
Nobody Cares (2011) - ghosh
http://www.bhorowitz.com/nobody_cares
======
econnors
I play a college sport, and our coach pushed our team to adopt this exact
mindset this past year. It completely changed our team culture and
performance. Cold weather, injuries, lack of facilities, etc. previously
served as excuses for why we weren't achieving our goals. Once we started
focusing on the controllables and working around our challenges rather than
hiding behind them, our performance drastically improved. We also started
enjoying our training and time together much more.

I think people who just "get things done" are ones that possess this mindset,
whether they know it or not. Instead of "I couldn't do X because of Y," they
tend to say "I originally couldn't do X because of Y, but by doing Z I was
able to make significant progress regardless."

------
AndrewKemendo
I'll go one further and say even if you have something amazing, nobody cares
unless you can actually take a big market share - whether in niche or
otherwise.

I see this a lot, and have done it myself. You will frequently see someone
with "better" technology than the leader or "the best" [insert thing] - but
because they were too early, too late, didn't have enough PR, or the right
connections etc... can't take market share and inevitably closes down.

I read a great quote from a rolling stone article, about Trump that I think is
somewhat applicable to my point[1]:

 _Cheryl Donlon says she heard the tariff message loud and clear and she 's
fine with it, despite the fact that it clashes with traditional conservatism._

 _" We need someone who is just going to look at what's best for us," she
says._

 _I mention that Trump 's plan is virtually identical to Dick Gephardt's idea
from way back in the 1988 Democratic presidential race, to fight the Korean
Hyundai import wave with retaliatory tariffs._

 _Donlon says she didn 't like that idea then._

 _Why not?_

 _" I didn't like him," she says._

"Nobody" cared, about the Gephart's plan - and it even tanked him - but with
the right spin and shine or however you want to put it, it sells.

[1] [http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-
made-d...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-america-made-donald-
trump-unstoppable-20160224?page=9)

------
MrAlmostWrong
I think he could've done a little bit better job of tying the Parcells story
with his actual point unless I was reading it wrong. For a while I really
thought he meant people don't care when things go wrong and I kept saying "the
hell they don't, that's when they care the most!"

But then it turns and he's saying nobody cares about the story of why things
are going wrong. That makes more sense.

~~~
enraged_camel
Yeah, exactly. It's like what Steve Jobs used to tell newly minted VPs: once
you reach a certain rank in the company, reasons don't matter anymore, and
only results do.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-the-
difference-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-on-the-difference-
between-a-vice-president-and-a-janitor-2011-5)

~~~
qznc
What also matters are expectations. If you have mediocre results, but
everybody expected much worse, then you still are a hero (example:
Paralympics). This is relevant when dealing with clients. Keep expectations
down and then over-deliver. Much better than promise a dream and then (only)
deliver something great.

Sometimes expectations are everything that matters. For example, elections.
Turns out, you can get a Nobel Peace Prize, before you really do anything as
president.

------
unabst
Here's the thing about excuses.

Excuses can be identified as anything said that has no consequence. And to
anyone focused on only the consequences, not a single one of those words
matter. They could be true, they could be false, it doesn't matter. Nobody
cares, because nobody's listening.

An excuse is the very act of disowning a consequence, and those who are
responsible for consequences, can never disown them. Anyone who recognizes
this never has an excuse. They just fix things, which often can be done
silently. Entrepreneurs, like coaches, have no excuses.

Excuses arise from the need to dodge responsibility. But the catch is, if
you've got responsibilities you can dodge with excuses, you never were truly
responsible for them anyway. You never had full ownership. If you give your
boss an excuse that they are okay with, it either means the work didn't
matter, or they had backup, aka, they expected you to fail. When a kid has a
doctor's note that excused them from a field trip, it's okay, because the
kid's presence doesn't matter that much. They just need a "good excuse". It's
a true shame schools are so full of good excuses.

The true worthlessness of excuses can be demonstrated by the fact that anyone
smart enough can come up with an infinite number of them. Allow lies, and
you've got even more. If you ask nicely, in a bureaucracy, your boss may even
come up with an excuse for you. Ya, "he's got your back." Except, that won't
change the fact that you're all full of shit. And by shit I mean excuses.

But this has dire consequences beyond mere work. The same applies for excuses
to be happy, and excuses to be sad, and for anything else. In other words,
those who make a habit of making excuses can make an excuse for anything if
they're smart enough. They will claim them all as "reasons" but the truth is,
they're just doing whatever they want. A person that wants to be happy will
have every excuse to, and vice versa. But excuses have no consequence. That
person was already happy to begin with! (and vice versa). You see happy and
depressed people with great excuses all the time. They're just happy or
depressed. And if you need an excuse to be kind, you're an asshole already.

