Annotations (26)
“He said, 'Teddy, there's only one thing you can do. You need to recruit a board that becomes the greatest set of super salesmen in history, because you don't need our advice, you don't need our financial engineering, you don't need us to read balance sheets, you need us to sell airplanes.' And what he did is he went out and he put a list together and he brought it back to me, and we went through it.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 6
Strategy & Decision Making · Leadership & Management · Business & Entrepreneurship
DUR_ENDURING
Board as distribution channel
“Herb Allen II was my mentor, telling me what to do, what not to do, if I was going to do something incredibly stupid. He had the nicest way of telling me how stupid I was. We were on the phone ten times a day. He didn't push me away. He didn't think I was nuts. He thought it was a great idea that he and I do it together. Every other bank tried to push me out. And Herb said to me, 'Don't ask anybody for anything.' When I closed the deal with Matsushita, he said to me, 'What would you like?”— Michael Ovitz
p. 20
Business & Entrepreneurship · Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Trust through contingent payment
“Every Sunday for 50 years, I do the same exercise. Hell or high water, I've never not done it. I look at my calendar the week before. I go through every single meeting I had, every transaction, every human I met could be social. And I decide if they go on what's called the Sunday list. Which is on Sundays, since I don't do anything, I put names of people I want to get to know better, and then I parse through the week. The names from the week before that I want to re-engage with.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 30
Operations & Execution · Leadership & Management · Strategy & Decision Making
DUR_ENDURING
50 year Sunday review ritual
“We were lucky enough to stumble on a man named Glenn Lowry, who had absolutely no contemporary art background. He had a PhD in Islamic Art, knew nothing about contemporary art, but was smart, articulate, well-spoken, handled people brilliantly, and had this extraordinary burning desire to learn. And everyone that was debating it was saying, well, he doesn't know anything about art. Well, that's true, but neither did I when I started and you learn.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 3
Leadership & Management · Strategy & Decision Making · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Hire for learning rate over credentials
“I realized that what was going to happen is that these companies were going to need sponsors, they were going to need money. They were dying for cash flow. I could tell because we were having trouble collecting. And I said, wouldn't it be great if CAA not only had all the clients, but we had all the owners. We were the ones that they had to talk to.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 18
Strategy & Decision Making · Business & Entrepreneurship
DUR_ENDURING
Control clients AND owners
“We met monthly, not quarterly. And the attendance at the meetings was 100% every time because everyone had assignments. We had so much fun at the board meetings and board dinners that after we sold the company seven years later, we all continued the board meeting. And we used to stand up at the beginning of each meeting and announce what we'd sold. At the board meetings. Teddy had approved the minutes, 100% attendance. Board meetings were always like 5 o'clock.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 7
Operations & Execution · Leadership & Management
DUR_ENDURING
Monthly meetings, 100% attendance, public reporting
“That benchmarking exercise applies not just to artists, but to everything in life. All the people you mentioned, I identified early as people I wanted to be involved with. When I met Alex Karp 20 years ago, who Peter Thiel introduced me to, he wasn't the Alex Karp he is today. He was highly profiled, incredibly well-spoken, and dogmatically passionate about his point of view. Wasn't that guy.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 5
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior · Strategy & Decision Making
DUR_ENDURING
See talent before they prove themselves
“He did something that I did at CAA, which was I thought really smart to do. He didn't get the idea from me. One of his partners, Stefan Cohen, brilliant young engineer, would take one meeting every 10 minutes with an engineer and they were lined up for 10 minutes with Stefan and he'd interview 50 engineers and take one. If they don't get this question in 10 seconds, then it's over, it's over.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 9
Operations & Execution · Leadership & Management
DUR_ENDURING
50 interviews, 10 minutes each, take 1
“All these people that I've been fortunate enough to come in contact with all have very similar traits. They're interesting, they're aggressive to certain degrees in their own way. Some blatantly, some not so. They're wicked intelligent, they are perceptive, and they all have this extraordinary burning desire to learn. They want to learn something every minute of the day, and they don't want to waste time. Time is a valuable commodity.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 6
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
5 traits all great talents share
“We never had a written document. In 25 years at CAA, I didn't have written documents with employees or clients. We never lost a client the whole time I was there. Sometimes we had what's called Guild authorization papers. But they didn't mean anything because under the Screen Actors Guild within, if a client didn't work for 91 days, they had the right to fire you. Why have a contract? Because it just gives them something to look forward to. I had people stay with us 25, 30 years.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 21
Business & Entrepreneurship · Leadership & Management
DUR_ENDURING
25 years, no written contracts, zero client loss
“Secondly, he populated the board with the most diverse, amazing group of men and women. But they had one common denominator. They were all art collectors of something. There's a huge difference between an institution with trustees that are financially responsible or socially responsible, but don't have the passion to collect something.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 4
Leadership & Management · Strategy & Decision Making
DUR_ENDURING
