LinkedIn CEO Shares Advice On Leadership, Hiring And Firing

Jeff great to see you again great to see you love to start with a big step back question over the course of your life would have been the most important leadership lessons you've learned I think one of them the most important lessons I've learned certainly since becoming CEO to use a sports analogy is to not leave the pitcher in the game for too long in baseball oftentimes you'll see a pitcher come out strong and their arm begins to tire as the game progresses the manager comes out of the dugout asks the pitcher especially top pitchers star pitchers how they're doing and inevitably the pitcher will respond I'm doing fine go take a seat a lot of times you'll see the manager go back to the dugout and then the pitcher gives up a home run within the next few batters and the team will lose and it's really not the pitchers role to be dictating what the manager does it's up to the manager to make that decision and in roughly 20 years of managing people I've never had anyone come to me and raise their hand and say they can't do their job not once and oftentimes when you're in a situation like that when you're asking yourself is this person up to the task you already know the answer you don't ask that question of superstars the real key in that situation is not necessarily determining whether or not the person is capable of doing the job in that moment because you wouldn't be asking the question if they were it's what you're gonna do about it for far too many managers and executives and I'm certainly among those you just look the other way you rationalize it you're fearful of the uncertainty of change of demoralizing the team of how quickly you're going to be able to recruit a replacement a whole litany of things and concerns will sometimes not lead to the right outcome and what I've learned over time is that in situations like that you should sit down with the person and say you know we have an issue there's a gap between where the bar is set for this role and your performance I'm rooting for you you're you know I'm the reason you're in this role and I'm gonna work with you to do everything within my power to get you up to the bar if not over it mm-hmm and here's the timetable and I'm gonna be completely open with you throughout on the progress that we're making and to the extent we're not able to get up to that bar let's think about a different roll for you either within the organization or potentially outside of the organization so that's arguably the most valuable lesson I've learned I made that mistake a few times and it can be a painful lesson how long is the timetable typically that you give them to get where they need to be there's no cookie cutter approach for this it depends on the person depends on the gap depends on the role depends on the timing you've talked a lot about compassionate leadership how do you square that with the fact that sometimes people have to move on so it's one of the two most frequently asked questions I get on the concept of managing compassionately one is how would you ever let anyone go if you're compassionate and the other I'll get back to in just a second it turns out in the case of transitioning somebody out or firing somebody one of the least compassionate things you can do is let that person stay in a role where their way over their head and a lot of people have been in situations where you work with a colleague who is not able to get the job done and that person may have previously been self confident and assertive and had a lot to contribute at meetings and to the team and over time they just become a shadow of their former selves you can see in their body language and the way they show up at a table you don't hear from them as often and they're just not the same and it's not good for their team it's certainly not good for them and they bring that energy home with them so it has pretty significant implications and that's why I think it's so important to do the right thing and in that case put yourself in other person's shoes and do what you can to alleviate that suffering to help them achieve a better objective so it may turn out at times that letting somebody go is the most compassionate thing you can do and I've heard in a number of cases people after the fact maybe while it's happening they don't feel like this but after the fact they'll come back and say it was one of the best things that happened there what was the second most often question you get people will say so with regard to this compassion thing I find that it's really easy when I like the person but I'm struggling when I don't necessarily connect with the other person you know compassion is not conditional it's actually most warranted it's it's most valuable in situations where you don't have a natural connection with the other person how have you scaled yourself as a leader you talked about the bar being raised you had to keep scaling yourself to grow into the jobs just what was your approach to that so a few different things some a little bit more mundane but absolutely essential would be the power of routine it was certainly something I didn't appreciate when I was younger and as I took on more and more responsibilities I recognized that when I had a clear routine when I knew what to expect for the most part throughout my day it became easier to navigate what became greater and greater responsibilities so you know from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed having a sense of what I'm trying to accomplish that day both at home and in the office one of the things that I found over time that became part of the routine was scheduling buffer time throughout my day at this point it's roughly 90 minutes a day that could be 3 30 minute blocks an hour and 30 minutes later and it's just time to catch my breath to synthesize some of the information that's coming at me connect dots take that unscheduled meeting with someone who needs some coaching just catch up on email it could be a whole host of things but that's made an