Tag: leadership

Hit Refresh, Book Notes

Hit Refresh, Book Notes

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Over the holiday I wrapped up a number of books that had been piling up on my bedside table. Hit Refresh was one of those books and I am glad I read it. The main reason I enjoyed the book was the underlying sense of optimism and progress that Satya implies through his vision of the future workforce and broader society. I similarly enjoyed his open willingness to revisit core principles and identify which foundations (people, culture, products) to support to enable the next chapter at Microsoft.

Here are some quotes from the book that I highlighted…

On leadership & vision

“A leader must see the external opportunities and the internal capability and culture – and all of the connections among them – and respond to them before they become parts of the conventional wisdom”

“The view your adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life” – Dr. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

“… compete hard, and then equally celebrate the opportunities we create for everyone. It’s not a zero sum game.”

On Trust

“Consistency is better than perfection”

“Consistency over time is trust” – Jeff Wiener

“The key to cultural change is individual empowerment”

“Learning to fly is not pretty, but flying is”

On Societal Change

Engelbart’s Law: “…Our ability to improve upon improvements is a uniquely human endeavor….”

“Economic improvement is centered around the intensity of the adoption, not just the presence or availability of the technology.”

Edward Conard: The Upside of Inequality…. inequality ultimately leads to faster growth and greater prosperity for everyone. Investors wait for good ideas that create their own demand for properly trained talent needed to commercialize ideas successfully. He sees two constraints to growth: an economy’s capacity and willingness to take risk and to find properly trained and motivated talent.

As machines replace labor in some tasks, firms will be incentivized to create new tasks in which humans have a competitive advantage. “Although automation tends to reduce employment and the share of labor in national income, the creation of more complex tasks has the opposite effects.” – Daron Acemoglu, MIT economist

“Business is humanity’s most resilient, iterative, and productive mechanism for creating change in the world.” – John Batelle

Becoming dispensable

Becoming dispensable

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On a recent RECODE/DECODE podcast where Kara Swisher interviews Frances Frei, the SVP of Leadership & Strategy at Uber. Frances is a renowned leadership coach with a special skill at turnarounds and an unparalleled optimism and belief in an individual’s redemption potential and trajectory.

In the podcast Kara and Frances cover Frances’ 3 key to modern leadership:

1) Making others better as a result of your presence. This is usually a “catch-all” line, but the impact needs to be internalized: are you as a leader actively focused on improving those around you?

2) Having strong performance outlast your presence. Replace yourselves as quickly as possible. Leadership is about a leader serving their team and creating a condition for them to thrive with a goal to become replaceable as soon as possible. Having this leadership goal implies the leader is confident there is another role for them in this organization or another one.

3) People feel your high standards and your devotion to them. Communicate this through asking questions and digging deep.

The one that stood out to me the most is item #2:. Younger professionals that rise to the executive ranks earlier than they expected tend to have a problem with becoming dispensable. A natural tendency is to retain information, become important to many stages of the company and not lose the opportunity to give input for what each group is doing.

I fell for this mind trap when Choose Energy was growing but I was lucky in that Kerry Cooper was my CEO giving me strong advice how to combat the problem. Similar to what Frances Frei says, Kerry’s coaching was persistent in that successful leadership was creating a structure that would thrive beyond my presence. It took me a while but ultimately through improved corporate communications, better delegating and transparent KPIs, we created a structure that was successful independent of our cumulative influence.

Choose Energy is acquired, hat tip to Jerry Dyess

Choose Energy is acquired, hat tip to Jerry Dyess

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Last month Choose Energy was sold to RedVentures.

I joined Choose Energy as the Director of BD in June 2012 in coordination with the Series A investment from Kleiner Perkins. I was the third employee and first non-engineer. The range of highs and lows we experienced as we grew the company from under half a million in annual revenue to over $10M in ARR were dramatic. There were many unique components to the CE growth that I am look forward to diving into over the next few months. But now that the deal is done and public and was successful from both a financial and educational perspective, there is one major thank you I need to give:

Thanks you, Jerry. Jerry Dyess is the Founder & CEO of Choose Energy. At first glance Jerry doesn’t “match” the Silicon Valley CEO fit. And frankly, early on in his tenure at Choose, he didn’t. Based in Plano, Texas with Louisiana heritage Jerry (admittedly) never felt totally comfortable in a San Francisco board room. Instead of board discussions he preferred customer conversations, employee engagement and products that drove immediate revenue and feedback. Jerry never explicitly stated this but if I had to summarize four of his main mantras, they would be:

  1. A small company grows into a big company through many small steps
  2. Revenue follows value provided. (A relationship that many SV firms tend to believe is the inverse)
  3. Hire the best people and get out of their way
  4. Stay lean. Excess cash causes problems. See point 1!

With the deal now in the rear-view mirror, what I am most proud about and thankful for is working with Jerry from the first days after the Series A to final day of the sale. Jerry is the consummate entrepreneur and I have no doubt that the ultimate success of Choose Energy was driven primarily by his product vision, his employee and customer empathy, and his market understanding. He transformed as a leader and I am proud to say I worked alongside him as his Chief Revenue Officer in our final year. In today’s transient workforce, I would like to believe that our enduring run at Choose Energy was pretty special.

And I can’t wait to see what he does next.

my lessons from bill campbell

my lessons from bill campbell

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When I began working at Kleiner Perkins I made sure to introduce myself to many of the executive assistants in the office. I knew that I was going to intermittently look foolish and lost in the coming weeks and wanted to learn some of the daily routines and protocols to the extent possible. That openness helped me bridge into some great relationships with men and women I still speak to frequently. One of the early dividends of those relationships came when, working heads down at my desk, Kendall (now at FBN) in her boisterous way introduced me to “Coach”. I was young and hadn’t fully learned the recent history of the Valley quite yet and didn’t know who Bill Campbell was. Yeah, dumb I know.

I ended up speaking to Bill for a few minutes. We spoke about learning from the more established KPCB Partners around me and to do my best to spend time with the founders to expand my horizon into the operational side of the business. He never once mentioned his stature and who he had worked with. So, when the conversation ended and I did the obligatory Google search, my jaw dropped. A Silicon Valley legend, 100% down to earth, connecting, listening to young me. There was nothing of significant value I could have provided Bill in that moment – but he was simply curious about what the youngest looking guy in the building was doing. The curiosity – the curiosity to really meet me (albeit very briefly) made me feel special. I can only imagine how good of a coach he was to those who received hours of his time each month. His combination of grounded personality and curiosity was a real treat.

The one main lesson I took away from this is that if THE Bill Campbell is spending time, slowing down his day, to talk to a young me, then surely we can all take the time to better connect (truly listen and engage!) with those around us. (Oh, and the other lesson is to always befriend executive assistants 🙂 – thanks again, Kendall!)