process was: ‘If the generator has not been expended install shipping cap on the firing pin.’ This required a gang of hard-pressed mechanics to draw a distinction between canisters that were ‘expired’, meaning the ones they were removing, and canisters that were not ‘expended’, meaning the same ones, loaded and ready to fire, on which they were now expected to put nonexistent caps. Also involved were canisters which were expired and expended, and others which were not expired but were expended. And then, of course, there was the simpler thing—a set of new replacement canisters, which were both unexpended and unexpired.”14 These were conditions that existed long before the Valujet accident, and that exist in many places today. Fear of prosecution stifles the flow of information about such conditions. And information is the prime asset that makes a safety culture work. A flow of information earlier could in fact have told the bad news. It could have revealed these features of people’s tasks and tools; these longstanding vulnerabilities that form the stuff that accidents are made of. It would have shown how ‘human error’ is inextricably connected to how the work is done, with what resources, and under what circumstances and pressures.

Suburban zoning has replaced “public characters” with the retailers and their employees in the malls and out on the strips.

Much of the signal system was installed in the 1930s and transit employees now have to fabricate their own replacement parts for obsolete equipment. While subway riders have to rely on this century-old technology, New York's automobile drivers take advantage of traffic signals that are part of a sophisticated information network. Above the streets, the city's Department of Transportation monitors data from sensors and video cameras to identify congestion choke points, and the remotely adjusts computerized traffic signals to optimize the flow of vehicles. Drivers obtain accurate, real-time traffic condition information via electronic signals, computers and smartphones.

Then there are Friedman’s “five forbidden phrases.” • “I don’t know.” It should be replaced with “Let me check and find out.” • “We can’t do that.” Instead, tell callers what can be done. • “You’ll have to . . .” The caller doesn’t have to do much of anything, certainly not sit on hold. Instead, the employee should say, “You’ll need to . . .” • “Hang on a second, I’ll be right back.” It’s a lie and should be replaced with “I’ll need to put you on hold for a few moments, if you are able to hold.” • “No.” It should no longer appear at the beginning of a sentence. That makes people think about what they’re saying before they start talking.

From the moment the doors of a hospital open for the first time and the first patient is treated, the facility acquires a pulse and begins to develop a personality as unique as any individual's. It fumbles and grows, learning from its mistakes. It stretches and explores, reaching out more and more to the world around it. Its organs decay and need repair or replacement. Its moods - the collective moods of its patients and employees - grow more distinctive.

Even the best female employees can cause many problems if they don't have the childcare issue taken care of. I'll have to make sure her replacement is unmarried.

From the moment the doors of a hospital open for the first time and the first patient is treated, the facility acquires a pulse and begins to develop a personality as unique as any individual's. It fumbles and grows, learning from its mistakes. It stretches and explores, reaching out more and more to the world around it. Its organs decay and need repair or replacement. Its moods - the collective moods of its patients and employees - grow more distinctive.

If you don’t improve by 25%, you get the sense you could be replaced. Your manager casually says, “I don’t care how you do it. Just do it.” While this might seem like empowerment (full range to do or try anything), it’s also not supportive for a big, new, and elusive goal. Your manager is removing any of his or her accountability and contribution to the result, leaving you solely accountable for a result that has many factors (and people) beyond your control. This flippant form of delegation makes the task feel more like a threat.

Greg Peters, who replaced Neil Hunt as chief product officer in 2017, is one example. Greg gets to work at the normal hour of 8:00 a.m. and leaves the office by 6:00 p.m. to be home for dinner with his children. Greg makes a point of taking big vacations, including visiting his wife’s family in Tokyo, and encourages his staff to do the same. “What we say as leaders is only half the equation,” Greg explains. “Our employees are also looking at what we do. If I say, ‘I want you to find a sustainable and healthy work-life balance,’ but I’m in the office twelve hours a day, people will imitate my actions, not follow my words.

Putting together percentages for the two types of automatability _ 38 percent from one-to-one replacements and about 10 percent from ground-up disruption _ we are faced with a monumental challenge. Within ten to twenty years, I estimate we will be technically capable of automating 40 to 50 percent of jobs in the United States. For employees who are not outright replaced, increasing automation of their workload will continue to cut into their value-add for the company, reducing their bargaining power on wages and potentially leading to layoffs in the long term. We'll see a larger pool of unemployed workers competing for an even smaller pool of jobs, driving down wages and forcing many into part-time or "gig economy" work that lacks benefits.