enormous difference as well some other things that I think are a little bit more obvious but sometimes though they're obvious they're not always easy to do one is transitioning from focusing on tactical execution to more proactive strategic thinking as you take on more responsibilities within the organization as the organization continues to grow I think that's a fundamental transition that startup founders that early term executives need to make it's very different when you're at a smaller company that's just starting out and everyone needs to chip in roll up their sleeves and get it done over time if you're not thinking about the future if you're not thinking about how to navigate a constantly shifting landscape you're going to end up back on your heels and reacting to your environment rather than playing your own game another continuum that I think is really important to navigate and transition is this idea of problem-solving for the people that work for you and your team and coaching and again when you're a startup when you're a smaller organization you just got to get it done but as you continue to scale it's absolutely imperative that your key leaders can start doing those things for themselves and even more importantly that they're capable of coaching the people on their teams and that's how you truly scale an organization talked about the importance of routine what are the key pillars of your morning routine and your evening routine key pillars of the morning routine well let's start overnight which is getting a good night's sleep when you're growing up your parents are constantly saying get a good night's sleep eat properly some might tell you to work out and it's spot on I certainly didn't appreciate that when I was younger in business but with each passing day it becomes more and more important so starting with getting a good night's sleep when I wake up several times throughout the week I'll work out I'm gonna clear out some of the email I received overnight I started a meditation practice several years ago try to do that on a daily basis help get the kids ready for school and then you know heading to work and in terms of the evening practice it's pretty straightforward it's get home in time for dinner put the kids to bed and then spend some time with my wife how do you handle the crush of emails everybody gets so many emails one lesson I learned several years ago even before joining LinkedIn it may sound somewhat overly simplistic but it's highly effective if you want to reduce the crush of email in your inbox send less email and it was a lesson I learned while at Yahoo I worked with a number of people who were very intense users of email they end up ended up leaving the company not an immediate succession but close enough where I could he that it was having an impact on my inbox and what essentially I came to learn was because they sent email out quite a bit and I responded quite a bit that would generate more emails and round and round it would go and when they left and I was sending out less email as a result I was receiving a lot less email and it kind of makes sense if you think about it there's some other tips too oftentimes we have a tendency all of us to use two synonymously with CC and everyone on the two line thinks they should be in a position to respond and every time someone responds someone else feels the need to respond it's also easy to overlook the importance of clarity and brevity and emails and the longer and more complex and email the more questions get raised and people are looking for follow-up answers and you have to send more emails and then more responses come back and so forth and so on so I think with a few areas of increased focus like that you can definitely reduce the load so do you pick up the phone instead I use the phone I use the phone in particular for people that are working outside of our Silicon Valley offices oftentimes particularly in a volatile situation people will send email they're not always becoming a spectator to their own thoughts if when they're authoring the email and they'll send something out that may trigger someone on the receiving end and you get a lot of vitriol going back and forth and sometimes it's best to just say let's take this offline get together and be able to provide additional context as to why people are upset or why there's friction and you can resolve things much faster that way what is it about email things get lost in translation people don't get tone I think it's exactly that when you say people don't get tone the vast vast majority of human communication certainly effective human communication is subtextual it's not necessarily the words it's our body language and our voice inflection and the email outside of emoticons doesn't do a very good job of capturing that what's the best mentoring advice you've heard over your career mmm I've been very fortunate to have some wonderful mentors know that there's a singular piece of advice that I would cite but there's certainly multiple instances of advice I've been given that has been invaluable to me a guy named Fred Kaufman a wonderful adviser and author he used to do leadership consulting he at one point was working at LinkedIn Fred once taught me that wisdom without compassion is ruthlessness and compassion without wisdom is folly and that was pretty profound and had a great deal of influence on me in terms of my own personal vision statement which subsequent a conversation with Fred where he mentioned that as a response to my initial thinking about what I ultimately wanted to accomplish I ended up revising a personal vision statement to be to help expand the world's collective wisdom and compassion which still serves as a TrueNorth for me today another mentor amazing guy named ray chambers taught me his five keys to happiness to live in the moment to be a spectator to your own thoughts especially when you become emotional the fact that it's better to be loving than to be right to be grateful for at least one thing every day and to be of service to others and help