The Benefits of Pissing People Off

Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Workweek, has a great post up today about The Benefits of Pissing People Off. I had the privilege of having dinner with Tim a few years ago in San Francisco (along with my good friend Jason DeFillippo), and learned a huge amount about the nutritional supplement industry. I particularly liked the quote he included from Colin Powell:

Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity: you’ll avoid the tough decisions, you’ll avoid confronting the people who need to be confronted, and you’ll avoid offering differential rewards based on differential performance because some people might get upset.

This applies as much to managing people as it does to baseball agents and four star generals. Even the smallest teams face tough decisions and you need to be able to face them, make a call, and deal with the consequences.