There are consequences of our action. Its good when people protest to deliver their message. If they can't be heard . The problem is they are creating opportunities for companies to invest in AI (Artificial Intelligent). Companies will want to buy robots in replacing people , because robots wont protest, sexual abuse someone , get sick, be racist or favor certain employees. . As an employee you are supposed to generate cost for the company not costing the company.

In a high-performance environment, paying top of market is most cost-effective in the long run. It is best to have salaries a little higher than necessary, to give a raise before an employee asks for it, to bump up a salary before that employee starts looking for another job, in order to attract and retain the best talent on the market year after year. It costs a lot more to lose people and to recruit replacements than to overpay a little in the first place.

Even the best female employees can cause many problems if they don’t have the childcare issue taken care of. I'll have to make sure her replacement is unmarried.

In my experience, whoever is left out of the discussion ends up being the target for blame. This is just as damaging whether the scapegoat is a junior employee or the CEO. When it’s a junior employee, it’s all too easy to believe that that person is replaceable. If the CEO is not present, it’s all too easy to assume that his or her behavior is unchangeable. Neither presumption is usually correct.

Now, the wrong way to determine an organization’s values is to survey the employee population. This may seem to be a useful way to test a hypothesis, but it is not a replacement for the introspection and discussion of an executive team. More important, it can lead to the adoption of a value set that executives are not willing to support.

In 1930, for example, during the depths of the depression, economic visionary W. K. Kellogg (as in corn flakes), announced a revolutionary experiment: Nearly every employee in his huge Battle Creek plant would thereafter work a six-hour day. The reduction in hours was accompanied by only a minimal cut in pay, since Kellogg believed that hard work would replace long hours.

You were right. I forgot my place. I’d gotten so comfortable around your family and in social situations such as Ares and Raven’s wedding, that I forgot that I don’t belong in your world. I never will. I’ll never be more than a replaceable employee, someone who would only ever be a mistress, but never a wife.

First, articulate the kernel segments for which you don’t have a thoughtful point of view. Just knowing what you don’t know gives you permission for that confidence about the things that you do know, and in the process allows you be honest about what you don’t know. Heck, just whip out the list when a client asks a question about anything on it. They are fine with advice-givers who are human, and merely saying “no” from time to time can give real meaning to your “yes” statements. “Honestly, I’ve been asking that same question and I don’t think I have it figured out yet. [Reaching down] Here are my notes so far, and this will provide that opportunity to finally figure it out. Any thoughts along the way would be welcome. Thanks.” Second, determine all the methods that would motivate you, as a unique individual, to develop a given position. This might include a public speaking engagement, a repeatable section to include in proposals, an article you can place for publication, an interview with a journalist seeking expertise, a seminar you will teach, some internal training to prepare for, or a handout to be used at predictable conversation intersections when talking to clients in person. Third, group the topics by platform, order the topics in each group by descending level of importance, and assign a date to each item. About that: You cannot fully explore one of these topics and then craft the language to present it in less than two weeks; typically it requires a month or two. Fourth, ignite the research (less than you’ll guess) and insight generation (more than you’ll guess) by articulating a compressed 2,400–3,600 words for each topic. Fifth, begin what academia calls the peer review process. Release it to the brutal public for feedback, disagreement, and “this strikes me as right” commentary. If nobody reads your blog, that’s like winning a race with no opponents; you can just skip that and cast it far and wide instead. Email it to everyone not already tired of you and wait. Or just let that one cynical employee eagerly make you wince as they’ve always dreamed of doing. Sixth, over the following years, strip out what later seems like filler and replace it with more substance. Work on it long enough each time to make it shorter and shorter.