Trustees must have skin in game
“My checklist is a series of things that fit into my cognitive frame of reference that is weighted, predicated on previous experiences. How the person behaves, what their interests are, what their social capacity is. It doesn't have to be great in the traditional way, what their quest for knowledge is. Are they motivated? Do they want to work hard? Do they enjoy working? Why are they working? What's the goal? And what's their raw processing power?”— Michael Ovitz
p. 10
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Complete talent evaluation rubric
“All these people are all about momentum. In other words, they remind me of this toy I bought my grandson that's a remote control truck that when it hits a wall, it bounces off and turns in the other direction. That's kind of these people. There's no stopping them. And there's no idea that isn't worth considering.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 16
Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management
DUR_ENDURING
Bounce off walls, keep moving
“Loss of confidence, fear of failure. Fear of failure is the greatest problem outside the United States. I was in London a couple months ago in a business meeting and one of them looked at me and said, 'How do we do this? You've been up, down, and sideways, but you never stop. You don't take no for an answer. And you just keep building. But you know how to build off success and off failure.' He said, 'If we fail in Europe, it's over.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 17
Psychology & Behavior · Culture & Society · Business & Entrepreneurship
DUR_CONTEXTUAL
US treats failure as badge of honor
“When I started as an agent, I was 21 years old, and I knew right off the bat that time was my enemy, even at that age. Because if I went and met with someone to judge if I could do something for them, if I made a mistake, that mistake was irreparable and a time sink that can't be recovered. And it's not a hiatus, it's a loss. There's a big difference. It's a loss. You could be doing something else with that time.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 6
Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution
DUR_ENDURING
Wrong meetings are permanent losses
“Well, first of all, you have to see if there's a visceral connection. That's not anything that's on a list. You know, do you feel some rapport with the person? That's a given and a critical. The list is amorphous. I learned a long time ago from a client and a good friend, Marty Scorsese, who's a genius, and he said, when you're looking at actors, what are you looking at? He said, 'Their eyes.' And it spoke volumes to me. I also have a frame of reference because I've met so many people.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 8
Psychology & Behavior · Leadership & Management
DUR_ENDURING
Scorsese: look at their eyes
“So I started to make a set of parameters when I met people about why I want to continue the dialogue. And I have kind of like a pilot's checklist in my head of things that are important to me. And it doesn't really matter what the vocation of the person is.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 6
Strategy & Decision Making · Operations & Execution
DUR_ENDURING
Pilot checklist for people
“We needed someone that could make a dynamic turn in the museum. Because the one thing about an art museum is at the end of the day, it's entertainment for different strata of social culture. And MoMA basically was a commercial show place for people that were tourists to come and look. We needed to move to the next level.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 2
Leadership & Management · Strategy & Decision Making
DUR_ENDURING
Tourist trap to cultural force
“I learned on the job every day. I watched Steve Schwarzman, I watched Pete Peterson. I used to go to lunch with Roger Altman and pick his brain. I am an insatiable sponge. If I can get 30 minutes with Marc Andreessen or a meal with Peter Thiel just to listen to me, that's a quadruple net positive. Because I learned so much.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 20
Leadership & Management · Psychology & Behavior
DUR_ENDURING
Insatiable sponge for knowledge
“For me, time's the foundation of everything, then relationship, because I can't get the relationship without the time. If I make a mistake, when I met you, I didn't know if I wanted to do your podcast. For me, time's my enemy. And it's been that way since I was a kid. It's got nothing to do with my age chronologically. I remember being in high school and I was running for student body president of a 4,000 kid high school.”— Michael Ovitz
p. 11
Operations & Execution · Philosophy & Reasoning
DUR_ENDURING
Time enemy since high school
Frameworks (4)
The Ovitz Pilot's Checklist
A systematic approach to evaluating exceptional talent across any domain
Ovitz developed a repeatable framework for identifying talent early, before conventional markers of success appear. The framework prioritizes learning capacity over credentials, raw intelligence over experience, and passion over polish. Applied consistently to hiring Glenn Lowry for MoMA, spotting Alex Karp for Palantir, and recruiting Marc Andreessen to his first board.
Components
- Visceral Connection Test
- Learning Appetite Assessment
- Raw Processing Power Evaluation
- Time Respect Indicator
- Motivated Aggression Check
Prerequisites
- Large reference class from meeting many people
- Self-awareness about your own visceral reactions
- Willingness to prioritize unconventional signals
Success Indicators
- Identifying talent before conventional markers appear
- Low regret rate on people hired using this framework
- Ability to articulate why someone was hired beyond credentials
Failure Modes
- Overriding visceral discomfort because credentials are impressive
- Mistaking confidence for learning appetite
- Failing to build large enough reference class to calibrate judgment
The Super-Salesman Board
Designing boards for execution rather than governance
When Ted Forstmann recruited Ovitz to help save Gulfstream, Ovitz recognized the company's primary constraint was not strategy or operations but sales. He advised recruiting a board designed specifically as a sales force: each member had a distinct network and assignment, met monthly (not quarterly), and publicly reported sales at every meeting. The system worked: attendance was 100%, board members competed to sell, and the company went from bankruptcy to successful exit.
