Bing Gordon (@bingfish) talks about what it takes to be a great CEO. Some great thoughts in this video, my notes below.
- Have one slide or poster that encompasses the whole company’s strategy.
- Build a company that is missionary, not mercenary — build a cohesive lasting organization — sell the vision.
- Give up the idea of CEO = “Command and Control” — CEO’s job is to define objectives and be around to help. The objectives is the boss (not you).
- Install “OKRs”
- Intel uses OKRs and their goal is to achieve 70% success — because if it is above 70% then you’re not pushing hard enough.
- Know what “killing it” is
- Don’t measure people by outcomes. Look at what people are inputting — thought process, how it was done, what was done, was it done well? — vs whether we increased revenue
- Set an aggressive pace as CEO
- Take a close look at how you are spending your time and how they stack up against your OKRs
- Abolish 1 on 1s — people just use that to whine — do it with a Group
- Have a great executive assistant
- Allow one mistake per 90 days
- Allow one big mistake per year
- “Great people want a lot demanded of them. ” - David Ogilvie -> Demand a lot
- Most rookies build board of directors and want the board of directors to be the “grownups.” — Change that.
- Board of Director meetings should be something you look forward to, they should be inspiring.
- Do whatever you can to get rid of shitty Board members.
- If you can’t, then create a shadow Advisory Board with people you actually like
- Build your board so you retain governance vs. maximizing valuation
- Only pick people to be in your board that you’d pick to have dinner with (because you are)
- Hire a great HR person early — for recruiting and for setting the culture
- Have 3 direct reports that dominate their jobs and whose judgement you trust totally
- Onboarding is curicial for new employees.
- MAKE SURE BY FRIDAY, THEY KNOW WHAT IT MEANS TO BE “KILLING IT” IN THEIR JOBS
- Rule of 7/10 - How productive are you? — Define what 10 is = Killing It. 1 = Time standing still. 7 = You’ve got a little bit of spare capacity — if you get attacked, you can attack back.
- After 90 days, decide whether they are a fit or not and go through a real crisp process.
- Fire anyone that is not “over achieving”
- Your job as a CEO is to give everyone confidence that “things are going to be OK”
- Focus on culture
- Post your values on the wall, make sure everyone has buy in
- Merit not politics
- “Do what I do, not what I say”
- Have Product P+Ls and share the data with employees
- Any company that isn’t doing a 100 A+B tests per week is probably failing
- The most valuable other job is “Chief Product Officer”
- Engagement/Gamification
- If you can feel the users feel like heroes => +25% engagement/monetization
- People spend 2x hours/week to get badges
- If you get people to believe in a virtual asset they learn, people can be retained for 3x longer.
- e.g. career score, amex member since 1979
- Key learnings from social
- Understand how the newsfeed works
- Understand new communication channels (e.g. texting)
- Gifting, not competition - focus on sharing and helping each other get better
- “Harvest” mechanic — get people to invest now and then get them to come back at a particular time to reap the rewards — ticking timebomb
- Virality and incentive - take what used to word of mouth -> turn it into viral engineering rooted from product design
- Proven product leader metrics
- Current quarter — what are the key metrics?
- Next quarter — make a commitment for the growth forecast for the end of the period
- IP value — your job is to make this become more valuable
- Technology/innovation — make sure your engineers have swagger + patents/algorithms
- Operations — build a coherent team that has been through wars together
