Mutual Mobile CEO John Arrow recently sat down with Fast Company to do a series of interviews for their 30 Second MBA collection. Watch the videos or read a transcript of the talks below.

What Do You Tell a Team that has Failed?

John Arrow: There’s a saying that we should celebrate failure, and we should celebrate failure, but we shouldn’t celebrate it for failure’s sake. We should celebrate failure because it allows us a critical point in time where we know that events did not occur as we would have liked. And it’s important to appreciate that, assign blame where blame is due, figure out why it happened, and after we take an unbiased look at it we can move on and get it right the next time.

What Quote, Lyric, or Poem Inspires You?

Interviewer: So, John, tell me about a song or a book or a lyric that really resonated with you.

John Arrow: One of my favorite quotes – this is probably one of the shortest quotes that anyone can call their favorite – is from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. The quote is “Check your premises.” And something so simple has a lot of importance for me and it has a lot importance at Mutual Mobile. It means to always make sure what you’re doing is actually what matters. It’s about focusing on results. When we’re working with multi-national companies and teams of dozens of people, if the action ever isn’t clear or you don’t feel right about what you’re doing, just repeat “check your premises” and the action will generally be clear.

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