In short, we needed to view technology as more of an opportunity than a threat, and we had to do so with commitment, enthusiasm, and a sense of urgency.

Peter saw no problem with a system in which he and the analysts who worked for him made so many of the company’s decisions. Meanwhile, businesses around us were adapting to a world that was changing at blinding speed. We needed to change, we needed to be more nimble, and we needed to do it soon.

I uttered the same sentence to them that I had repeated multiple times during my negotiations with Steve and John and Ed: “It doesn’t make any sense for us to buy you for what you are and then turn you into something else.

I went to our board’s compensation committee and explained the dilemma. When you innovate, everything needs to change, not just the way you make or deliver a product. Many of the practices and structures within the company need to adapt, too, including, in this case, how the board rewards our executives. I proposed a radical idea— essentially, that I would determine compensation, based on how much they contributed to this new strategy, even though, without easily measured financial results, this was going to be far more subjective than our typical compensation practices.

Value ability more than experience, and put people in roles that require more of them than they know they have in them.