Tom Conrad: evaluation

Transcript context

…Wow. So I think what broke Apple out of that mode was Steve came back and they didn't vote anymore. Steve was just making the call. And so I have some sympathy for Brian and Evan, who have these big, thousands of people working for them. And as they delegate, they grow frustrated that there's not progress at the pace that they're looking for, and that there's indecision, and the people on the teams report that there's just churn and no progress, and there's fiefdoms and politics and all the rest, and that as the CEO, as a brilliant product-oriented CEO, they are uniquely situated to come in and cut through all of that garbage and get the trains running on time again. Having said all of that, I also think that it can be a mistake to be that kind of leader in a smaller org because part of the opportunity in a small org is to assemble a group of people that are incredibly talented that believe in your mission and where who you can easily influence with a much lighter touch and set them up to build a culture in an organization that can execute. And so I see my job as CEO is to try to surf that edge of I'm really in the details. So I deeply understand the business and the product decisions that we're making and the processes that we're using to run the business, but not overplay my hand with respect to dictating outcomes. The one thing you'll always have as CEO is, no matter how much you tell the team that when I swing by their virtual desk and say, "I've been thinking about this little detail that's not important right now, but what do you think?" It's like nine out of 10 times, that person is going to go and start working on that thing. And so you do have to be just really careful about the way you engage in some of those details, I think. There's a really good episode I had with Lane Shackleton from Coda, and he shared this framework called flash tags that they use at Coda, and I think it comes from HubSpot, of you tell people, "Here's what the subpoena is. Is it an FYI? Is it a suggestion? Is it a do this?" There's four of them and one's like, "I will die on this hill. You need to do this."…

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