Consider the case of SeaTac, a suburb of Seattle that increased its minimum wage for certain service industry employees to fifteen dollars per hour starting January 1, 2014. The Seattle Times reported in February 2014: “At the Clarion Hotel off International Boulevard, a sit-down restaurant has been shuttered, though it might be replaced by a less-labor-intensive café. . . . Other businesses have adjusted in ways that run the gamut from putting more work in the hands of managers, to instituting a small ‘living-wage surcharge’ for a daily parking space near the airport.” Some businesses in SeaTac have cut benefits to their employees. When asked whether they appreciated the increase in the minimum wage, a hotel employee replied, “I lost my 401k, health insurance, paid holiday and vacation.” The hotel reportedly offered meals to its employees. Now the employees must bring their own food. The hotel has also cut overtime and the opportunity to earn overtime pay. A part-time waitress stated, “I’ve got $15 an hour, but all my tips are now much less.”41

En route, Perkins revolutionized insurance sales, replacing the agency system with branch offices, and offered employees profit sharing.

What is the cost of replacing and bringing up to speed one of your managers, supervisors, or front-line employees who left because they were frustrated with your organization’s leadership?

David and Neil were MBA students at the Wharton School when the cash-strapped David lost his eyeglasses and had to pay $700 for replacements. That got them thinking: Could there be a better way? Neil had previously worked for a nonprofit, VisionSpring, that trained poor women in the developing world to start businesses offering eye exams and selling glasses that were affordable to people making less than four dollars a day. He had helped expand the nonprofit’s presence to ten countries, supporting thousands of female entrepreneurs and boosting the organization’s staff from two to thirty. At the time, it hadn’t occurred to Neil that an idea birthed in the nonprofit sector could be transferred to the private sector. But later at Wharton, as he and David considered entering the eyeglass business, after being shocked by the high cost of replacing David’s glasses, they decided they were out to build more than a company—they were on a social mission as well. They asked a simple question: Why had no one ever sold eyeglasses online? Well, because some believed it was impossible. For one thing, the eyeglass industry operated under a near monopoly that controlled the sales pipeline and price points. That these high prices would be passed on to consumers went unquestioned, even if that meant some people would go without glasses altogether. For another, people didn’t really want to buy a product as carefully calibrated and individualized as glasses online. Besides, how could an online company even work? David and Neil would have to be able to offer stylish frames, a perfect fit, and various options for prescriptions. With a $2,500 seed investment from Wharton’s Venture Initiation Program, David and Neil launched their company in 2010 with a selection of styles, a low price of $95, and a hip marketing program. (They named the company Warby Parker after two characters in a Jack Kerouac novel.) Within a month, they’d sold out all their stock and had a 20,000-person waiting list. Within a year, they’d received serious funding. They kept perfecting their concept, offering an innovative home try-on program, a collection of boutique retail outlets, and an eye test app for distance vision. Today Warby Parker is valued at $1.75 billion, with 1,400 employees and 65 retail stores. It’s no surprise that Neil and David continued to use Warby Parker’s success to deliver eyeglasses to those in need. The company’s Buy a Pair, Give a Pair program is unique: instead of simply providing free eyeglasses, Warby Parker trains and equips entrepreneurs in developing countries to sell the glasses they’re given. To date, 4 million pairs of glasses have been distributed through Warby Parker’s program. This dual commitment to inexpensive eyewear for all, paired with a program to improve access to eyewear for the global poor, makes Warby Parker an exemplary assumption-busting social enterprise.

Here are some scary statistics: Each year the average company loses 20-50% of its employee base Cost of replacing entry level employees: 30-50% of their annual salary Cost of replacing mid-level employees: 150% of their annual salary Millennial turnover costs the U.S. economy $30.5 billion annually. The cost of replacing high-level or highly specialized employees: 400% of their annual salary.

Specifically, they argue that digital technology drives inequality in three different ways. First, by replacing old jobs with ones requiring more skills, technology has rewarded the educated: since the mid-1970s, salaries rose about 25% for those with graduate degrees while the average high school dropout took a 30% pay cut.45 Second, they claim that since the year 2000, an ever-larger share of corporate income has gone to those who own the companies as opposed to those who work there—and that as long as automation continues, we should expect those who own the machines to take a growing fraction of the pie. This edge of capital over labor may be particularly important for the growing digital economy, which tech visionary Nicholas Negroponte defines as moving bits, not atoms. Now that everything from books to movies and tax preparation tools has gone digital, additional copies can be sold worldwide at essentially zero cost, without hiring additional employees. This allows most of the revenue to go to investors rather than workers, and helps explain why, even though the combined revenues of Detroit’s “Big 3” (GM, Ford and Chrysler) in 1990 were almost identical to those of Silicon Valley’s “Big 3” (Google, Apple, Facebook) in 2014, the latter had nine times fewer employees and were worth thirty times more on the stock market.47 Figure 3.5: How the economy has grown average income over the past century, and what fraction of this income has gone to different groups. Before the 1970s, rich and poor are seen to all be getting better off in lockstep, after which most of the gains have gone to the top 1% while the bottom 90% have on average gained close to nothing.46 The amounts have been inflation-corrected to year-2017 dollars. Third, Erik and collaborators argue that the digital economy often benefits superstars over everyone else.

