“Take care of the people, the products, and the profits, in that order.”

Why it was said

Ben Horowitz uses this line as the title of a chapter in The Hard Thing About Hard Things, the one about building a company that people want to work for. It sets out the order in which a leader's attention has to go, and it draws on his years running a company through its hardest periods.

What it actually means

The order is the argument. Profits come from products, and products come from people, so a company that looks after profits first ends up damaging the things that produce them. Horowitz is not dismissing money; he spent years trying to keep a company alive. His point is that when times are hard, the tempting cuts tend to fall on training, culture and the people doing the work, and those cuts show up later as worse products and then worse numbers. Taking care of the people is not about being soft. It means building a place where good people can do good work, which is the precondition for everything else.

How to use it

1. 1When a decision is on the table, write its effect on people, product and profit in that order, and notice when you started with the third.
2. 2Protect one people investment, such as training or onboarding, from the next round of cuts, and say why.
3. 3In a hard quarter, ask what your best people need to keep doing their best work before you look at the budget lines.