“Maybe some percentage that’s substantially larger than 95 percent of VCs add zero value. I would bet that 70-80 percent add negative value to a startup in their advising.”

- Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun Microsystems and Khosla Ventures

If your true purpose involves making a real difference in the world, find a meaningful problem and approach it head on. Optimize for it. If you’re spending a good chunk of your energy optimizing for other things (e.g. money or status), or if there’s a persistent knot in your stomach, then reconsider your purpose. If you find yourself becoming repeatedly distracted by success metrics that are not well aligned with what you’re telling yourself you want in life, it is time to stop and think.

Comic by internet humorist Drew

“Yes, some things…are sacred, but if you let go of those chains, new and wonderful things can happen.  Those things you hold so dear cannot change and grow and expand unless you loosen your grip on them a little. … if you have a preconceived notion of how something should be, you will always be disappointed.  Instead, just go with it, just accept it, because usually something even more wonderful will come out of it.”

- Mica Angela Hendricks, illustrator and graphic artist

Communicating well with your colleagues is critical to success. The implications of a lack of fluent exchange can be subtle at first, but if you find yourself exhausted from translating you should have cut your losses long ago. Being able to finish each other’s sentences may be an indication of too much uniformity, but you shouldn’t have to measure every word to make sure you’re understood. Team misalignment is far more than a waste of time; it can easily kill a venture.

“Make sure you are speaking the same language. Research to one partner might mean 30 minutes of light skimming on the Web, while research to another is three hours of intense reference-checking and phone calls. In other words, make sure that you not only want the same things, but also that the meaning of those things is the same.”

- Kim Kaupe, Co-founder of ‘Zinepak

“You have to wallow in it…. Take time to get to know people. Understand where they are coming from, what is important to them. Make sure they are with you.”

- Jack Welch, former GE Chairman and CEO (as quoted by Beth Comstock, GE CMO)

“A Great CEO Is The Chief Experience Officer”

- Dharmesh Shah, Founder and CTO at HubSpot

Shah argues that CEOs will have done their job if they create amazing (1) product, (2) purchasing, (3) brand, (4) support, (5) exit, and (6) employee experiences.

The concept of creating a superb experience rings true for all levels of employees (including both managers and sole contributors) as well, with the key difference being that customers can be internal as well as external. In other words:

Great employees are the chief experience officers of their domains.

- Randall Munroe

“Because your time is expensive too. This is a fact often overlooked in debates about how much a digital book should cost. Reading a book is a big undertaking. What you spend to buy a book — whether $5 or $50 — is small compared to the hours you’ll spend reading it. Every great book is underpriced; no bad book is cheap enough.“

- Matthew Butterick, typographer (emphasis added)

“Love those Close to You. Failure of your company is not failure in life. Failure in your relationships is.”

- Ev Williams, internet entrepreneur extraordinaire (Blogger, Twitter, Medium)

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. So does not making an appointment.

Make sure your metrics are meaningfully aligned with success. In this case, it’s your health that matters, not how often you see the doctor. Frequency of doctor visits is not necessarily a good proxy for your health. It’s easier to measure than your health, but it doesn’t matter.

A poor choice of metric can easily become your master as you attempt to optimize it. Minimizing the metric of doctor visits is not necessarily a path to a clean bill of health, and instead might lead to disastrous results.

Measure what matters, not necessarily what’s easy.