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5 Leadership Lessons from Interviews with Top CEOs
- 1. 1 5 LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM INTERVIEWS WITH TOP CEOS Spencer Rascoff, CEO, Zillow Group
- 2. 2 LESSON 1 Inexperience can be your biggest advantage, enabling you to see solutions that seem viable to you but not to others who know your space. @spencerrascoff
- 3. 3 Aaron Levie CEO, Box “Silicon Valley – and tech innovation in general – thrives on a set of people every couple years who know nothing about history coming in and saying, ‘What’s Microsoft? What’s Google? We are trying to solve a problem.’” @spencerrascoff
- 4. 4 LESSON 2 Mature companies drive innovation by focusing on people and giving them the best infrastructure to stay competitive. @spencerrascoff
- 5. 5 Christa Quarles CEO, OpenTable “OpenTable was on a monolithic code base up until 2012. Now, we can ship every day. If you start thinking about rapid, iterative, A/B testing culture, that was something that wasn’t even possible for us technically just a handful of years ago.” @spencerrascoff
- 6. 6 LESSON 3 Servant leadership drives productivity and innovation. Managers should focus on what they can do for their people; they shouldn’t spend time relaying orders. @spencerrascoff
- 7. 7 Joel Spolsky CEO, Stack Overflow “When you take away passing reports up and down the chain of command, you’ve eliminated the easiest stuff that managers used to do. What you’re left with are the hard things – dealing with the complex, human problems.” @spencerrascoff
- 8. 8 LESSON 4 If they’re just like you, hire someone else. Diverse opinions and an environment that encourages dissent give companies a competitive edge. @spencerrascoff
- 9. 9 Sallie Krawcheck CEO, Ellevest The power of diversity is diversity, not bringing in a whole bunch of diverse people and having them act in a certain way.” @spencerrascoff
- 10. 10 LESSON 5 Missions help companies stay small while getting big. Employees feel connected to the larger purpose and understand the role they play in its achievement. @spencerrascoff
- 11. 11 Scott Svenson CEO, MOD Pizza “Many of the brands in our space have interesting product and interesting stories, but not a lot of soul. When you walk into a MOD… it’s the feeling you get that’s most important.” @spencerrascoff
Editor's Notes
- I learn a lot about leadership by talking to other leaders. Here are a few lessons to share and my thoughts on how we as business leaders can apply lessons to grow and sustain our business – and in return, grow our region.
- I learn a lot about leadership by talking to other leaders. Here are a few lessons to share and my thoughts on how we as business leaders can apply lessons to grow and sustain our business – and in return, grow our region.
- Lesson 1 Inexperience can be your biggest advantage, enabling you to see solutions that seem viable to you but not to others who know your space. For Seattle businesses: Innovation can’t be discouraged by incumbents. Venture capital scene needs to be willing to bet on a new perspective. We also shouldn’t rely on the usual suspects (Microsoft, Amazon, etc.) to carry the agenda – all businesses at all levels should be part of the conversation. ZG example: Hack week – new ideas come from employees from all levels of the business (Tinna’s Chinese/Mandarin product)
- I learn a lot about leadership by talking to other leaders. Here are a few lessons to share and my thoughts on how we as business leaders can apply lessons to grow and sustain our business – and in return, grow our region.
- Lesson 2 Mature companies drive innovation by focusing on people and giving them the best infrastructure to stay competitive. For Seattle businesses: Understand what people need and invest in the resources to remain an innovator. For the city, implement programs that incentivize public transit and affordable housing. Research: Is your City Building Enough Housing?, It’s Time to Move Forward with ST3 ZG example: We’re constantly disrupting ourselves from within, whether that be transforming the way we collaborate and communicate with each other through things like Slack or pivoting our entire company to focus on game-changing technology (i.e. becoming mobile first in 2008).
- I learn a lot about leadership by talking to other leaders. Here are a few lessons to share and my thoughts on how we as business leaders can apply lessons to grow and sustain our business – and in return, grow our region.
- Lesson 3 Servant leadership drives productivity and innovation. Managers should focus on what they can do for their people; they shouldn’t spend time relaying orders. For Seattle businesses: Empowering teams is fundamental to effective leadership, especially with millennials. ZG example: Core values, reflect on RLC talking points. Recently rolled out manager training – Leadership Playbook – and one of the core tenets is about empowering your team by clearing roadblocks and enabling them to move fast and make decisions.
- I learn a lot about leadership by talking to other leaders. Here are a few lessons to share and my thoughts on how we as business leaders can apply lessons to grow and sustain our business – and in return, grow our region.
- Lesson 4 If they’re just like you, hire someone else. Diverse opinions and an environment that encourages dissent gives companies a competitive edge. For Seattle businesses: Top-down, authoritarian leadership is not the way forward. Encouraging different opinions and hiring different backgrounds is crucial to our region’s competitiveness. ZG example: Consensus-driven data meritocracy – even an intern can change the course of a CEO’s decision if they have the data and the argument to back it up. Launched diversity & inclusion initiatives.
- I learn a lot about leadership by talking to other leaders. Here are a few lessons to share and my thoughts on how we as business leaders can apply lessons to grow and sustain our business – and in return, grow our region.
- Lesson 5 Missions help companies stay small while getting big. Employees feel connected to the larger purpose and understand the role they play in its achievement. For Seattle businesses: We’re familiar with how effective missions can be – even through examples like the Seahawks and the power of the 12s. Are there more community-wide missions our businesses can establish, like Challenge Seattle? ZG example: We empower people with information that will help them make the best decision about their homes – and we have found that using our platform and engaging in public-private partnerships is an effective vehicle to “give back.”
- I learn a lot about leadership by talking to other leaders. Here are a few lessons to share and my thoughts on how we as business leaders can apply lessons to grow and sustain our business – and in return, grow our region.