others every chance you get what are you trying to get better at as a leader what do you want to be better two years from now than I I wouldn't even know where to end I mean it's really everything there's there's nothing I can't improve on the things that would come to mind immediately starting with managing compassionately you know I was talked about the fact I aspire to manage compassionately and aspire is such important for it because it's really difficult it's really difficult to be a spectator to your own thoughts especially when you become emotional to get outside of your own head we're all egocentric by nature we all see the world through our own lens and our own experiences our own perspectives especially when we get triggered by our environment or conversation we're having it's challenging to step outside of yourself recognize what it is that you're responding to and even more importantly put yourself in the shoes of the other person understand what they're going through and do whatever you can to forge a stronger connection and help that person to achieve whatever it is that they're they're hoping to accomplish that can be really difficult so try to get better at that everyday try to become more mindful try to become more patient but it's an optimal level of patience there's an efficient frontier there you can be too patient certainly if you're operating with in Silicon Valley in the tech industry you don't want to be too patient because the industry and innovation and advances in technology are moving so quickly but at the same time you can't be too impatient you have to allow for things to take their natural course you have to allow for iteration and for some failure so there's an optimal level of patience and could always use more of that as well let's talk about hiring if you were looking at a couple of candidates to be a direct report to you and they're very similar on paper but there's a couple of 5% difference makers what are those most important X factors to you that's going to determine whether somebody gets the job connection there are certain people I've had the privilege to not only meet but then ultimately work with who within a few minutes of our interview I felt like I had known them for years and not only known them I felt like I had worked with them they felt very familiar in certain ways I think we shared a value system and you would come to learn that over time that you shared a sense of values a sense of purpose a sense of humor all of these things that I think helped people forge stronger connections which can be incredibly valuable when you're working at a company together and trying to traverse the ups and the downs so that would be the the most important intangible there's some other qualities I look for as well they're a little bit easier to identify looking for people not only people with fierce intelligence and and very bright but very steep learning curves so folks that are going to be comfortable going in a situation where they may not be expert they may not have the rep experience but they're capable of learning really really fast and they not only are capable of learning they really enjoy the process of learning which makes it that much easier we've been talking about the importance of at least for me managing compassionately and very interested in in people that not only appreciate what it means to be compassionate but really aspire to not much compassionately and have that experience look for people who are passionate about the work that they do I think that can make all the difference in the world regardless of how skilled they are if they lack passion it's not necessarily going to be an optimal situation and look for people with a shared sense of humor you know the work is intense it's hard at times and I find it a lot easier to work with people who don't take themselves too seriously and who can share some laughs along the way I've heard from a lot of CEOs at an early lesson for them is that when they were hiring they did look for that connection but as a result of that they didn't hire a diverse staff they were essentially hiring mini-me versions of themselves so how do you square that I totally get your point you want that connection but you want diversity of thought and perspectives so yeah how do you think like that I don't think they're mutually exclusive in any way I think as a matter of fact some of the things that can forge that connection is a strong ability to learn from one another those are some of the my not only favorite people to work with but certainly some of the most valuable people I've worked with people who come from wildly different backgrounds than myself in terms of their upbringing in terms of their work experience in terms of their domain expertise in terms of their education those are the the people that I feel can complement me the strongest and I think having awareness of your strengths your weaknesses and being able to surround yourself people that can fill in those gaps that's an enormous ly important and valuable part of building a world-class team so I do think it's important though especially when you have differences of opinion and perspective and experiences around the table which again is essential that it's based on a similar foundation and for that foundation is our culture the collective personality of our organization which is comprised of the personalities of the individuals and our values which are the first principles upon which we make day-to-day decisions and that's where I believe you need alignment but you want people exactly to your point with diverse perspectives and diverse backgrounds and diverse skill sets hypothetical if you were interviewing somebody for a job you could only ask them one question and decide based on their answer whether to hire them what would be your question what's your ultimate dream job and it's not just changing the world that's not entirely helpful in that context it's literally if you could write down your perfect job the company the role you name it your day-to-day