Page 274 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

and effective corporate operators tackled a problem. I’d say that
50 per cent of the time I looked at situations completely differently
to them, approached the solutions in the opposite way and came
to different conclusions. Perhaps the most illuminating example
was a module we did on decision-making. They all – every single
one of them – looked to get consensus from their colleagues before
implementing a decision: as the boss of my own company I had
simply implemented whatever I thought was best for the business.
I listened to my advisers, of course, but ultimately I hadn’t felt it
mattered if everyone disagreed with my course of action.
I learned so much in those sixteen weeks. The course was
planned for people with an understanding of business, so when we
looked at the economy of China, for example, our case study
posed the question: if China was a company how would you assess
its balance sheet? As someone who had had his head stuck so far
inside his own businesses for so long, having my perspective
yanked towards global markets was a real eye-opener.
I had got used to dealing with pretty big numbers by this stage
in my life. But instead of dealing in hundreds of thousands and the
odd million, suddenly I was dealing with billions and trillions, and
by the end of the course I had an understanding of just what those
figures mean in real terms. Just as belonging to YPO and the
NSPCC board had introduced me to able and brilliant operators,
hanging out with the other students gave me insights into how big
companies behaved and how different their challenges were to
something the size of Alexander Mann. I was learning what makes
a company great, how tiny clauses in deals have huge pay-offs –
like Intel’s insistence that any computer manufacturer who used
their chips had to include their name in the advertising of their
products. I found out how you lead a really big company (it comes
down to having a clear vision and being able to communicate it to
people who execute it) and I was learning how to assess investment
opportunities in a global context: things like what political and tax

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