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Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2007 by Collin Levy
Interview with Sam Zell contains a number of important lessons and is worth reading.
1) How do you know when to sell?
First, evaluate the value of something you have or might acquire. Referring to his decision in February, to sell Equity Office Properties to Blackstone for $39 billion in cash,"Somebody made an offer that was wide ( far higher) than my own valuation. So I'm looking in the mirror, and any day you don't sell, you buy, and I wasn't willing to buy at the price they were willing to pay, so I sold it."
2) Understand and evaluate risk as a "professional opportunist"
"..people take all kinds of risk all the time and don't know it." Make risk-assessment a part of everything that you do. Estimate the value of the potential gain and of the cost of being wrong.
3) Have your own perception of value versus risk.
Do a professional analysis, and always be willing to proceed, even if no one else agrees with you.
4) Standing still has risks.
Realize that NOT taking an action also has risks.
Lesson: Stay focused and consider "risk versus rewards" in a professional manner, rather than just making decisions based on "intuition" or vague "gut feelings." Then- Have the courage of your convictions.
Dr. Vivek Murthy
4 years ago
3 comments:
surely in light of recent discoveries about the subconscious and how it controls a large part of our decision making, then there is value in intuition and 'gut feeling' when something feels right to an expert although they cannot yet articulate why.
I agree that intuition and "gut feeling" can be useful, but mostly as a starting point for an idea. Then you need to analyze the problem/ need and do research to understand the user and what has been done before, establish metrics for comparison, consider wide range of alternatives, all in an effort to create a concept that is far better in all respects than your original idea. This means lots of work, but the results will be worth it.
Nursery link is not working??
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