condensing doesn’t mean doing more at once, it simply means less waste. It means lowering the ratio of words to ideas, square feet to usefulness, or effort to results. Thus to apply the principle of condensing to our lives we need to shift the ratio of activity to meaning. We need to eliminate multiple meaningless activities and replace them with one very meaningful activity. For example, one employee at a company I’ve worked with (one who was well enough established to not have to worry about being fired) routinely skipped the weekly meeting other people attended and would simply ask them what he had missed. Thus he condensed a two-hour meeting into ten minutes and invested the rest of that redeemed time getting the important work done.

Robots will never take sick days, never need a pay increase or employee benefits, never go on strike, and will work long hours without a break. Remember, the word means “forced labor.” There will be no need for employers to hire and fire employees. If a robot is injured while performing a dangerous job, it can easily be repaired or replaced by a new robot, without the need for disability payments or potential lawsuit awards. Computer intelligence is expected to outwork and outlast a mere flesh and blood human. The superior will overtake the lesser. What a perfect business model; robots will work, while wealthy humans hop on a spaceship to visit Mars.

Paulson started making phone calls back to Texas, back to the oil-patch state where Paulson had friends and employees who thought the world of him. He called these old friends and asked them to come up to Minnesota to work. Shortly after the picket line was erected outside the refinery gates, Paulson arranged for helicopters to fly these workers into the refinery. The helicopters swooped in low over the refinery fences and landed on the refinery grounds to drop off his new workers from Texas and Oklahoma and other states where unions were not only rare but widely hated. Inside the main office building, Paulson converted a large room in the basement into a barracks for the new workers. On the picket line, the OCAW men watched as the helicopters passed over them, hovered, and landed inside, delivering the workers who would replace them. The picket line was becoming symbolic.

Here’s an example of the 1/3/1 + 1/3/1 structure from my article, “8 Soft Skills You Need To Work At A High-Growth Startup.” It takes a certain type of personality to want to work at a startup — and the crucial qualities of startup employees you decide to hire. When I was 26 years old, one of my closest friends and I decided we were going to start a company. He was still in the process of finishing his MBA. I had recently taken the leap from my job as a copywriter working in advertising. And every few weeks he would fly to Chicago (where I was based), or I would fly to Atlanta (where he was based), and we’d trade off sleeping on each other’s couches while brainstorming what our first step was going to be. We called it Digital Press. I’ll never forget the day we decided to make our first hire. He was a freelance writer recommended to me by a friend — and we were in the market to start hiring writers and editors (to replace the jobs my co-founder, Drew, and I were performing ourselves). We asked him to meet us at Soho House in Chicago, ordered a bottle of red wine to share, and “interviewed” him by the pool on the roof. He was a fiction writer with a passion for fantasy and sci-fi (not business writing, which was what we needed), and we were young and inexperienced just hoping someone would trust us enough to follow our vision. We hired him — and fired him two months later. The last thing I want to point out here is that you can actually make the 1/3/1 + 1/3/1 structure move even faster by combining the last sentence of the first section, and the first sentence of the second section, into one singular subhead. Here’s how it works: This first sentence is your opener. This second sentence clarifies your opener. This third sentence reinforces the point you’re making with some sort of credibility or amplified description. And this fourth sentence rounds out your argument. This fifth sentence is both your conclusion and the first sentence of your second section. And this sixth sentence clarifies your second opener. This seventh sentence reinforces the new point you’re making—with some sort of credibility or amplified description. And this eighth sentence rounds out the second point of your argument. This ninth sentence is the big conclusion of your introduction.