It's stunning to me what kind of an impact even one person can have if they have the right passion, perspective and are able to align the interest of a great team.
If you're doing something new you've got to have a vision. You've got to have a perspective. You've got to have some north star you're aiming for, and you just believe somehow you'll get there, which kind of gets to the passion point.
When I was trying to popularize the concept of the Internet - ten or 15 years ago - I came up with this concept of "the 5 Cs." Services needed to have content, context, community, commerce, and connectivity. After that, when I was trying to think of what the key management principles were to build into the culture, I started talking about the Ps. The P's were things like passion, perseverance, perspective and people. I think the people aspect is really the most important one.
I continue to have a special pride and passion for AOL, and I strongly believe that AOL - once the leading Internet company in the world - can return to its past greatness
I think the support of the other team at AOL and everybody's really shared passion and belief about this and - saying that some day everybody was going to be on line.
