Long Strange Trip: CEO to CEO with Brian Halligan
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.
00:48:03 · Luca Ferrari, Brian Halligan
[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. [00:49:01] S1: You said something interesting, whoever's the CEO at that point in time. I had a chance to chat with Jensen Huang a year ago and he's got a unique style where he's got 60 direct reports and similar to you, he does gives direct feedback, positive and negative in public. He doesn't do one on ones. And I asked him like, and when you ever retire, will the person who replaces you inherit that and use that system? And he said, oh no, hell no. This is kind of built for me specifically. It's the way I work. Somebody else should come in and completely rewrite it. You said as long as you're CEO, what did you mean by that? And do you agree with Jensen?
00:49:01 · Brian Halligan, Luca Ferrari
[00:49:01] S1: You said something interesting, whoever's the CEO at that point in time. I had a chance to chat with Jensen Huang a year ago and he's got a unique style where he's got 60 direct reports and similar to you, he does gives direct feedback, positive and negative in public. He doesn't do one on ones. And I asked him like, and when you ever retire, will the person who replaces you inherit that and use that system? And he said, oh no, hell no. This is kind of built for me specifically. It's the way I work. Somebody else should come in and completely rewrite it. You said as long as you're CEO, what did you mean by that? And do you agree with Jensen? [00:49:44] S0: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, as I said earlier, it's almost like if you're coaching or running a sports team, I think it'd be a fool saying, well, the way to win is this and that and that's the only way to win or the best way to win no matter the people you have on the team, right? So the players. And so yes, I mean, if and when we we change our CEO, I would encourage her or him to see whether any change is warranted. I mean, they don't have to change anything if they like it the way it is, but they equally they should feel free to change things if they thought that would improve things.