John

"Larry and Sergey were good at listening to people who knew what they were talking about. I’m sure they argued with John, but they listened. They had never run a company or even worked in a company before. John came in and said, “This is a way you can run your business, and it’s measurable and trackable.” Measurables were intuitive to Larry and Sergey, and they had to be impressed by the fact that Intel used OKRs. Intel was such a great company, and we were so small by comparison."

"ONE mustn’t get institutional; we need to stay disruptive. I’m always scared that we’re going to go corporate and try to beat every quarterly goal. We needed John to remind us, “If everything’s at green, you failed.” That was counterintuitive for a lot of people, especially now that we’re financed up and have the best and the brightest working here. But John kept saying, “More red!” He was right. We needed more big ambitions because that’s what we’re good at. We’re less good at the incremental stuff."

""Obviously, some of the information we share flows to the street," John adds. "But the value of sharing everything with our employees is much greater than any downside there might be to some information getting out. It hasn't seemed to hurt us through 27 years of profitable growth in an industry that hasn't consistently done well.""

"Building that network was expensive, however. Columbus’s expansion was funded with US $ 1.25 billion—including from banks like Citi, RBC, and Scotiabank, the largest retail bank in the Caribbean, as well as further investment from CFFI. During one cash call, Michael Lee-Chin found himself short on funds. “I didn’t have the liquidity then. So John said, ‘It’s OK, Mike, don’t worry—I’ll put it in. Pay me when you have the money.’"

"“John Malone is not the kind of guy that walks through the halls of Liberty and puts his head down when people are coming towards him. He’s a very approachable guy, just like John is. Very charismatic.”"

"As I sat there with John and Ed, my experience of the day was suddenly giving birth to a new feeling. These two leaders had dedicated themselves for years to their crafts, with almost no commercial success and recognition. I had no idea how, when, or where they might succeed, but one thing was becoming clear to me. They were winners. I might not know how that victory would come, but I was quite confident that, for them, somehow it would."

"“How do you see the creative decision process moving forward?” I asked. “Our films must come from the heart,” John explained. “It’s not just about entertainment. It’s about telling stories that audiences connect with emotionally. The way to do this is to make our films personal, to make certain they mean something to our directors.” John had such passion in his voice, such sincere conviction, that it was almost impossible not to be moved by it. He literally touched over his heart as he spoke. “We have to trust our story team,” he went on. “They have to believe we trust them.” “So what you’re saying,” Steve said, “is that we should bet on our creative talent, no matter the risk.” “Yes,” John replied. “I know that’s asking a lot, but it is what I think we should do.”"

"A few hours after I was born, my father, Andreas Catsimatidis, took me to the house of his mother, who hadn’t been well. He carried me into the bedroom and handed me to my *Ya-Ya,* which is what Greek children call their grandmothers. Without a word of prompting, she said to my father, “A new Yiánni Catsimatidis is born.” That was her late husband’s name, Yiánni—Greek for John. And that night, my grandmother died. That very night. She was happy the whole day long."

"tri-partite leadership is challenging in the best of cases, but it worked at Pixar. As Pixar filmmaker Pete Docter told me: “Here there was a clear definition of power: John on creative, Ed on technical, and Jobs on business and financial. There was an implicit trust of each other, as well as one guy with the final word (Steve)."

"When Ford’s brother came to visit him in China, John would teach this same lesson in a more fun, slightly dangerous way. “My brother loved driving with me and my car in China, ‘cause I could pull up next to a cop at a red light, then run the red light in front of him,” he says. “My brother would laugh and say, ‘How do you get away with that?’ It was because the cop assumed that if I was doing it, I must be *able* to do it. If he pulled me over, he’d be risking getting fired by this powerful person who clearly knew he was powerful enough to pull around the red light right in front of him.”"

"“You’ve built an impressive HDTV set,” I said to Morita. “What if we were to buy ten thousand of ’em? What would it cost us?” Morita talked to his deputies and they retreated to a corner for a moment. When we reconnected minutes later, Morita smiled politely and said, “We can build them for seven thousand U.S. dollars apiece.” Which was a great price at the time, because in Japan they were not yet the commodity that they are now. We had seen ads for HDTV sets for $30,000. Then the visiting cable team was off by themselves, too. “Hey, John, we didn’t bring our checkbook, and I’m not authorized to spend anything!” said one CTO, concerned we were in the middle of a purchase order. The intention wasn’t to buy HDTV sets, I explained. A simple question like that will get you answers from Sony about how they’re thinking about high-volume production. What are they pricing sets at, how many can they make, and how quickly can they penetrate the market? All these things, just by asking a question."

"John continued to test the limits of man in the sky throughout his life. Planes were becoming increasingly complex, from biplanes flown with the wind in one's face to enclosed cockpits. The requirements of pilots and their eyes changed as well. In an attempt to break a new altitude record, Macready returned to the ground with an irritation in his sight. The old goggles were no longer enough to protect him from the increasingly closer sun rays. He contacted Bausch & Lomb, the optical company from New York State and supplier of lenses for the American army, asking to develop anti-glare glasses that would stop the solar rays. After years of attempts, in 1937 the glasses were ready: the Ray-Ban Anti-glare was born, anti-blinding glasses that banish the rays. They are glasses with a light metal frame, with teardrop-shaped lenses to fully cover the eyes following the face, in mineral glass to filter the solar rays. On May 7, 1937 not just a model of glasses for aviators, called not coincidentally Aviator, was born, but also a myth, that of the quintessential sunglasses. The Ray-Ban. In 1938, Ray-Ban launched the Shooter model: the central "cigarette holder" ring, designed to allow the shooter to have his hands free, is the distinguishing feature."