job description what does something like that look like and the reason I find it so valuable is because it helps me evaluate fit and it also helps me get a sense of who you are by virtue of the specificity of that answer and it depends on where you are in your career path when I'm talking to people who've just graduated school and thinking about what they want to do I don't expect there to be a lot of specificity but the longer you've been in the workforce I think it's really helpful to know what it is you ultimately won because I think once you know what it is you ultimately want you are that much more capable of manifesting it so that's one - it helps to evaluate fit and often times and you see this in M&A by the way as well it's recruiting and they have a lot of similarities in this respect oftentimes when you're recruiting both the candidate and the company or the hiring manager over time become increasingly fixated with closing the deal with getting the offer or getting the candidate to accept the offer all too often you can overlook the fact that that's just the beginning it's like a couple getting together and putting all of their energy into their wedding day without thinking about what's gonna make for a successful long lasting marriage and having an understanding of what that person ultimately wants to accomplish and why and then understanding the nature of the fit with regard to the role that they're interviewing for I think can be can be really valuable I imagine some people though say my dream job is the job I'm applying for SVP of customer engagement it's happened I can count on one hand how many times a candidate has said exactly the job they're interviewing for is exactly their dream job I think people recognize the importance of authenticity and hopefully can recognize when the person the opposite end of the desk or table gets a sense that it's inauthentic so thankfully haven't had that problem where they're they're telling me or they're telling my colleagues what we want to hear because that authenticity becomes such an important part of the mix but you would be surprised how seldom it happens which is which is good you want honesty in that situation you you want people to be upfront and I mentioned earlier the similarities sometimes between recruiting and M&A you want that same process when you're sitting down you're thinking about whether or not to acquire a company and if you're being acquired same thing you want to be as honest upfront and as early as possible in that process in terms of what you're trying to accomplish your sense of purpose all the things that matter so deeply your culture your values identify the gaps and start thinking about are those gaps are mountable do you want to work towards better alignment can those gaps coexist so it's important to have those honest discussions and if a candidate is telling you what you want to hear that's gonna be a problem how many have said to you I want your job Jeff also a handful and I love that response I love it you know somebody that has that sense of what they want to do longer term that's the kind of person that you want to take the time to coach and potentially mentor especially when they have the raw materials and the aptitude to do something like that whether it's in my exact seat or it's becoming a founder of a start-up or a CEO further down the road or a senior executive it's always wonderful to hear if it's for the right reasons if people are doing it because they like the idea of you know the title and what comes with that that's one thing to the extent they just dream of being in a leadership position they've looked forward to the day when they can help steer a company when they can help codify and put a stake in the ground on vision on mission on culture and values and strategy and help bring people along and build incredible teams and deliver products that help change the lives of the the people that those products ultimately serve that's a that's exciting to hear an answer like that let's talk about culture what I find fascinating about every discussion about culture is that there are essentially no wrong answers but the better question is what are the things that matter most in terms of culture attracting talent holding on to talent actually building a place where people want to go to work every day what is at the top of that hierarchy for you what are the most important drivers of effective cultures well I think it starts with the definition of culture and I think you know a number of organizations may define culture differently they sometimes use culture and values synonymously culture at LinkedIn is the collective personality of our organization it's not only who we are but who we aspire to be and the aspirational component is absolutely critical because without reinforcing the fact that it is aspirational you oftentimes will see executives getting up on stage talking about the cultural dimensions of the company and people in the audience thinking to themselves what company is that person describing because that's not necessarily us and when you add that aspirational component you're saying this is where we're gonna set the bar and we may not always be walking the walk on this but that's what we aspire to do that's who we aspire to become over time so I think that's really important values are the first principles upon which we make day-to-day decisions and values are nested underneath the culture so I think it starts there in terms of the practical applications of culture and values I think it starts with recruiting and I believe oftentimes hyper growth companies particularly startups will potentially go off the rails because they begin to compromise their hiring bar with regard to culture and values they're growing so quickly they have a real need to put butts in seats and they become fearful of what happens if they're not hiring fast enough and they're not necessarily meeting people who would be a strong cultural fit or who share the same values and when they do compromise there it can be very