When Mark Zuckerberg first started Facebook, he knew he didn't have the experience necessary to run a major company, Ekaterina Walter says in her forthcoming book "Think Like Zuck." Here's how he triumphed anyway.
In the first several years of Facebook’s existence, multiple journalists portrayed Mark Zuckerberg and his friends as party lovers who would code all day and stay up all night. Mark liked to have fun just as much as any other college freshman, but he was also very focused. He knew that he needed to keep the company moving forward, and he didn’t hesitate to put the rest of his colleagues on the lockdown until something got done. Early on, he showed qualities of a natural leader, according to his friends. Sean Parker, former president of Facebook, remembers: “The leader of a company needs to have a decision tree in his head--if this happens, we go this way, but if it winds up like that, then we go this other way. Mark does that instinctively.” Zuckerberg also made sure every angle was covered. Parker continues: “He liked the idea of Thefacebook, and he was willing to pursue it doggedly, tenaciously, to the end. But like the best empire builders, he was both very determined and very skeptical. It’s like (former Intel CEO) Andy Grove says, ‘Only the paranoid survive.’”
To read the original article: Think Like Zuck: Leadership Insights From Facebook's Early Years | Fast Company
