CEO_ALL_HANDS_10-7-08_FINAL - Free Legal Forms
We’ve got a little bit of a financial struggle on our hands, no doubt about it. How things will resolve themselves is still very unclear to just about everybody. This is affecting confidence, planning, and decisions at every level of government, business, and society. Forget about the stock market for now, that’s been reduced to nothing but a moment-to-moment measurement of overreaction and rampant emotions. Wait, I guess the stock market has always been like that.
Given the intensity of the mess we find ourselves in, many of the venture capital firms have been calling “CEO all hands” meetings for those who lead the companies in their portfolios. The meeting of Sequoia Capital’s CEO group was earlier this week, and the presentation for that meeting, shown above with its dark humor intro slide, is making its way around because it succinctly drives home the need for one very important strategy: Prepare for the worst.
“My attitude is batten down the hatches… it is going to be a rough ride.”
Douglas Leone of Sequoia Capital
When events are fluid, unpredictable, and at best volatile the appropriate strategy is to secure what you can, make the hard decisions, prepare for a worst case scenario, and ready yourself to take advantage of when situations begin to improve. The appropriate strategy is to do what is required right now to ensure your company is around on the other side. Prudent advice, indeed. What is important here, though, is not so much the practical reality of that advice as much as how well Sequoia Capital’s presentation above provides such an effective situation analysis to justify it. Next step, focus on the facts and remove emotion from our collective thinking on these matters.
Found the slideshow above via Techcrunch.
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