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you want to get bad behavior you know out of an organization fast you know I don't think a business as a family unfortunately in a family you can't fire your family even though you sometimes want to snowflake CEO Frank slootman
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snowflake is now open for business the biggest software IPO ever I want to start with going into a new company and the Playbook that you use for the first 90 days we can't do everything so we have to choose not choosing is the worst
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thing you can do because now you're compromising everything how do you go about fighting bureaucracy hierarchy or charge mean nothing to us you know we operate through influence it doesn't matter where your title is or what
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organization you come from or who your boss is talk to me a little bit about about AI you know I I find it almost intoxicating to think about that's an incredibly valuable point I don't think I've ever heard anybody mention that before
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thank you I think when I was thinking about where to start I want to start with going into a new company and the Playbook that you use for the first 90 days can you walk me through what's done before what's done on day one and give me some detail
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over how you look at the next 90 days because that's really the time when you can transform a company yeah I uh I tend to take a little bit of exception to the term Playbook like it's a cookie cutter thing um and and it's not
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um it's also not a football game whether you know there's very precise rules on on on how to play the game it's very situational it's very much first principles I mean you come into a new situation and you just start processing on what
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you're what you're seeing um but that said yes there are things that uh you know you zero in on each and every time and that is you know are the right people on the bus you know are there you know are there people that
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need to get off the bus um you know we're inspecting the functions are they working are they not working do people think they work you know what what can we see very very quickly and then you start prioritizing okay you know some things you know are
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obvious that need to be dealt with ASAP uh there's really no point in waiting and uh that then everything starts to sort itself so you know there's usually a number of things that happen incredibly fast like week one
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and then there are things that happen slower you know and maybe you know 30 60 90 days but then in in 90 days you know I tend to be through sort of the initial you know triage of okay you know what let's get ourselves on a on a solid footing
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here where we can function and operate and and understand and and then we can you know much more incrementally iteratively you know progress you know from there so that's that's sort of the you know if you're asking for a
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framework that that would be it uh but I will tell you that you know every place I've been they're all different okay and I expect them to be different and you got to be very careful uh that that you don't get into a rinse and repeat mode
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where you know you just think you have a formula or an algorithm and you can just apply it over and over again that's just really simplistic thinking and it will lead you astray because you kind of try to observe things in a way you know like
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a five-year-old would they've never seen it before and and how are you reacting to it you know so so I understand there's no repeatable framework that you can just apply but I would imagine there's there's sort of repeatable principles and methods of thinking that you use what are the ones that you find the most helpful well I I look very hard uh at what's working what's not working and in other words you know some things are uh not working
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at all uh some things seem to be working reasonably well and then they're sort of the stuff that you're sort of humming and highing on um so obviously you prioritize the I mean I've I've sort of separated with
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people very very quickly because I think the function the functions that they were responsible for were barely breathing and at that point you know I don't hesitate you know I move on quickly immediately um you know I go after cultural issues
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you know people that are are just you know egregious violators of just things that we we all generally find normal and acceptable um you know we very quickly separate on Behavior you know performance is something that we will give more time
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Behavior we won't and that's because behavior is a choice it's not a skill set and if if you can't choose you know the way a normal person would then uh you know because you know when you come in as a new leader everybody's watching
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not just what you're doing what you're not doing and uh so if you're not moving on things that people that everybody is seeing right and uh then you know your your leadership brand is already in question because you know apparently
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you're blind and apparently you're hesitating uh or you're tolerant of of behavior that you shouldn't be tolerant off so yeah there's pressure because you know it's not just what you want to do it's the whole world's watching you know
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and uh you know if you're hesitant uh uh you know to move that will not help you you know you said behavior is a choice not a skill set I've never heard it quite framed that way I think that's a very um that's a really interesting way to look at it but you also said that you sort of you'll give time for performance but not for Behavior how much time how do you learn like when do you pull the plug when do you reinvest and how do you
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think about that well look you know behavior is uh it's it'll it'll smack you in the face uh usually but I've also seen things happen underground where you know I wasn't aware of it and I wasn't seeing it but it was happening because
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of what happened on calls that I wasn't on and uh you know one one time I uh I got tipped off by uh an employee of my former company that said luck you know that office over there is a complete you know disaster and uh because they knew
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people there and you know how sales people are all right everybody talks doesn't matter what company you're in um and then you know we started you know basically peeling away the layers and all of a sudden you know you come across
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you know really bad situations abusive situations you know harassment all these kinds of things uh because sometimes it's just not visible it's happening people don't like to talk about it you know they're worried that they're
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ratting on people and they don't want to go to their manager because they don't trust their manager you know they don't trust HR you know which is usually you know your second choice or maybe your first choice to go when you have you
