People who worry about looking good typically hide what they don't know and hide their weaknesses, so they never learn how to properly deal with them and these weaknesses remain impediments in the future.

The pain of problems is a call to find solutions rather than a reason for unhappiness and inaction, so it's silly, pointless, and harmful to be upset at the problems and choices that come at you (though it’s understandable).

Over time, it also became important for me to share my management principles with the people I worked with because we had to agree on how we should be with each other - and that way is unique. Because the logic behind being radically honest and radically transparent with each other wasn't clear, it had to be spelled out in these principles.

Some people have subject matter expertise in one thing. Some people tend to be creative but not reliable, and others are reliable but not creative. Everybody has different dimensions.

The expression I use: Pain + Reality = Progress. Whenever I would have a painful mistake, I started to view that as puzzles that would give me gems if I could solve the puzzle. So, it made me thoughtful - what should I do differently next time? That was the puzzle. And the gem was some principle for handling the same thing when it came along again, and then I would write it down. And by writing it down and referring to it, and also being able to show it to other people so that we could agree that that was a good way of handling that thing - that was very, very powerful.

There is giant untapped potential in disagreement, especially if the disagreement is between two or more thoughtful people

The meaningful work and the meaningful relationships are, to me, comparable rewards. I think being on a mission to do something great is great, and to be on that mission with people who you have really meaningful relationships with not only provides both types of rewards, but it's mutually supportive. Because you can have tough love, but there's also the love part of that in terms of the caring for each other, and when you have the caring you can be tougher on each other. Some people describe it as an intellectual Navy Seals.