Our Internal Standard for Leaders

The first step to having a clear culture is writing it down

Copy/pasted from our internal confluence; note that as a result many links are to internal Confluence pages and thus not publicly available.
This page was last updated in Jan 2021, but we believe we’ve had minimal cultural drift since then.

I gave someone feedback today that they should expect more of the managers on their team. Upon reflection after the conversation while I was following up with RWF (Regular Written Feedback) as clear written follow up, I realized that I’ve given this exact feedback before more than once to other managers-of-managers. So, the fault is likely partially with me also. Thus, I’ve given myself the following SRWF (Self Regular Written Feedback) that I wanted to share with you all.

Bo, you find yourself giving feedback to managers-of-managers that they should expect more from the managers on your team likely because you yourself have not written down your expectations of the managers-of-managers on your team (which would, naturally, include the standards to which they hold the managers on their teams). That’s the What. The So What is without clear written standards that communicate what greatness looks like the managers-of-managers who report to will find it hard to de-blur “expect more”, and broadly what is expected of them. The Now What is: write the standard, communicate the standard.

As I sat down to write these, it became clear that the more that a job is a repeatable process, the more the Standards for that job can be very tactical and specific (“make at least X number of calls, convert at least Y percent of calls into customers” etc). The more that a job is not a repeatable process, the more that the standard for greatness will read like a set of principles. Both are needed, and equally valuable to the organization. But the second type is harder to articulate. So, for leaders here CBH, the best standards for you are our Company Values, with more examples and explanations, and a few additions:

The Standard for Leaders at CBH

Great leaders at CBH exhibit enormous amounts of:

Customer Obsession

Every leader here talks to our customers regularly: new customers, existing customers, happy and unhappy customers, customers who’ve become friends. You put yourself in the shoes of our customers and viscerally feel their Job to be Done. You audit what customers actually experienced with us and feel their delight when we succeed for them, and their pain and frustration when we disappoint them. You ask yourself how could it have been magically better? You build that magical experience and run it at scale. And then you do it again.

Uncomfortably High Standards

Expecting less is a self fulfilling prophecy. Leaders have relentlessly high standards, and unapologetically communicate these high standards clearly (in writing), frequently, and broadly. Leaders hold the people on their teams to the same high standards they hold themselves: a leader’s standards are not any lower for junior members of his or her team just because that person’s scope of impact or role responsibility is narrower. Many people will think a leader’s standards are unreasonably high, and actually if nobody in your organization thinks your standards are somewhat unreasonable it’s a sure bet your standards aren’t high enough. Leaders ensure that defects do not get sent down the line and that problems are fixed so they stay fixed. We are a fast-paced startup, and leaders remind their teams that the same performance it took to get a 3 this year will earn only a 2 next year as their jobs expand in scope and impact naturally with company growth. This approach creates extra stress, possibly even frustration, and some people will self select out your team. But it pulls forward the future, yields better results for our customers, and attracts the best people who want to get better. We exist as a company first and foremost for our customers. It’s not a secondary goal to be a “stress-free relaxing place to work”; instead we are a place where great people can push themselves and get rewarded for doing so by growing. For additional thinking here see The Hard Work to create a Company Culture we want and The blurry thinking that prevents us from actually having high standards.

Hire, Develop, and “Rehire” the Best

Leaders raise the performance bar with every hire and promotion. They recognize exceptional talent, and willingly move them throughout the organization. By the same token leaders realize when they’ve hired someone unexceptional and unapologetically hands that person an exit package to make space for someone exceptional in that role. Leaders focus their precious coaching and development time on growing and rounding out exceptional talent so they can become the next generation of leaders, instead of shoring up underperformers hoping they’ll magically improve. Leaders know that with every new month, every new quarter, they are “rehiring” the person already in a seat for that seat for the next month or quarter, and their High Standards are no different for rehiring that person than for hiring him or her in the first place.

Self Critical and Inventiveness

Leaders regularly ask themselves “how can we do better? How can my team and I move faster, take on bigger challenges, select for more exceptional people, ...” the list goes on. Leaders are naturally introspective and do not accept the status quo of what exists today; they’re consistently pushing the envelope for how to improve, how to make a bigger impact, and expect others that they lead to do the same. If we think about the leaders that the world we most admire, they’re not the ones that said “well, I’ve done enough” and rested. Jeff Bezos could have stopped at Amazon becoming the world’s largest bookstore. Instead, his directive to his team is that it is always “Day 1 at Amazon.” In fact, 99% of Amazon’s growth came after its IPO. Elon Musk could have stopped when PayPal sold and he became unimaginably wealthy. Instead, he started two world changing companies, first SpaceX and then Tesla. How do these leaders push the envelope forward? They communicate the output of this thinking, either in Self Regular Written Feedback or clear notes to their teams, and share these writings with stakeholders. They are externally aware, look for new ideas from everywhere, and are not limited by “not invented here." Leaders are not afraid to be misunderstood for long periods of time to achieve the outcome they want. Leaders earn the trust of their stakeholders by being their own worst critic and vocally self-critical, even when doing so is awkward or embarrassing. Leaders do not believe their or their team’s body odor smells of perfume. They benchmark themselves and their teams against the best.

