Tachi Yamada
Talk to Me. I’ll Turn Off My Phone an interview with Tachi Yamada.
Favorite excerpts:
“I don’t micromanage, but I have microinterest..
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I don’t tell people what to do.
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What is the one thing that everything else hinges on? I’ll spend a lot of time understanding that one thing.
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You have to have people in an organization who are willing to truly embrace change, because if they don’t, then what you have is an organization that’s constantly fighting to stay at the status quo.
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Native intelligence is critically important. I don’t think you can train people to be more intelligent.
Intelligence is often more displayed in what I would call complex abstract thinking, and there’s nothing more complex and abstract than human relationships. And if they can work their way through a human relationship problem intelligently, my guess is that they’re very smart people.
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I also look for people who’ve moved. This kind of thing is often very informative about how people have had to deal with crisis, different circumstances and how they’ve had to adapt or change.
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I think one of the hardest things to do is to figure out what your North Star is. What is it that you really are interested in? This helps you to weigh one option versus another. And then keep your eyes and ears open.
Be open to new challenges. I don’t think anyone should do one job for too long a time. I think every five to eight years you should be willing to take on some different challenges. It’s so easy to get stale.”
