今年10冊目。 "The Hard Thing About Hard Things"

Actually, I don't like reading books talking about principles to manage organizations, especially when the book was not authored by the individuals who really changed the history of the earth. The reason is clear – the seeming principle is not the principle in fact; it's rather a solution which fits into the unique situation that the author faced. Some people talked to me that "this book is full of applicable lessons", and I wonder they're not the ones who really thought about how to solve problems in their organization.

That is why I love reading books about history or story of entrepreneurs and great spirits in human's era. By reading these books, I can understand context of the decisions made by leaders. Then I will be able to apply the key lessons to the problems facing me. Therefore, to me, the most impressive part of this book is not about principles of start-ups written in latter part of the book, but about the story of how he managed his company until he sold it. Especially, I was really impressed by the Marc Andreessen, the inventor of Mosaic and Netscape. The author was amazed by how Andreessen at the age of 22 knew everything about the history of the computer. Andreessen shows up many times in this book and gives me far stronger impression than the author himself. One important and practical insight for me by reading this book is that I should study everything which is related to my business, and actually that how this reading memo began (I started to read this book in December, and after a long pause I finished it)

Surely, there are some other thoughtful lessons in this book. Let me list up some:
- Don't forget that you work for family not for company
- The strong will to survive really makes your company alive
- The hidden cost of layoff is to destroy corporate culture, as after this employees never want to make sacrifices needed for the company
- Once you decide to layoff employees, you should do it as soon as possible before any information leaks. Also managers should fire people by themselves; never leave the task to HR. When you fire someone, you should be adamant enough.
- Take care of the people, the product and the profit – in that order
- Managers should train employees by themselves
- One important role of the CEO is to design and implement communication architecture of the organization
- The most difficult skill for CEO to learn is to manage one's own psychology