As a business owner, and as a parent, there will be no excuses. Instead, tell
me how you could have not failed. Better yet, implement something that will
prevent it from ever happening again. And that's what everyone cares about.

~~~
clock_tower
I'm glad I'm neither your employee nor your child.

~~~
unabst
Excuses are _that_ important to you? A life without excuses is so much better.
Best of luck.

~~~
clock_tower
Yes, they are. A world where people can be blamed for things that aren't their
fault, is a world I wouldn't want to live in.

~~~
unabst
Excuses go well with dodging blame, but the greater issue there is that there
is someone blaming you. You assumed I blame people. I don't.

From the article, the coach made an excuse because he was expecting to be
blamed. Instead, he was only expected to do the best he could given the
circumstances. No one cared about his excuses because no one was wasting time
blaming him.

------
makeitsuckless
The part that makes this kind of crap so infuriating is that there's usually a
large group of people that, despite what the author casually claims, _do_
care: the people on the payroll. The people about to lose their jobs.

But of course, in the Horowitz's world only investors and entrepreneurs
matter, not the little people. They're not part of the game. They are
literally _nobody_.

------
forrestthewoods
I'll extend this.

Your customers don't care. Customers don't care that you only have two
engineers. Customers don't care how little time you had. Customers don't care
how you did so much with so little. Customers don't care that you're losing
money every month. Customer's don't even care why you made a decision that
negatively impacted them. Customers don't care about you. They care about the
end result in their hands and nothing else.

~~~
exodust
You're right, and I'd call that a correction not extension.

Bens Blog says: "When things go wrong in your company, your employees don't
care... Nobody cares." Sounds like a false statement. Employees are not
customers, they have a stake and interest in healthy operation of the
business. If they don't, then the company culture must be crap.

Looking closely at reasons for failure is about learning lessons and avoiding
similar trouble in future. At the last two companies I worked for, there was a
constant drive and focus on "moving forward" \- literally that phrase would
pop up in emails and meetings, and too frequently the same mistakes would be
repeated.

~~~
ktRolster
I got confused when I read that section, I realized what he was trying to say
was, "When things go wrong in your company, your employees don't care _about
your excuses_... Nobody cares _about your excuses_."

And that's true, if my company stops giving me a paycheck, I will be gone very
quickly. No reason to stay around that kind of company. I doubt you are much
different.

------
luckydata
What deep truth was I supposed to take away from this?

~~~
guptaneil
That nobody wants to hear excuses.

This as true for a CEO as it is for an entry-level employee. If you don't hit
your deadline, your manager doesn't want to hear excuses. That doesn't solve
their problem. They want to hear how you're going to fix it.

~~~
exodust
A good manager should want to know the whole story, to analyze the reasons why
something went off the rails to avoid it happening in future.

"Nobody cares why X happened" is to avoid learning a lesson.

~~~
ktRolster
It's the same as what Yoda says, "Do or do not, there is no try." Trying and
failing is the same as failing. You don't get credit.

Now, maybe you learned something from your failure, in which case you have
another chance.

~~~
exodust
Yoda logic might work when preparing your run-up in the Olympic long jump, but
in a business environment it remains in the realm of office banter and who has
the best Yoda voice.

Comparing real life with Star Wars got way out of hand years ago.

"The Hero's journey - is what we're living!"... Yep. Okay. Good luck with
that. Me, I'm stuck on "tempted by the dark side" and kinda liking it there to
be honest.

------
xyzzy4
Or maybe they silently care and hope for your company to fail. Many people
love watching other people fail, especially if those people have high status.

~~~
atheiste
Where are you from? We are constantly told that there is no such thing as
shadenfreude in the US.

~~~
WalterBright
It obviously does exist, or we wouldn't have stolen the word for it from the
Germans!

------
sawthat
The title is a perfect review of the post.

------
jheriko
Nobody cares why you fail, only that you did.

------
teddyh
[http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-
yo...](http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-harsh-truths-that-will-make-you-better-
person/)

#6: The World Only Cares About What It Can Get from You

------
jakozaur
Seems another rewritten part from book "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by
Ben Horowitz.

------
maker3249
Wow. Can I have my 3 minutes back?

~~~
vecter
1\. You made a throwaway account just to say this?

2\. You obviously missed the lesson of this story, which I won't repeat b/c
other commentors here have done a great job explaining it. There is actually a
valuable lesson to be learned that you can apply to your life to achieve
better results. As an entrepreneur, when I came across this story a year ago
in the book version, it was a huge insight and relief. I used to wallow in
self pity about all the crap I had to suffer through, but after I read it, I
stopped worrying about those silly things and just focused instead on
executing. It's a night and day mental shift and it has not only massively
reduced my stress level, but also resulted in better performance.

~~~
ktRolster
Furthermore, even if you already know this lesson, hearing it again can help
you get into the same mindset. Kind of like listening to _Eye of the Tiger_ to
do a workout.

