Lessons In Unconventional Thinking
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Eli Broad
Notes
Research—and using what you learn from it to analyze every situation—is what separates being unreasonable from being irrational.
We would treat land as just another raw material, like lumber or nails. We would buy it when we needed it and let someone else own it when we didn’t.
Look for needs your competitors don’t satisfy. Look for disgruntled customers who deal with your competitor not out of loyalty but because there’s no other option. Make yourself an attractive alternative.
People who have been in meetings with me have probably heard me say, “Let’s move on.” That’s how I tell people they’re on the verge of wasting my time. If they’re lucky, they’ve never heard me say, “Anything else?” That means they’ve already wasted my time, and I’m not happy about it.
Once you’ve identified your crucial tasks and sorted out your priorities, try to find a way to delegate everything else.
I always bet on youth over experience for experience’s sake… I want to see a lot of confidence, ambition, and drive. I want him or her to ask me a lot of questions and to convey knowledge about the industry and my company. Even in the days before Internet search engines, I expected anyone applying for a job with me to get to the library and read some trade publications and company filings…Younger employees simply have fewer preconceived ideas of what they can and can’t do….When I interview more experienced employees for a position, I always ask them: “What did you learn in the past year that you didn’t know before?”
We guaranteed a roughly 7 percent increase in home value in the first year and offered to refund the difference to anyone who wanted to sell at the one-year mark. We promised to cover the mortgage payments for anyone who got laid off or was otherwise incapacitated. In other words, we reassured our customers that the new home they wanted really was a safe investment. And we made sure to assess our risk and to purchase insurance for ourselves beforehand in case our calculations were off.
You can’t wait for opportunities to come to you. Instead, go hunting.
Sometimes there are forces at play that are impermeable to either persuasion or logic. When you can see that’s the case, get up from the table and move on to the next project.
The best praise is specific, genuine, brief, and, ideally, followed by setting a new, more demanding goal.