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know real behavioral cultural problems and then it just it just keeps going on so uh I've been surprised before about how much you know wasn't visible to us not just to me but also the people that were that I have brought in that were
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close to me they were not seeing it either eventually you know believe me it it we will we will find it and we will get to it and then we will we will move at lightning speed um because you you want to get bad behavior you know out of an organization
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fast because that that is your leadership brand you you start tolerating that you know the there is there's no end in sight to what you're going to have trust is key to moving quickly I would imagine with velocity
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and organizations how do you go about establishing trust in a performance-based culture well you know people need to believe that you're that you're fair that you that it's not just personal preference right that you're
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not doing things because oh I don't like your haircut or whatever it has nothing to do with that it has to do with you know um how do we come together how do we behave as a group and you know if if you have you know people behaving in huge
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you know conflict with that then it's like yeah we are going to move on sometimes you know I I've had situations especially with young people where hey we need to do a reboot reset come back tomorrow I'm sure your parents
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didn't teach you you know to behave this way and you can do better but tell me that you can and I've seen people come back literally over the weekend and be a different person because for whatever reason they were LED astray by you know
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my managers that just you know were inspiring that kind of behavior that happens right people learn behaviors from what they see around them with a behavior that gets encouraged and they don't realize that they are just getting adrift you know from from
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their own upbringing and their own you know personal principles because that's sort of the environment starts to you know really it's a slippery slope that they get on and all of a sudden they're in a place where they don't even
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recognize themselves anymore and that's that's where a reset can really work you know because basically you're regrounding them to you know normal behaviors and then things can work out really nicely uh from there on but most
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of the time unfortunately it's like look you know you're not a fit here you know this is this is not who you are who we want to be and uh there's there's zero tolerance I mean Behavior like like you just said you know it's choosing you
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know it's it's just look we want you to be this way not that way and you know for some people it's like hey they learn behaviors in other companies it's part of who they are it's their culture this is not this is not for you man Alan
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malali put it to me this way he said uh when you're you're choosing a behavior that's not the organizational behavior that's desired you're choosing not to be a part of the organization I thought that was a powerful way to think about
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it yeah your uh you're you're separating and you're in you're in violation of the the driving culture is really important because if you don't um you know other people will will fill that void right and you get subcultures
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in a city or a division because strong personalities can do that so unless you are you are filling that void right um it will get filled by something or somebody else and before you know it you know you're just a grab bag of stuff and
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it's just a bunch of feed thems running a company well you don't want that team the company needs to stand for something this is who we are you know seems like there's a lot of organizations that are more family based I mean they take a
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very similar approach to a family and they don't necessarily think in terms of performance what are your thoughts on that well you know we we've talked about this quite a bit in uh in recent years you know I don't think a business as a
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family um because you know um unfortunately in a family you can't fire your family even though you sometimes want to um you have to tolerate them and deal with them and off sometimes in the most egregious way that is just the nature of families I mean all the dysfunction that comes with it um but in in business it's more like being a professional sports franchise right here you're assembling the best players and uh you know we may be
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friends but we don't have to be friends because we're not coming together on the basis of friendship we're coming together on the basis of mission you know in other words share purpose and uh you know we're very demanding of
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each other and it's really about you know our respective contributions to the to the mission That's the basis of our relationship so it is much more akin to uh to professional sports I think that's the correct analogy now some companies
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don't want to be that way you know certainly uh you know companies like Salesforce and and even Google come to uh to mine but you know in the end they're laying people off too by the thousands okay so I guess it it's not family after all you know so do you
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think most organizations try to do too much there seems to be a natural entity entropy that sort of builds up right you start with one thing it becomes successful and then you sort of expand your footprint and before you know it
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you have you know before Steve Jobs came back to Apple they have I don't know what was it like 20 or 30 different products the first thing he did was narrow the focus down to four key products how do you think about that
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yeah well the interesting thing about about Steve was that uh he had a he had a standard call to insanely great which you know I remember at the time there was kind of a thing in Silicon Valley um so if it didn't meet that standard
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you know it would get scratched really really quickly if it wasn't you know incredibly exciting and world changing and all that you know we just we just couldn't be bothered to you know even have that on the pallet and and work on
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that so I think that's a great way to be by the way to just demand to be inspired and be in awe you know uh of the nature of the mission and what we're trying to do because that's that gives energy that gets life that creates excitement it
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creates Focus uh it creates urgency and people come to work you know with a sense of mission rather than well I have to be here you know for my paycheck um so it's really applying that filter rather than I got too many things going
