Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO with Brian Halligan
00:27:23 · Brian Halligan
[00:27:23] S1: Okay. One of the things I used to say to myself is actually I got this quote from Eleanor Roosevelt of all people. I wanted to keep my head in the clouds, but my feet on the ground. And by that I meant I wanted to be okay, a JV, William Wallace painting a picture of the future, getting everyone excited about where we're going, looking over the horizon. But feet on the ground, it's like, holy crap, there are a lot of problems and we have to deal with all these frigging problems. And my glass was very half empty and I spent a lot of times a little negative looking at the problems. Where are you in the Eleanor Roosevelt quote?
00:28:02 · Luca Ferrari
[00:28:02] S0: I want to give myself a little pat on the shoulder. I think if there's one thing I tend to do reasonably well is being able to see the big picture. You know, I guess head in the cloud kind of thing. Maybe I'm not the best at say articulating it again with the grand speech, but I think I'm pretty good at you know, in the substance understanding what matters, what doesn't, where the opportunity is, what logically we should be doing and what's just noise. And I think I've historically been very hands on in the details in the trenches. I think it's a good quality that you want to have as an entrepreneur and CEO. Don't think it's a it's not super widespread in the population, but it's quite commonly found, I think in entrepreneurs and CEOs. And I think it's quite powerful because if you if you don't have the big picture, you can't really set a direction of strategy. That's that's the winning strategy, unless someone else bring it brings it to you, which is always nice, but you can't count on that happening. It's a, know, hope is not a strategy as they say. But if you're not in the details in the trenches, feet firmly planted in the on the ground, then I think you're unlikely to be able to inform that big picture properly, you're unlikely to be inspiring to your colleagues, very few people like working with with people who are in an ivory tower that they don't get their hands dirty, doesn't really scale. I think it's not good. You're not in a position to assess others to coach others because you don't really know anything about the work at some point. So I do believe you need both to be successful. And you know, finding some sort of equilibrium, I find it's easier to sequence those activities and trying to run them in parallel. So I try to have times where I'm very much in the clouds thinking, Okay, what are the big problems or big big opportunities? How should we go about them and be more of an architect and then long stretches where I just get into execution mode. And I'm, you know, mad head to toe, just getting stuff done, blood, sweat and tears. I think it's quite difficult to be both at the same time, but you can be both in sequence.
00:30:06 · Brian Halligan
[00:30:06] S1: Let's talk about coaching for a second. Similar to me, I had never been CEO of a company with thousands of employees in public. And I was figuring out as I went along. And sometimes I just didn't feel qualified to coach some of my executives. Do you ever have that feeling? And also related to that, so many of the CEOs I'm working with, they like have a very talented person internally, they're on their way up. Should they bet on that person or find someone who's seen the movie before and has a little bit of experience? That's happening everywhere across Silicon Valley right now. Should we hire the better than were done that person? Or should make the person bet on the person who's on their way up and really hasn't seen anything close to this movie?
00:30:48 · Luca Ferrari
[00:30:48] S0: So on coaching, I'm certainly inadequate as a coach often with people I work with. I don't think at Bending Spoons, we work off the assumption that our managers should always be capable of solving or advising on a solution across all problems that are experienced by the direct reports. We just think that any one person may be able to coach any other person on some things and they should do so regardless of reporting lines. I think a good manager would generally be someone very smart, a good problem solver, so at least they can provide kind of generally support, they should be able to, they should be emotionally supportive and ready to get their hands dirty. But ultimately, you know, being someone's manager doesn't mean you're always better positioned to solve a problem for them. Know, like it's there are so many skills needed in a business like like yours, like like like ours that obviously you need to divide and conquer or in any case. I've never been a big fan of I mean, we do value experience, but I think we value experience a lot less than most people. I believe that, yes, the being there done that helps, but there are a few big buts. The first one is the world changes pretty fast. I'm not exactly certain that someone who did something seven years ago, that still applies all that well. And there is a huge risk that people will be blind as to the new context because they did it that way and they will just try to paste whatever solution they applied before. So maybe, you know, you buy some good, but you also buy a lot of bad. I'm not sure which of the two is stronger. For a company like Bending Spoons, also, we have such a, as far as I can tell, distinctive culture that we found that every time we hired someone, almost every time we hired someone very experienced, they struggle to adapt. We're so hands on, no politics, radically candid, everybody needs to carry their own weight. And it doesn't translate well, often people who have been successful at large tech companies, they tend to be to have a different style to leadership, which may very well be optimal at those companies. I don't know, but it's not at a Bending Spoons. So we also need to account for the cost of that cultural change, which is sometimes doesn't even happen. And if it does, it takes a long time.
00:33:09 · Luca Ferrari, Brian Halligan
And last but not least, I find that generally people lose motivation as they gain experience. And so you need to consider whether it's better to have someone with twenty years of experience, but I don't know six out of 10 motivation, or someone with two years of experience, but 10 out of 10 motivation, I find often the latter is better. It depends on the situation. So we're generally we're not big on experience. We have hired experienced people occasionally we prefer to have [00:33:38] S1: Has it changed as you've scaled? Have you changed your mind at all on that? Or you're like actually no. Yeah, interesting.
00:33:38 · Brian Halligan, Luca Ferrari
[00:33:38] S1: Has it changed as you've scaled? Have you changed your mind at all on that? Or you're like actually no. Yeah, interesting. [00:33:44] S0: No, and I may be wrong. Look, we have tried. It's not that we never hired experienced people. We have hired some experienced people with great success. Know, it's not that we were completely closed minded regarding that. But now we keep investing in students or new graduates or people with a couple years of experience where we think that we can really help them mold their skill set and professional culture in the way that we believe will best serve them and the company in the long run. And also, is a trade off between talent and experience in a competitive labor market. You know, experience we can provide it to you, we just need to be a little bit patient. Talent, we can't and so we focus more on talent and experience. It's all considered we're happy with this, we wouldn't change it necessarily. But we have encountered difficult situations sometimes where maybe we have, you know, a 25 year old lead engineer or something, showing up at an acquired company and essentially being the person in charge on on our end and, and people with twenty years of experience thinking does this guy even know what what he's doing? And I think our track record consistently shows Yeah, it does. Or she does, but I can see how it's a more difficult sale than if we had a 50 year old person with thirty years of experience come in and say the same things. It's much easier to assume that person is competent, you know.