Just reading a Fast Company article on Mark Zuckerberg! He not only founded Facebook but he consciously developed himself over a period of a few years to be the CEO of a multibillion dollar company. He began the transformation at age 20 and as of this writing is still under 30. No small feat! Amazing in fact! How did he do it?
He opened himself to learning and then interviewed successful and admired CEO’s. He adopted many of their behaviors and practiced their skills. However, he didn’t adopt all. He had values to which he adhered so for example he disregarded advice from Andy Grove of Intel fame because it seemed too harsh.
Organizationally when something he tried didn’t work he changed it. For example, as his company got larger it tended to go in the direction of all bureaucracies and get hidebound. Since open communication is his mantra, to correct this they developed “the Hacker Way” – getting engineers and programmers in a big room and working around the clock to change whatever was the issue or solve the problem.
I wonder how many of us could move from being a college student computer programmer to running a multi-billion dollar business in a few years. Would we be willing to be open to learning what we need to succeed at our goals?
