Don't be a Unicorn. Be a Phoenix.
Reid Hoffman
Entrepreneur. Product and Business Strategist. Investor. Podcaster. Author.
Much of what I've been thinking and talking about in recent years focuses on scaling up quickly. But this week on Masters of Scale, I'm focused on a very different topic — how to reinvent a company so it remains relevant decades or even centuries after founding. Forget being a unicorn, and be a “Phoenix” instead — the rarest of companies that lasts 100+ years by rising and falling and rising again.
To learn to be a Phoenix, you have to look outside of Silicon Valley. So I talked to my friend John Elkann, who joined the board of his family's company (at his grandfather's request) when he was a 21-year-old engineering student. You may have heard of this company; it's called Fiat Chrysler. 21 certainly sounds young, but that's the same age that his grandfather, Gianni Agnelli, was when he joined the board at the request of his grandfather, Fiat founder Giovanni Agnelli.
John became vice chair of Fiat at 28, after the deaths of his grandfather and great-uncle. Maybe John didn't have to jump off a cliff and assemble a plane on the way down, but he did have to figure out how to fly an aging 747 with every warning light flashing an urgent red. John and the "truth-teller" he named as Fiat's CEO, Sergio Marchionne, managed to turn around the company and steer it through the 2008 financial crisis, including the eventual acquisition of Chrysler.
In this week's episode, John shares what he's learned from Fiat's near-death experience and rebirth. You'll also hear from other “Phoenixes” who have re-invented themselves, like Robert Pasin, the CEO of Radio Flyer, whose grandfather (an Italian immigrant) introduced his iconic toy wagon in 1917. After cheap plastic wagons threatened the company's core business, Pasin found the essence of his company and leveraged the Mandela Effect to become the #1 brand in tricycles. Similarly, when Paulette Cole joined her family's firm, ABC Carpet & Home, she realized that she could turn a bargain hunter's carpet store into a high-end, award-winning retail experience.
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As always, I'd like to hear your thoughts and reactions to this episode. What is the essence of what your company is about? Who in your life can you count on to be a truth-teller when things go wrong?
Please write a short post on your LinkedIn newsfeed to share your answers with the wider community. Tag your post #mastersofscale so I can find it. And if you’d like, Tweet it at me (@ReidHoffman) and @MastersOfScale.
Corporate communications, Marketing, Branding, Crisis Management, ESG #Sustainability
6yThat´s happening with Renault-Nissan?
Lead @ Accenture
6yIt is very good advice to be a phoenix. To raise once in life, we have to check the environment and do something relevant to the current environment. But to raise time and again we have to adapt to the changes in the environment. While building companies, when we build one successful company it makes sense to sell it off and start with a new slate so that we can raise like a phoenix time and again. It is indeed a challenging job to make elephants dance as once we build a successful company, in order to keep it relevant we have to change each and everything that we did in the past, to be relevant in the present. A futuristic outlook might help till that future becomes a reality. With the market being disruptive due to technology, the futuristic outlook might not be of great help. What can help is an attitude where we present a solution for the short term and discard it completely after the term is over. This might bring the challenge of frequently building things from scratch. But I think that is more economical than making an elephant dance!
I'm really enjoying the podcast. This one (and the Barry Diller 2 parter) have been my favorites.