Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO with Brian Halligan
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?
00:44:03 · Brian Halligan, Luca Ferrari
[00:44:03] S1: What's your one right now, Luca? [00:44:05] S0: I happen to be someone who I told you earlier that I don't remember exactly the words I use, but the message I was trying to convey is probably the greatest privilege I feel I have in my life right now and I've had it for a while is the quality of the people I get to work with. I don't mean it and I really mean it. It's I really believe it to be the case. And as I appreciate their skills and talents and their contribution tremendously, I'm awful at saying that aloud. I'm very critical of myself too, to be clear. I generally at night when I call it a day, generally I'm disappointed in myself. Okay, so it's not I'm the same way toward myself as I am to others, maybe more more more critical of myself, I'd like to think but anyway, the point is, even people I hold in the highest esteem, I rarely tell them how amazing they are. And so I, I decided that I need to be better at telling them how much I appreciate them. In a fully honest way, know, it's not like this has not been hypocritical, just voicing what I know unconsciously, but I don't really linger on. So I've tried to do that a lot more. I think it's been a half a success, a failure, but certainly an improvement over past levels. [00:45:24] S1: I get exact same feedback pretty much every year. There's a saying in some old school saying that you should give five pieces of positive feedback to every one kind of correction. I would definitely be opposite before we point that out. [00:45:45] S0: Let's use all six slots for corrections.
00:45:45 · Luca Ferrari, Brian Halligan
[00:45:45] S0: Let's use all six slots for corrections. [00:45:48] S1: It's pretty close to that. And so I worked on that. I got slightly better. And to the point where I would put like a fifteen minute slot on Friday afternoon, give compliments to force myself to do it. So I hear you, most CEOs have that same a lot of CEOs also get feedback from their teams that their trust circle is just small. They trust four people and they run everything through those four people and everyone else feels like they're very arms length. Do you get that? [00:46:18] S0: No, actually, I haven't gotten this feedback. We're quite distributed in that way. We don't have an executive team or a leadership team. There's no clear... I mean, people could reconstruct it and say, Okay, I think whoever leads product should be there and whoever, but we never... We did have it many years ago, we dropped it because we found the precise definition of that group didn't help at all, because it would lead to some people being involved in discussions who shouldn't be involved just because they're part of the executive team, and then some people missing in discussions because, you know, we needed to have a discussion at the executive team level. So now we're just okay, you involve whoever needs to be involved, no matter, let's say the title or the standing, fuck the executive team, we don't need an executive team. [00:47:04] S1: Yeah, interesting. So how is it organized? Like if you do, let's just say you do a strategy off-site where you want to think big things and do some navel gazing, who's there?
00:47:04 · Brian Halligan, Luca Ferrari
[00:47:04] S1: Yeah, interesting. So how is it organized? Like if you do, let's just say you do a strategy off-site where you want to think big things and do some navel gazing, who's there? [00:47:15] S0: I would invite people I think can contribute the most or take away the most. Sometimes invite someone who in general, I think this is not just me, but the company, hate meetings and we hate big meetings. But there are cases where inviting someone who won't contribute to the meeting could still be a good thing if you think they can learn something. Inviting someone just so they feel good about themselves is never an option, though. It has to be useful. I would try to invite the people I think could contribute the most. I would have to think about who those people are. Some names come to mind, but also depending on the precise, say part of the strategy or angle, I would divide different people. [00:47:57] S1: Luca, you didn't, it doesn't sound like you have an org chart. You're more like Cal Shi. There's no, I report to Luca.
00:47:57 · Brian Halligan, Luca Ferrari
[00:47:57] S1: Luca, you didn't, it doesn't sound like you have an org chart. You're more like Cal Shi. There's no, I report to Luca. [00:48:03] S0: No, we do. We do actually. It's an algorithm. So we have two, it's basically a matrix organization with functions and teams functions being in charge of the how things are done, you know, the hard skills, I'm oversimplifying and teams being in charge of what we do. So like the objectives, what we're trying to accomplish to make Bending Spoons more successful. And then every person has a functional lead and a team lead. And it all flows to a single node, which currently would would be me is me. But you know, it's basically whoever the CEO is at that point in time. So there is a pretty specific formal org and we use it to automate a lot of stuff. But we remind people that it's only useful to the extent that it's useful. It's in no way they should feel limited by it or quite fluid. We've had many cases where someone is a lead for a while and then goes back to being an individual contributor. Yeah.