Page 275 - James Caan - The Real Deal

27 · Harvard

arrangements make for a good operational environment. Unlike
the other students, I wasn’t applying what I was learning to my
own organisation: I was free to pick and choose modules that
interested me rather than those relevant to my career, because –
frankly – right then I didn’t have a career.
I’ve since recommended the course to several other people who
have sold the business they had founded. When you go through a
period of transition, one of the hardest things is to get your old life
out of your system. It’s a bit like coming out of a long-term
relationship: it’s easy to dwell on what might have been and
extremely hard to move on. Doing something so intense, so
engrossing and intellectually fulfilling allowed me to put Alexan-
der Mann behind me. It’s too easy in that situation to keep going
back and see how the team were getting on, but Harvard got me
squarely looking forward and not back. It moved me on and,
emotionally, that was invaluable. I still didn’t know what I would
do at the end of the course, but I sensed I was ready for anything.
I came to a couple of conclusions about business that shaped
what I thought I might do in the future. I realised that to build
bigger businesses takes time. I was impatient and not interested in
spending three or four or five years working on something I
couldn’t be sure would succeed. I wasn’t the kind of person who
stuck his toe in the water; I just dived in and saw how I got on. I
also realised I wasn’t interested in starting from scratch all over
again: been there, done that.
I was also aware that big corporations find it hard to make good
long-term decisions. They have to make quarterly reports to their
shareholders and some are guilty of making decisions that benefit
their shareholders and not their customers. I felt that limited what
could be achieved: oddly, the stock market impedes the growth it
demands that companies produce.
I had never been a man with a plan. I had always taken life a
week at a time and followed instincts rather than a roadmap. If

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