"Then John came to my house one afternoon. I began by saying, “Right now, you are the biggest star in the world, and you worry you’re going to screw it up. You’re listening to this twerpy, inexperienced manager of yours, and it’s leading you to the wrong decisions. This is a critical time for you, and when you’ve got a great script and a great part, you don’t let anything put you off it.” I went on with various examples of how his management had been mishandling things since his spurt to superstardom."

"Of course, Charlie had loved the first movie, and about an hour after it opened, he already wanted a sequel: the story of what happened to Tony Manero once he crossed the river. Four years had passed since *Fever*, and still no one thought this was anything but a bad idea. Nevertheless, Charlie wouldn’t get off this dim sequel horse and I placated him by arranging a meeting with Travolta at the Hôtel Byblos in Saint-Tropez. Charlie romped around the room, trying to talk John into doing it. It was, of course, a stupid thing for John to agree to, but he was overwhelmed by Charlie, and he uttered an incautious yes. For no connected reason Charlie then met with Sylvester Stallone. He immediately called me and said, “I have a great coup! Stallone is going to direct the movie.”"

"I called Milken, who said, “John wants a billion seven fifty. But he thinks he could sell the Boston station to Hearst for six hundred million. So it’s a billion one for the other stations.” I called Murdoch and reported all that. Rupert wasn’t fazed and just asked how much the whole effort would cost. I called my friend Marty Pompadur, a very senior media executive who had been a key ABC executive and knew everything about broadcasting. An hour later Marty was in my office, and we began chewing over how to build a fourth network."

"As with John in Australia three years earlier, Craig’s hiring may have been a surprise to a few people who had thought Steve Ridgway’s successor (Steve had been Virgin Atlantic’s CEO for twelve years) was probably going to come from within the airline. Again, though, like in Australia, we opted to take someone from a big legacy carrier – it wasn’t the first time we went fishing at American, having hired David Cush from there to head up Virgin America some years earlier."

"John makes it part of his routine to do what the Australians call ‘going walkabout’ around the company. When he does this, one of many things that make the NBO different is John’s habit of not just saying ‘Hi, how are you?’ but instead taking the time to get into deep impromptu discussions with all level of employees and, importantly, acting on their feedback rather than telling them he’ll ‘consider it’ and moving on."

"Anyway when John raised the subject in front of all the airline heads I was probably expected to be the one to quickly put this Qantas interloper in his place and say something like, ‘Sorry, but that is one area where we cannot go.’ On the contrary, other than John, I think I was the only one in the room who thought it made sense and so said, ‘Screw it, if that’s what you think you need then let’s do it.’ The result was a very different-looking sideways rendition of the logo that, in all honesty, some love and some don’t, but the updated treatment freshened up the brand and got us lots of media and consumer attention in the process."

""You do what's right for your project and don't worry about the rest of the relationship," John said. "Each decision has to stand on its own.""

"*TCI didn’t believe in business class. Since this was its first venture outside the United States, it had no view on 12-hour flights. So I flew to New Zealand in an economy seat and arrived early after an uncomfortable flight and went straight to a breakfast with Alan Gibbs, Trevor Farmer and two of the American directors. After exchanging pleasantries someone said, ‘John, talk a bit about your background.’ Halfway through my story Alan cuts me off. ‘You bloody Americans had the chance to do everything perfectly after World War Two, but you didn’t have the guts to take on Russia.’ Then he launched into a tirade against America’s lack of courage. I was aghast. I mean, I was born in 1953. I fought back a little bit, as best I could when I could get a word in, which wasn’t easy. I think I said, ‘Well, I’ve just met the only guy in the globe who thinks Americans aren’t sufficiently tough.’ Afterwards I said to my colleagues, ‘Jeez, that didn’t go well’, but the Americans who knew him said, ‘Oh no, I think he likes you.’ Thereafter, when things were going OK, Trevor Farmer would be there, but if Gibbs turned up we knew we were in trouble.*[30](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477273-050103421-30)"

"In the event, as the television pictures around the world showed, when Branson reached the shore, the tide had dropped a little too low and he needed a lift from some bystanders to get the back wheels on to the ramp. It was only a problem because we’d been held up by two things. First, he and I had taken off in the Aquada when I took a message on the radio to tell Richard that some guy called John, evidently a journalist, wasn’t on the flotilla. ‘Oh, we can’t go without him,’ Branson said. So we stopped and floated around in the harbour for 20 minutes waiting for this guy to arrive from London. Then because it was the twentieth anniversary of Virgin Atlantic and Branson had taken possession of his first Boeing 777, he wanted a photo of the plane swooping above the car. We reached the precise spot using GPS coordinates, but there was no sign of the plane. It had been delayed by air traffic control. That left us waiting another 20 minutes or so for it to fly by."