challenging especially when you're starting to grow and expand globally and you're starting to open up offices in other cities because you're hiring people into those offices for leadership roles who are going to bring their own baggage they're gonna bring their own value system and their own sense of culture and what they've learned in Prior roles and they're going to establish that very naturally if it's not already established or if they don't feel a fit and that can take a company off the path so I think it certainly starts with hiring and maintaining that bar and not compromising and then once the person is hired that's when the hard work begins and it starts with onboarding so on day one this is not only what we're trying to accomplish as a company this is how we're trying to accomplish it I think far too often organizations become so consumed with the what that they overlooked the how and there are significant consequences and unintended consequences to that over time so once you're through the onboarding process it's about baking in your culture your values and key things that you want people to learn and create paths for growth through learning and development and so creating the right programs for the right segments of your your team whether that's an individual contributor someone that's just starting out in the workforce a new manager someone that aspires to be a leader or an executive whether those are specific hard skills softer skills customizing those programs so that you can help people to really transform the trajectory of their career is something that's embedded in our culture transformation is the first pillar we have five dimensions of our culture transformation of self company and world is arguably the most important and then lastly we evaluate performance based on culture and values and again it's not just about the results that you're getting we is critical and results is one of those five dimensions of our culture it's about how you get those results and it's important that when you have bad actors within the organization who may be creating a lot of value that you either work with them to help them understand where there are gaps with regard to how you expect things to be done or you make hard decisions you know those can be very difficult situations because when you leave people in roles who are not walking the walk but are creating value it sends signal to the rest of the organization that maybe the culture and the values don't matter as much why do people leave jobs I think there's a number of reasons one of the most important reasons is they're not necessarily leaving the job they're leaving their manager and they didn't feel that sense of connection we were talking about earlier they don't feel like their manager has their back they don't feel like their manager is taking the time to invest in them in their career path asking them what it is they ultimately want to accomplish providing them the coaching they need to be on that path providing them feedback you know I think having a manager that you know cares about you and is doing everything within their power to set you up to be successful is what everyone's looking for to some extent I also think beyond your immediate manager people will leave a team or leave a company when they don't feel like they have someone who they would consider a friend and often times and it's unfortunate you'll see someone leave an organization who became really close to someone else within the organization and that other person will follow suit because they don't feel the same sense of belonging that sense of belonging by the way transcends friendship that sense of belonging is absolutely critical to creating an environment where employees can do their best work feel inspired feel engaged and has become so important to us at LinkedIn that when we talk about the importance of diversity and inclusion we've actually added that third dimension we call it dibs diversity inclusion and belonging a lot of people are in jobs when we're they're doing kind of their own Hamlet routine like should I stay should I go you know a lot of people aren't certain but what what is your kind of general advice to people you stick it out or relief it got me doing the whole to be or not to be soliloquy in my head we actually studied Hamlet and 5th grade I think it it really begins with a clear understanding of what it is you ultimately want to accomplish if you don't know exactly what that is taking the time to understand and optimize for two things your skills and your passion and not one at the exclusion of the other and once you have that clear understanding of what it is that you ultimately want to accomplish making sure that you're on the right path whether that's your management and and people who are invested in you whether that's the people you work with whether that's access to the right learning materials being challenged the right sense of autonomy a shared sense of purpose alignment on values those are the things that matter most and when those things are questioned when those things are uncertain it creates instability and I think that's one of the the reasons that people would be asking themselves that question day in and day out I also think and you see this in the valley quite a bit people become consumed with the idea of moving on to the next thing I don't believe that's an optimal way to manage one's career and I know it's not the optimal way to maximize value within an organization if you look at the five most valuable companies in the world and the median tenure of their executive teams it's north of fifteen years and I don't believe that's coincidental with the value that those companies are able to create because when you work with people day in and day out it creates a certain kind of shorthand and that shorthand fuels higher quality decisions made faster and I think that ultimately is what helps companies to create value and when you have individuals who feel a strong sense of alignment with an organization its sense of purpose its