Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO with Brian Halligan
00:35:11 · Brian Halligan
[00:35:11] S1: I've spoken to a couple of the founders of companies you acquired and one of them said the person that replaced them was 25 and the other said the person who replaced them was 27. They didn't seem bothered by it, I thought that was kind of interesting. What I'm curious about is like, let's just say that 25 year old that takes over, I don't know, Me or whatever company you're buying. What are you looking for in that person who's gonna run that show? Is there a certain quality you're looking for? I know you rotate them around, but let's say it's the first first go at it. What are you looking for?
00:35:46 · Luca Ferrari
[00:35:46] S0: Yeah, and we wouldn't put someone in that position we haven't tested in a smaller version of it to be clear. So generally someone who led a team or a smaller business before. But yes, it could be someone with just three, four years of experience, a very, very junior. Well, on a high level, we look for smart and what we call extreme ownership. Being smart for us, I mean, pretty obviously, is you learn very quickly and we have evidence of that. And you're capable, consistently capable of high quality reasoning. So when you propose a solution or you diagnose a problem consistently, what you say or write makes a lot of sense. There's a meaning of all the answers, but your analysis is always rational, accurate, logically sound. We think that works across the board and in almost any position. Two, we want you to have extreme ownership, which means you are absolutely you care tremendously about being or becoming the best in the world is your job, bringing the greatest possible contribution to your team in the company. It's almost fanatical about that. So when when you find an obstacle or you identify a shortcoming in your skill set, you'll be hell bent on overcoming that. But then of course, we look for more specific skills, but that's really like we find that that that's 80% of the of when those are in place in big ways, those qualities that you're very, very likely to succeed, assuming you're, you know, you can communicate a little bit, you're nice, you're not an asshole, those hygienic factors. But the core killer features are those two.
00:37:29 · Brian Halligan
[00:37:29] S1: And when it doesn't work, so you put in the 25 year old to run it and like, I don't know, there's an immune system rejection or they just weren't up to it. What is it that falls down?
00:37:39 · Luca Ferrari
[00:37:39] S0: That's happened very rarely. I can only think of one or two cases, but when that's happened, I think it's been primarily one of two things. One, the person while very, very good, because it could also be that we misjudged those qualities, but so far it hasn't been because of any such, we haven't seen any such case, at least for our general managers. What we've seen is either the person we basically we didn't pay enough attention at a person's ability to lead others, call it communication, a certain level of common sense and empathy. And so they were incredibly smart problem solvers. They moved 100 miles an hour, but they failed to notice when someone was a little bit off, had an issue, they didn't say the right thing at the right time. And that basically created a level of hostility, or at least friction that ultimately made them untenable as leaders. The other case was where enough people in the org for all sorts of reasons felt more competent. And although this person was great and super nice and empathetic and communicative, These people couldn't get over the fact that oh, I'm so much more experienced, cannot take even if you know, like, I cannot be led by this person, even if just formally. That's been very rare, but I can remember one such case where that occurred. And look, and there we could do one of two things. We either move or part ways with, you know, these people who reject leadership or we change the leader. And you know, depends on the context of which of the two makes more sense.
00:39:25 · Brian Halligan, Luca Ferrari
[00:39:25] S1: How do you develop these people? Like, do you actually train them, develop them, coach them, or it's like, they're smart, they're gonna figure it out, you kind of throw them into it and they they're good. [00:39:36] S0: Yeah, we have training materials, but broadly, I think 90% of the outcome depends on you throw them into the deep end of the pool, you know, you give them way more responsibility that seems reasonable. And, and then you surround them with amazing colleagues, we find that we learn primarily by working with amazing people. Almost invariably, some of the people around you will be better than you at some things. And so if you are, if you try to emulate those good traits, you'll learn from those and also, know, they will suck at some things. And if you notice the weaknesses, you can avoid the, you know, falling into the same trap yourself. So the level of responsibility and the level of talent around you are the two things that we find drive growth the most. But yeah, mean, a little bit of formal training here and there and active coaching certainly adds that 10, 20% extra for sure.
00:40:29 · Brian Halligan, Luca Ferrari
[00:40:29] S1: I'd tell you the one thing that helped me on my journey. We decided we're gonna do a three sixty degree review for me, which was a good idea. And my co founder volunteered, which is a strange thing because he's really introverted. And he's like, how do I do this without talking to other homo sapiens? And so he did a net promoter survey. First question is on a scale of one to 10, how likely are you to recommend Brian as the CEO of HubSpot? And number two is why did you give that number? And it sent it out to like 25 people, the board, customers, employees. And people wrote freaking novels. I mean, they wrote long novels. And he spent some time correlated it, showed me the histogram, very helpful. And then he did something clever like for each feature, each feature be like, here's a feature and he will pull out direct quotes on what people said about the feature. So it really hit home to me that, okay, that's a feature. In the first 10 pages I'm going through the report and I'm like, feature, feature, I got this. I am fantastic at the CEO. I have this absolutely nailed. Page 11 is where the bug started. [00:41:35] S0: Then That's painful.