The right answer on raises is you have to be formal. You have to be formal to save your own culture.

Planning is valuable, tho the plan is usually useless.

There are no shortcuts to knowledge, especially knowledge gained from personal experience. Following conventional wisdom and relying on shortcuts can be worse than knowing nothing at all.

I think theres a lot to be said about just enjoying your work. It can be very contrived when people say their work is for the good of mankind.

Your employees know each other better than they know you.

When you're making a critical decision, you have to understand how it's going to be interpreted from all points of view. Not just your point of view, not just the person you're talking to, but the people that aren't in the room. Everybody else.

As a company grows, communication becomes its biggest challenge.