values who are committed to being there over a longer period of time I think it's better for them in terms of their learning and what they're capable of doing in the social capital that they build with their colleagues and the trust and it's better for the company when you're looking at a resume and somebody's gone you mean a profile LinkedIn profile yes I'm sorry I'm thrown when you're looking at a profile and people have changed jobs what is the frequency that starts making you concerned and furrowing your brow it's a great question it is a flag it's not an automatic flag and I think it's something worth asking about and I think it's important in situations like that to seek to understand because you never know there may have been very good reason but if someone's switching jobs every year every 18 months for like 7 to 10 years you know you start asking what's the issue here why was this circumstantial for some reason does this person have trouble making a commitment do they not know what it is they all ultimately want to accomplish are they trying to find their way where they let go of from these companies over and over again but in certain cases there could be good explanations people have tried startups that have gone under and they they put everything they had into it and they took the risk and it didn't work out maybe they tried a few of those back-to-back-to-back maybe their startups were acquired and they weren't happy with the acquiring company maybe they were promised certain things in a certain role and the the manager executive team didn't deliver on those promises so you never know and I think it's it's good to ask but it's also really important to remain open-minded in terms of the rationale if I were to interview your leadership team and ask them are there any sort of Jeff isms Jeff's favorite expressions that he's often repeating what would they tell me it's not me who coined the phrase but one of my favorite mantra' is his next play which comes from Coach K Mike chefs key coach of the Duke Blue Devils and I didn't go to Duke I'm not necessarily a fan of the team but regardless of what you think of the Blue Devils and whether or not you're rooting for them it's a really valuable principle not only with regard to sports but with regard to business as well and essentially for those less familiar it turns out every time the Blue Devils complete a play on the offensive or defensive end of the court Coach K yells out next play and it doesn't matter how success well they just were you know let's say it was like some amazing alley-oop dunk or how poorly they executed and maybe the opposing team stole the ball and brought it down the opposite end of the court for a quick layup and you spend a moment or two reflecting on what just took place and then you move on to the next play and I read about that years before joining LinkedIn and started to use that at the company actually at the time of registering for our IPO was when I first mentioned it and in All Hands because I thought it was so important that people recognize the IPO was a tactic in a stepping-stone towards our ultimate objective which was the realization of our mission and our vision and some big fan of next play and if I were to ask your leadership team this question would er what are Geoff's quirks I mean does he have any pet peeves we're all human beings we all have our quirks those little things that annoy us yeah what would they say yours are oh I you're saying annoyances I think some of the quirks are not necessarily things I'm annoyed by I'll drop in pop cultural references every now and again so that's maybe a little bit idiosyncratic certainly Seinfeld references but in terms of annoyances or pet peeves don't like surprises so I prefer that teams get out in front of managing expectations particularly on bad news and you know one of our core values is to be open honest and constructive and I think it's important that people take advantage of that I don't like seeing the same mistake made over and over again so I don't know if those are quirks per se but they're certainly not my favorite situations and if I asked your wife what your quirks are what my wife would say my quirks all right I consume a lot of information and I do a fair amount of pattern recognition so she may refer to me as Rain Man from time to time I don't know if that extreme but she definitely has a different perspective on things she means that as a compliment I sometimes is maybe not always what's your best mentoring advice the importance of knowing what it is you ultimately want to accomplish and optimizing for both passion and skill and not one at the exclusion of the other would be one to surround yourself with great people don't just focus on your manager or your boss in this modern age and this more global digital and networked world it's all about the team it's the people you work for the people you work with the people that work for you make sure that you're not compromising on that front and then the third piece of advice would be to always be learning the world is moving so quickly and I think the days where you could learn a trade regardless of where you went to school and be set up for the rest of your career I think those days are fast coming to an end and I think it's critical to remain curious about the world intellectually curious and constantly be learning new skills and new capabilities so that you can prepare yourself for the jobs that are and will be and not just the jobs that once work there's a lot of 22 year olds who graduate and they don't know what they want to do though and there's nothing wrong with that and so the first piece of advice not only is there nothing wrong with that it's perfectly natural the first piece of advice I would have is to recognize what you're good at to recognize your natural skill set your aptitudes and to recognize what you're most passionate about what do you enjoy the most if you're reading the news what kind of headlines do you gravitate towards naturally what kind of companies do you enjoy