Jimmy Wales

They end up doing so many different things that nobody's quite sure what the point of the company is.

And sometimes that works.

It takes a hell of a lot of effort to make something like that work.

And oftentimes what actually works is spin out the division that's successful but has nothing to do with anything else in the company because it's just distracting everybody.

But I think that that's one of the things, because once you have a clear purpose, then you start to have a metric by which you can make decisions.

You know, it's like, what should we do?

Actually, it's one of the things I think is very interesting in my personal experience for profit company boards versus nonprofit organization boards.

For profit company boards are much easier and much clearer in many cases, because usually in a for profit, you have strategic questions, all of that.

But there is something that you all share.

And there is an objective, which is we need to be profitable.

Like the company has to be sustainable.

You know, we want to be successful.

And that clarifies a lot of questions.

Whereas in a nonprofit, it's like, oh, well, we're trying to share free knowledge with the world.

But there's a lot of different ways to do that.

And it gets a little more complicated, even though I do think we've got a good purpose and all that.

It still is often quite complicated.

But every time you can come together on a simple purpose, then you begin to be able to make better decisions.

But also you begin to be trustworthy.

Like people know what you're going to do.