Own the Outcome

Leaders deliver results. At the end of the day we’re all judged on results: the market judges the board on results, the board judges the CEO on results, … there’s no layer of the org structure where we say “well, I guess the judging on results stops here. Because [of reason x] we can’t judge [person y] on results - I mean, they worked hard”. Yes hard work is necessary, but by itself is insufficient over months and quarters without superlative results. Even if you outworked Kobe Bryant (though almost nobody did), you still can’t win championships unless your shots go in. Leaders deliver changes to key metrics (revenue, active users, etc) that surprise to the upside, repeatedly, especially in situations where it would have been easy to just say “this metric is out of our control”[1]. In their decisions, leaders are right a lot. They have strong judgment and good instincts, and constantly work to update or disconfirm their mental models. In their execution leaders they work the plan, adjust the plan, go off script - whatever it takes to deliver results more often, of higher impact, and faster than others expect.

[1] People often say this as a way to prevent themselves from looking bad, to others or even to themselves, if they can’t move that metric. But it leads us to not try.

Extreme Curiosity

Leaders ask “why” many times in a row, to get to the root of a problem or situation, because they really want to understand it deeply from first principles. They continually challenge our own understanding of our customers, our market, and our business. Leaders have a preternatural ability to spot unexamined assumptions in others and unapologetically push on those assumptions. They think through our actions from first principles starting with the end goal in mind. Their curiosity is broad and deep, but depth matters more. They are curious about our industry, our team members, our customers[2], and more. Theirs is a deep curiosity that doesn’t accept surface level answers, doesn’t accept just-so stories, and works hard to disconfirm / update / add detail to our mental models. Leaders are like 5-year-olds, constantly asking “wait, but why”?

[2] We are more curious than anyone about our customers, including our customers. You know you’re here when you ask a customer a question and they say something like “huh, you know I never really thought about why I do that, I guess it’s because…”

Unreasonably Fast

Almost every team has the potential to do more, faster. The role of leadership is to convert that lingering potential into superlative results by pushing your team to go faster and further than they would have without you, to step up the pace, and to increase the intensity. Accomplish more with less time. Constraints breed resourcefulness, self-sufficiency, and most importantly invention. It is not easy because you will drive people out of their comfort zones. There will be resistance. Change is hard. Some will vote with their feet. If you want to be popular as a leader, this may not be for you, but leadership at CBH is not about being liked since most people are comfortable going slower. This was most articulately put by Frank Slootman. “Somebody would ask me if he could get back to me about something next week, and I would reply ‘how about tomorrow morning? Might be completely unreasonable, did not matter. The point was to change people’s sense of urgency.” Speed is what all successful big companies wished they could preserve as they got bigger. My goal is to never lose it, and indeed get faster as we get bigger. For inspiration see 42 days & 111 Days.

Dive Deep

Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdote differ. Leaders know their numbers deeply (see Story: Alfred Lin and "know your numbers"). They obsess over Metrics and Customer Conversations (see Letter to folks working with Bo) to better understand their business “to the metal” and make well considered data driven decisions when possible. No task is beneath them. Leaders realize the one customer complaint they happened to hear about probably isn’t unique, and take it a clue to seek out the truth at scale. By the same token, leaders see the one time a process broke, the one time someone on their team made a bad decision, as clues and dive deep looking for the root cause(s).

Initiative

Leaders see something that needs to be done and just take care of it (doesn’t mean they always do it themselves, but that they make sure it gets done quickly and to their high standards). Leaders go into meetings with a proposal (doesn’t have to be theirs, ideally from someone on their team), not a blank sheet of paper hoping others around the table will find the solution for them. Leaders clearly articulate their goals and their plan, and impress by their plan’s specificity, speed, and ambition.

Future Thinking

Leaders don’t think about the world as it is today, but the world as it could be. When something (a process, a product, a team) isn’t great they don’t accept that as life, but instead envision something better and execute. We imagine the customer experience from 5, 10, 50 years out, and then try to get there far faster. What’s the ideal customer experience that seems impossible? What’s an ideal internal alignment or org structure to serve the customer? Can we make it? We pull forward the future into the present.

Relentless and Resourceful

Many decisions and actions in business are reversible, and a single failure there is unlikely to cause the death of the company. So, leaders take calculated risks, and we value that. Rather than fearing failure, leaders fear not taking enough action, not trying hard enough creatively enough. In that way, leaders are like avid video game players who want to get to the next level. When you’re playing a video game, like Super Mario, you’re not thinking that there’s something wrong with you because Mario fell into a pit - because that’s reversible (you can restart). You’re thinking: how do I avoid that pit next time? How do I make it through these two blocks without getting killed by that green turtle? You’re thinking: how do I get more lives? Are there hacks? Truly great video gamers don’t give up the first time Mario loses all his life. They play over and over again until they get to the next level. They ask their friends for tips and tricks on how to avoid getting killed by the spiny clouds in level 4. They read online forums about secret worlds and hacks for getting infinite lives. Ultimately, they don’t view themselves as failures when they’ve actually failed at a certain level. Instead, they focus on defeating the boss and in their language, they talk about which level they *did* get to. Great leaders are the same. They don’t tie their self worth into what didn’t go right, but instead into how many times they’ve tried, how many different great ideas they tried and what they learned, and where they *did* get to. [For another lens on this, see PG’s essay Relentlessly Resourceful]

Summary: this is a fuller list, that we should all refer back to periodically and edit as we learn more. What I have written in my mind that I say again and again is this: CIO. Curiosity. Initiative. Ownership.