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on there just aren't too many insanely great things so it will it will necessarily sort itself to a small set you know when you come in uh you also believe in sort of doing less bad doing better and narrowing the focus how does
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that manifest itself in an organization like how do you go through and decide where to focus and what to cut on well it's uh we constantly have conversations you know around prioritization you know what what is we can't do everything so
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we have to choose and uh not choosing is the worst thing you can do because now you're compromising everything um so the question is you know we we use I use all kinds of different ways of trying to figure out you know what what is most critical and
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then by the way and we we revisit that conversation constantly and it has to be sort of you know reaffirming but it's like hey if you can only do one thing you know which one would you pick and and and and why and what would be the
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consequences of not doing you know the other things so we start sort of strapping it strapping it out for size and like can I live with that or what would happen if if if if that was the scenario here the problem is you know
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were you over time people create you know they're a mile wide in an inch deep right we creates more and more and more and more and and pretty soon we're swimming in glue you know we're lethargic you know we're moving like
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like molasses and uh that that saps the energy you know out of the people and and the organization so what I go through is okay let's just let's just take things out let's just uh you know do things in sequence rather than in parallel
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um because you know we we just want to be lightning fast on the things that really matter and really you know make sure that we're appropriately provisioned right because oftentimes you know everybody gets you know 100th of
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the resources as opposed to getting you know 50 of their resources things all of a sudden go a lot faster when you have to focus and and the resources and the provisioning things really move right uh whereas if you have to share with 50
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other things and nothing moves now so being very aware of it now you can create focus in different groups right when you get bigger as a as a company right it's really about you will be multi-focused and you will be multi-purpose but you have now way more
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resources you can you can and we often have done that by creating um you know product teams with general managers on them that that were measured you know on the progress you know against their targets right so they they
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could really go after their targets for their vertical industry or their product type or their Channel they could own it they could they could declare victory at the end of the month so you can create focus in in in a multi you know Mission
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organization you absolutely can I mean certainly Google was actually quite legendary for doing a lot of that stuff because they had a lot of successful things that they did and I think there's many other companies that have done that
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as well but you don't do it do it through a large you know monolithic functional organization because now everybody is a small in a giant wheel and that's uh that doesn't create uh you know the momentum that you want you know it in your experience is is there a number of priorities that people can focus on and deliver really exceptional results is it like one or two or three obviously it's probably not 10 is there a number that seems to be
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key well um obviously greatly depends on on what it is you know I I don't uh start off saying it has to be this number or that number I just want to see what it is because these things are not created equal it might just be one thing because
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it's just so big that it's going to consume us which is done fine you know sometimes it's not and then we can we can address more obviously more than one thing most product organizations obviously have uh you know have lists of
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projects and uh you know maintaining moving all these things along you know with with the focus and and and velocity and momentum yeah that's the art of management you know you will know you know when things are grinding down to a halt and things are too slow momentum is not happening um you know that you know that's why revisiting prioritization over and over again is really important you sort of want to convince yourself again and
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again this is correct this is correct or no it's not it's not working you know based on the on what we're seeing you know and uh that's okay you know you don't know everything ahead of time right so you you learn day by day um and you calibrate and and and adjust you know from there it seems like bureaucracy naturally creeps into organizations if it's not fought how do you go about fighting bureaucracy and what's your role in that yeah that's
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that's that's a really important observation because you know larger companies they they tend to become their own worst enemies it's not what the world does to them it's what they do to themselves and introducing bureaucracy in other
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words undue process you know a lot of friction in terms of getting things done um so I often talk about this in my communications you know to the companies like hey you know we we have to hang on to our youth our Innovative muscle our
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audacity our daring and uh you know I always say look you know hierarchy or church mean nothing to us you know we operate through influence if you can convince people great and if you can't well then you just can't it doesn't
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matter where your title is or what organization you come from or who your boss is so it's it's really it's an it's an extreme meritocracy it's really your ideas are judged on their Merit you know not on you know where they're coming from
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um so you know it's you you fight it I always say let's be like Peter Pan you know we never grow up you know at least not entirely you know so uh we we maintain that chip on our shoulder that attitude um and you know back to the insanely
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great thing right if we're not inspired what we're working on that's a problem in and of itself we got to go get that back fast I think I remember from one of the interviews I was listening to to prepare for this that you look for
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maladjusted people um I'm probably one of those people myself but uh you know yes I mean look you know where does Drive come from where does ambition come from you know it is a lack of adjustment because if you were a perfectly balanced person you wouldn't have any ambition you're so happy with where things are you barely have a reason to get up in the morning you know um but you know male adjusted people they they just have this
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this disparity between where they are and what they want to do and what they want to prove I mean all of us want to prove things either to our parents if they're still around or our siblings or our friends or people that didn't believe in us