following what kind of industries do you enjoy following perhaps most importantly if you don't know what it is that you want to do try different things it's a big world out there and see what resonates and see what doesn't and course-correct and you'll figure it out as you go did you always want to be a CEO I never wanted to be a CEO there was not a day in my life I woke up and said I aspire to be a CEO I've never been title driven with a notable exception as maybe a 25 year old working at Warner Brothers where I was hoping to become a VP within a certain number of years and was able to accomplish that that was the last time I ever thought about title as a career objective for me it's very much about purpose and that personal vision we were talking about earlier which is to help expand the world's collective wisdom and compassion being the CEO of a company like LinkedIn is very consistent with that and puts me in a position where I can contribute and make a positive difference that's certainly the objective so many people are title driven though I don't know that so many people are title driven I think oftentimes people can become consumed with objectives that are not necessarily sustainable or truly fulfilling whether its title or pay or working at the the hot new company those are not necessarily things that are going to provide lasting happiness certainly people need to earn living and they should be earning income that's commensurate to the value that they're adding that enables them to live the kind of life they want to live and take care of those that they care most about but at the end of the day I don't know any successful people that have taken a job because of money per se or because of title they took a job because of the opportunity to fulfill an objective that they had in terms of the impact they can make in the world and they pursued roles that were most in alignment with their longer-term objectives I think that's when success happens the irony of course is that when you are Purpose Driven and you are feeling a deep sense of alignment between your own values your own objectives and that of the company it's often times when you do your best work and when the title and the compensation will follow let's say you're speaking to a roomful of people who want to start their own companies you say them these I've met a lot of startup CEOs these are the three biggest mistakes that you shouldn't make that I've seen a lot what are those three mistakes so it would start with focus and being able to very clearly articulate what it is that the company is ultimately trying to accomplish what is the mission of the organization and for that mission to be as singular and unique to that company as it can be and to focus on fewer things and with fewer things you'll be able to do them better it's easier to communicate it's easier to internalize it's easier to execute and as company's scale they end up doing more things that's the the nature of it but with less focus and greater breadth and greater scale it becomes greater complexity it just becomes more difficult to execute so when you're just starting start as focused as you can understand what it is that's the one thing that you want to be able to accomplish above all others if you could only prioritize one thing not rationalize it and categorize it lump it with three other things and try to justify it that way but if you could only do one thing what would that one thing be and then do it better than anyone else and you can think about all of the other growth opportunities that that one thing will enable you to ultimately be able to execute upon but start by at least in the case of LinkedIn one of the first exercises I did with our CFO I went to a whiteboard and drew a target and the bull's eye was our ultimate focus was priority number one it was the clearest distillation and manifestation of our mission and our core value propositions then drew concentric circles around that bull's eye which were growth opportunities but you got to start in the center and you can't move on with those growth opportunities until you reach critical mass and even then you have to be very careful and thoughtful about how you're funding those growth opportunities because if you're drawing too many resources away from the core you're gonna leave the core susceptible to the competition that's been waiting for you to stumble because they've been watching your success so I think focus becomes absolutely paramount that would be first second would be communicating the right information to the right people at the right time it's so important especially as an organization is first starting to establish the the right cadence for communication how you want information to be communicated what information to be communicating what are those measurable objectives what are the stated priorities how are you performing against those priorities managing expectations coming together proactively to evaluate how the company's performing what you want to accomplish where the gaps exist that kind of communication becomes essential and you are establishing the way the company will ultimately be communicating those very early days so it's really important that foundation up the right way and then lastly is the speed and quality of the decision-making within the organization and focus and communication will certainly facilitate that as well ensuring that you're hiring the right people and that those people are developing shorthand and trust with one another this be great Jeff thank you thank you really appreciate it

Channel: CNBC

Views: 86,017

Rating: 4.8842363 out of 5

Keywords: CNBC, business news, finance stock, stock market, news channel, news station, breaking news, us news, world news, cable, cable news, finance news, money, money tips, financial news, Stock market news, stocks, linkedin, linkedin ceo, jeff weiner linkedin, jeff weiner net worth, jeff weiner, linkedin career advice

Id: W8RmWPqBiBo

Length: 42min 28sec (2548 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 16 2018