Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO with Brian Halligan
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.
00:41:35 · Luca Ferrari, Brian Halligan
[00:41:35] S0: Then That's painful. [00:41:39] S1: And the direct quotes in there, it was incredibly helpful to help me get better. One of my ahas by the way was some of the features were bugs. People didn't like that I was really passionate and sometimes I get really excited about things. And so the first year I tried to fix all my bugs. And then second, third, fourth year, I'm like, I'm take one or two of the bugs I'm gonna work on. How do you personally go about getting feedback and getting better? And how do you do that with your folks? [00:42:10] S0: Yeah, so we're big on feedback, a bit like you just described. We have something called radical candor internally, where basically the idea is you should always tell people when you see something good or bad, as long as you don't share that because you're venting, because you believe there's a chance that they could improve or the team could benefit or the company could benefit, you should share. Don't worry about the accuracy of what you're saying, the wording, whether you hurt feelings. Obviously, try to be nice if you can, but that's, you know, secondary to being honest. And so it's of course, we're not perfect. Not everybody does it all the time. But we try to have this environment where opinions and observations flow very quickly and abundantly. That's a very good source of learning. [00:42:57] S1: You make everyone do it face to face?
00:42:57 · Brian Halligan, Luca Ferrari
[00:42:57] S1: You make everyone do it face to face? [00:43:00] S0: Yeah, we try it. But our recommendation is to, if it happens in person, say it immediately, even in front of everybody in a meeting. Don't delay, just say it. Again, respectfully and empathetically, but just straight up. If it's if it's something that you notice through asynchronous communications, such as on Slack, then you can send them a message or whatever. Like, it's really secondary as long as you do it and you're candid. So that helps a lot. And then we have once a year, we have something a little bit like what you described, where we give more structured feedback based on a bunch of assessors, not 25, but more like six to 10, depending on the person. Additionally, and so that applies to me as well. I try to also once a year identify at least one major point of improvement. I went through exactly the same thing where I had five and then I figured halfway through the year it's too many. If these are challenging to improve, five is too many. I try to have one per year that try to get a lot better at. [00:44:03] S1: What's your one right now, Luca?