Thomas Siebel quotes: the billionaire businessman’s best advice.
“The advice I give to my kids and other people is that they should study what they like. They should take advantage of the opportunity. They’re never going to be there again. If they want to study history‚ they should study history. If they want to study classics‚ they should study classics or if they like art history‚ study art history. They are in a candy store. They can do whatever they want. Go learn what you find rewarding. Life will work itself out just fine.”
“I don’t believe you need to know as a freshman in college or even as a senior in college what you want to do for a living. You should be taking advantage of every opportunity that is put before you. You have this cornucopia of opportunities to study anything you want. Study what you like. Study what you find interesting and then figure out what you want to do.”
“Culture is absolutely everything and I think about it more than anything. Baby boomers are pretty easy to motivate. What motivates baby boomers is the compensation plan. Whatever you put in the compensation plan‚ they do it.”
“The right culture rewards collaboration, hard work, and continuous learning.”
“They all have a different sense of history. They have a different purpose in life‚ a different reason to work‚ and different value systems about work/life balance. It’s a much‚ much more interesting organizational management problem and the only way that you can manage a tapestry that rich is through culture. You can’t do it through rules. You can’t do it through training. You need to come up with a set of cultural values that all these people share‚ that all these people find motivating‚ and use that to get everybody moving in the right direction at the right time, doing the right thing.”
“The internet economy is only in its infancy and that we are all witnesses to a historic watershed. This is, without a hint of irony, akin in significance to the invention of writing, the introduction of metal currency. Astonishing conclusions for extraordinary times.”
“The coming two decades will bring more information technology innovation than that of the last half century.”
“Successful companies are using digital technologies and advanced analytics to create economic value, agility, and speed.”
“The scope of digital transformation and its implications are still evolving, and its impacts are still being understood.”
“And it is why digital transformation can be so frightening: companies must shift their focus from what they know works and invest instead in alternatives they view as risky and unproven. Many companies simply refuse to believe they are facing a life-or-death situation. This is Clayton Christensen’s aptly named ‘Innovator’s Dilemma.’ Companies fail to innovate, because it means changing the focus from what’s working to something unproven and risky.”
“To be successful, the CEO must drive digital transformation from the top down.”
“The leaders must know what opportunities digital transformation can open up and how to differentiate the company’s digital efforts from others. A leadership team committed to the digital agenda is an absolute requirement and a first priority.
“Work incrementally to get wins and capture business value. This consists of three simple pieces of advice: (1) Don’t get caught up in endless and complicated approaches to unifying data. (2) Build use cases that generate measurable economic benefit first‚ and solve the IT challenges later. (3) Consider a phased approach to projects‚ where you can deliver demonstrable ROI one step at a time‚ in less than a year.”
“Draft a digital transformation roadmap and communicate it to others. Clearly define a future vision for your digital business. What does your ideal future state look like in terms of your organizational structure‚ people and leadership‚ product and services‚ culture‚ and adoption of technology? Use this ideal future state to compare against your current state.”
“Pick your partners carefully. In a digitally transforming world‚ partners play a bigger role than in the past. Management consultants can help flesh out a company’s AI strategy. Software partners can provide the right technology stack to power a digital transformation. Professional services partners can help build advanced AI applications.”
“Focus on economic benefit. If you can’t identify projects for digital transformation that will return significant economic value within one year‚ keep looking. The market is moving too rapidly.”
“Create a transformative culture of innovation. The right culture rewards collaboration‚ hard work‚ and continuous learning.”
“Continually re-educate the workforce. It is impractical to think about replacing your workforce with a new‚ qualified team. But you can train them.”
“We’re making significant changes in strategy. The value proposition is completely changing. How we partner is completely changing. Markets that we go after are changing.”
“Demand near-term results. If the solution cannot be delivered within a year, don’t do it.”
“The confluence of elastic cloud computing, big data, AI, and IoT drives digital transformation. Companies that harness these technologies and transform into vibrant, dynamic digital enterprises will thrive. Those that do not will become irrelevant and cease to exist.”
“I don’t think I started out to be an entrepreneur. I started out to be a computer scientist and wanted to play the game in what I then thought would be a very large industry that would change the world as I think it has. I did my graduate work in relational database theory. When I finished my graduate work‚ I was recruited by a young entrepreneur named Larry Ellison at a small startup.”
“It ended up being a professional experience of a lifetime to be involved in the emergence of an industry and of what became one of the world’s great companies. In the course of being there for about a decade‚ I learned a great deal about how to run a company and I think I might have actually learned even more about how not to run a company.”
“What I had learned was that the idea that people are somehow genetically entrepreneurs and can drop out of college and be the next Steve Jobs is really a very long shot. I think that leadership and management come through hard knocks and mistakes and learning by experience. I learned a great deal at Oracle which made a substantial contribution to my success.”
“I used to be the classic meddling entrepreneur who was convinced that I could do every job in the company better than everybody else, and I needed to demonstrate that. I realized that if I continued to micromanage, the company would eventually grind to a halt.”
“The extent to which we have been successful is because we have repeatedly found ourselves to have been very fortunate to be in the right place at the right time and then manage not to goof up the opportunity.”
“The way that I do philanthropy‚ the skills I have in operating businesses apply directly. I’m very engaged in entrepreneurial philanthropy. We create things. We don’t tend to contribute to things. We’re not the guys to give to the opera.”
“We tend not to contribute to organizations‚ but to create organizations that make a difference. Why do we do it? There are organizations that have had a large impact on my life. I am a product of the great public education system in the United States.”
“I’m not here to lay a guilt trip on anybody. I just happen to be in a position to make a positive contribution. I try to leave the neighborhood in a better place than I found it and I’m in a position to be able to make some small contribution on the edge of these institutions. That is what I try to do.”
“It’s like when you see Tiger Woods win; is that skill or is that luck? I think if you train hard enough‚ for some reason‚ you get a lot of lucky bounces. Funny the way that works.”
“I know that I am the luckiest person on earth. I have had the good fortune professionally to be in the right place at the right time a number of times.”