Components
- Identify the Constraint
- Map Networks to Targets
- Create Specific Assignments
- Increase Meeting Frequency
Prerequisites
- Clear understanding of company's primary constraint
- Ability to articulate specific value proposition for board members
- CEO willing to run monthly meetings
Success Indicators
- 100% board meeting attendance
- Board members proactively reporting sales wins
- Board continuing to meet after exit
Failure Modes
- Recruiting prestigious names without specific networks
- Failing to create genuine assignments
- Allowing meetings to devolve into generic oversight
Trust Through Contingency
Negotiating without asking for anything upfront
Ovitz's approach to major deals with Japanese companies was counterintuitive: never ask for payment terms upfront. Instead, propose full contingency: if the deal succeeds, the client pays generously; if it fails, only expenses are covered. This created unprecedented trust and alignment, particularly effective in cultures where trust-building is paramount. Used successfully in Matsushita, Sony, and other multi-hundred-million-dollar deals.
Components
- Never Negotiate Fees Upfront
- Define Clear Success Criteria
- Propose Generous Success Payment
Prerequisites
- Confidence in ability to deliver
- Financial capacity to cover expenses if deal fails
- Clear success criteria that both parties understand
Success Indicators
- Client demonstrates visible trust (bowing deeply, emotional response)
- Absence of fee negotiation throughout engagement
- Generous payment upon success
Failure Modes
- Vague success criteria leading to disputes
- Client interprets no ask as lack of confidence
- Inability to sustain financially if deal fails
The Sunday List System
Weekly relationship and time management ritual
For 50 years, Ovitz has performed the same Sunday ritual: review every meeting from the prior week, evaluate every person met, and decide who goes on the list for follow-up. Categories include: wildly intelligent, doing interesting things outside my expertise, made money with, lost money with, and bored me to death. The system ensures systematic relationship cultivation and ruthless time management.
Components
- Weekly Calendar Review
- Categorical Evaluation
- Follow-Up List Creation
- Parse Forward
Prerequisites
- Digital or paper calendar tracking all meetings
- Quiet time on Sundays
- Willingness to be honest about relationship value
Success Indicators
- Never wondering who you should follow up with
- Systematic cultivation of high-value relationships
- Elimination of time wasters from calendar over time
Failure Modes
- Skipping weeks and losing continuity
- Being too nice in evaluations
- Creating the list but not scheduling follow-up actions
Mental Models (6)
Time as Foundational Resource
TimeOf all resources, time is the most fundamental because it enables everything els
In Practice: Ovitz's philosophy on time
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Hire for Learning Rate Over Credentials
Decision MakingWhen evaluating talent, prioritize capacity to learn over existing knowledge or credentials. Someone with a PhD in an unrelated field who demonstrates extraordinary learning appetite is often superior to someone with perfect credentials but fixed knowledge.
In Practice: Glenn Lowry hiring decision at MoMA
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Skin in the Game
EconomicsTrustees, board members, or advisors should have personal stake in the outcomes they influence. At MoMA, all trustees were required to be art collectors, ensuring they had genuine passion and understanding, not just social or financial motivation.
In Practice: Board composition principles at MoMA
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Opportunity Cost of Time
EconomicsEvery meeting or commitment has not just a direct cost but an opportunity cost of what else could be done with that time. A wrong meeting is not just wasted time but a permanent loss of what could have been gained with a right meeting. This compounds over years.
In Practice: Ovitz's philosophy on time management
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Control Both Sides of the Market
Strategic ThinkingMaximum leverage comes from controlling both supply and demand in a market. CAA's pivot to investmen
In Practice: CAA's strategic evolution into investment banking
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Momentum as Competitive Advantage
Systems ThinkingInstitutions and individuals that maintain momentum, even when redirected by obstacles, compound adv
In Practice: What all great executives understand
Demonstrated by Leg-jdr-001
Connective Tissue (2)
First person out of the foxhole
Ovitz describes effective leadership as always being the first person out of the foxhole, a military metaphor for leading by example. The leader must be willing to do anything asked of subordinates and must physically demonstrate that willingness, not just verbally command it. This creates followership through demonstrated courage and shared risk.
Describing Glenn Lowry's leadership at MoMA
Remote control truck that bounces off walls and turns in another direction
Ovitz uses a child's toy as a metaphor for exceptional entrepreneurs: a remote control truck that, when hitting a wall, automatically bounces off and redirects to a new path. This captures the resilience and momentum maintenance that defines great operators. They never stop moving; obstacles cause redirection, not cessation.
Describing what all great executives have in common
Key Figures (6)
Glenn Lowry
5 mentionsDirector of Museum of Modern Art
Alex Karp
4 mentionsCEO of Palantir
Peter Thiel
3 mentionsCo-founder of PayPal and Palantir; Investor
Ted Forstmann
3 mentionsPrivate Equity Investor; Founder of Forstmann Little
Colin Powell
3 mentionsU.S. Secretary of State; Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff
David Rockefeller
2 mentionsBanker, Philanthropist, MoMA Trustee
Invited young Ovitz to join MoMA board
- Recruited Ovitz to MoMA board at very young age to diversify perspective