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all this stuff and uh that's very powerful you know I remember you know I I had a we had a great accent with their domain back in 2009 and uh you know we were very proud of the work we did because it was a startup it was just you
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know we didn't have product Market fit for the longest time and it became uh you know we we were a bigger accident than the 10 next the next 10 competitors combined all this kind of stuff but then people started saying oh you're just
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lucky you know how that goes right well you know that that just puts on the afterburners uh you know for me it's like I'll show you luck you know and um that's that's attitude and attitude is something I like in people I like people
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that have attitude that have a chip on their shoulder that have a burning you know need and desire to prove something now over the years that will wear off a little bit that that's just the nature of things I mean you when you're 18 you
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have a very different life experience than when you're 40 years older you know depending on what happened in between um but I I generally uh you know uh like people who sort of constantly are very very strongly aware of where they are
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versus where they could be you know I I I rarely use the word proud or Pride because that signals you know a uh profound happiness with the status quo and I don't have that you know because I'm always at odds with the status quo
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that's sort of the the natural milk content you know uh posture that we have yeah we're here but we could be there so what gives how do we get there right so we're always envisioning a future that is different than the one that
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we're that we're currently experiencing if we could do it all over again what would we do right those kinds of conversations so it's very refreshing it's also uh um it's it's you're constantly sort of Reinventing you know what's going on and
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uh also keeps you safe because there are people out there who don't have Legacy they don't have nothing existing they start from scratch well they're going to get the better of you unless you know you you develop that attitude you know
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in your own company your own business as well it seems like the natural state for most people is to get reasonably good at something like driving a car and then there's a bit of a complacency that sort of sets in it's like I get to average or
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slightly above average in my job and then I sort of like let off the pedal how do you prevent that well um obviously you know their relationship you know what the people around you your team and and your managers like you know
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are people driving you to higher standards or are they not you know are they accepting you know of the way things are but you know one way we do this um you know this is throughout your organization uh all our employees role
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that are not in sales because sales people are on on commission plans but you know every quarter you know the company has to you know earn the bonus pool in other words the money that we're going to use for bonuses we have to earn
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it and we tell people how how we earn it exactly what the metrics are and you know we share all of that so they know hey none of us are going to get bonuses unless the company gets paid but once once we are once the company owns it now
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we're starting to allocate the uh the bonus money to managers and departments and we just say look you use this money you know to send messages to all your people you know and uh in other words we want to see don't peanut butter it out
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there needs to be a bell Curt we want to know who was you know deserving of 2x 3x versus who is deserving of zero um so that we we see the full spectrum the bell curve if you will uh of people that are you know performing you know
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incredibly well and uh and the ones who are not in good standing this is not so much about oh I don't want to give money to the people who aren't doing well it's more are we giving enough to the ones who are doing great right I don't want
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the great ones feel like the treat the same way as people that are obviously not in good standing that that just that just you know that creates a that's not a performance culture so um we do this every quarter and um in
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the beginning when when people have not lived this life before and it's very challenging for them it's like oh my God I gotta have a conversation like this about money and performance every single quarter every single person how do I do that
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well people get used to it because during the quarter they now start to have a different you know a much sharper lens um the work and how the work's getting done and they keep notes and they make notes and then they can really give a
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credible message back and employees will also ask hey uh if I wanted to have 150 bonus or whatever number uh what do I have to do and by the way this is exactly the conversation you want to have what do I have to do damn good
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question let's go have that conversation what do you have to do right everybody wants to Aspire to something they want to be better but you got to force that conversation to happen in such a way that it has consequences right in terms of compensation and recognition and celebration and all of that um so I'm big on recognizing you know great work I think great people need to be and need to be celebrated and rewarded and singled out in in every way
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possible again that's a that's a merit performance uh culture you know these days that is being frowned upon in in in popular culture but in in Enterprises this is really important people need to become the best version of themselves
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and this is this is part of how we go about doing that you know aside from money what other sort of mechanisms do you use internally to reward people well um it's recognition and and celebration you know um you know we for example we we have uh
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Equity Awards in in sales for people that are landing designated customers that we desperately want and uh you know we we they're often surprised because they may have forgotten about it because it's not a you know it's just
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something that only happens when you you know you you land certain customers and uh you know we all get on it you know to send notes you know have conversations uh references in other conversation all of a sudden everybody knows in the whole
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company like wow this guy this team you know uh did this and they're like wow you know they they're bathing and Glory you know I mean and uh you know sales people live for that I mean you have to live for money I know you know they're
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they're coin operated but they also live for for recognition that goes out as just uh you know it's it's very very rewarding it's in a very deep you know psychological way it's very rewarding so you want to bring that don't take it for
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granted you know it's not like oh that's just doing your job yes it is but at the same time man this is this is this is amazing okay do you really want to let people know and especially when it comes from me as a CEO and they're like my God you're taking time out of your day to tell me this I'm like yes we are you know well most organizations are sales organizations and I guess I'm wondering uh we we all sort of recognize a bad
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sales organization because that business will go out of business but what's the difference between a good sales organization and a great sales organization you get much better sales organization when you have full alignment
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um in the entire company so that everybody works you know for sales effectively we always say that we're all working for sales here because they're the tip of the spear and the rest of us are really the wood behind the arrowheads you know that's
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sort of the way I characterize the relationships between sales and and the rest of the company and I always tell them we're all working for you because if we're not working for you I don't know what we're doing um and sales needs to feel that wood behind
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the arrowhead like everybody is you know is is killing themselves to help me uh succeed and it's not so much that that it's all about selling stuff and transactions and Deals and all of that it's just that sales experience is the
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reality of the marketplace the first and the most profound and the most profound way right the rest of your organization sits much farther away from the the cold Winds of competition and and some of the ugliness that
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happens and the uncertainties and the anxieties and all these kinds of things so yeah sales is harder which is why the rest of our organization needs to be in alignment and in support uh you know of them to be lime is really important
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right that we really provision the whole company behind that because they are experiencing a reality in the marketplace and we the rest of us have to adjust to that we got to help them we got to change things and so it's a
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constant process of of basically living their experience and what does it mean and how often are we seeing this and what are we going to do about it but in terms of your your question I mean one thing that's really important to me I'm
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I'm a stickler for consistent execution in sales organization meaning that every quarter everybody shows up you know what what we can't have is like well yeah the back quarter but I'm going to do better next quarter I don't want that okay we
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need to run ourselves and our organization in such a way that we show up all of us every single period you know every single line of business Channel geography and and so on right and if if that becomes the culture the expectation and
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the reality yeah you're going to do way better than the rest of them because you know sales tends to be uh you know very uh unevenly distributed thing and you you want to work on that and uh so the expectation is you know I don't care how
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far ahead of plan you are you have a shitty choir that's not a problem with me I can't build on you I can't trust you I can't expect that you're going to deliver and I and you work on that all the time right people that are that are
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not uh consistent that you better you better find a way to get there okay and not overnight but you're gonna make moves what moves are you going to make what are the reasons that this is inconsistent what are you doing differently right because we always say a good quarter is one where you exceed your numbers but also one where you set yourself up for the next one you got to do both it's not just about making the quarter you also have to lay the
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foundation for the next one and the rest of the year so you got to think much more long term much more strategic you know about your business rather than I'm just trying to hit a number for the quarter you know I think of that sort of
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like running a billiards table right like where you leave the ball matters for the next shot it's a good announcement just anybody can make one shot but you want to run the table exactly there's a natural tension between sales
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and product and at the start of an organization's life cycle you can sort of get away with customizing the product per sale but when you start getting into Enterprise you can't do those things how do you think about the relationship
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between sales and product and who's driving the bus and who's not and how that looks yeah you know there's there's tension there uh sometimes healthy sometimes you know not as healthy and uh you know it's it's a relationship that
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has to be managed very aggressively certainly want a product or organization that really views the reality of sales is their problem okay as opposed to well you guys are just not smart enough or whatever um and they're interested in all kinds
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of things that have nothing to do you know what the sales organization's succeeding um so the the alignment again is is number one but you have situations where you know sales goals this is not working okay and we have enough data points to
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say that it's not working okay what are we going to do um so that dialogue goes on all the time um you know we make mistakes you know we we prioritize incorrectly uh we're too slow on certain things I mean all these
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things happen right but that's a that's a continuous force field that we're we're working on um you know the the thing about sales is that you know great sales people can't sell about product right but lousy sales people can sell a great product okay and
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that's that's very important because you know oftentimes in Silicon Valley they think that sales is the problem and I'm like no because if you had a great product you know even an average or below average salesperson will be able
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to sell it right and uh typically sales problems are are product problems but typically that's not the the initial assessment because you know you don't want your baby to be called ugly and you know investors are on the table have
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invested in your technology so you don't want to openly you know sort of uh face your demons and and really confront things the way they really are and uh that then leads to a focus and and solutions that don't work like well
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let's hire another VP of sales well it won't work because your product is the problem you know so so I I do hold the product people to a very high standard because we have to make very average uh sales people uh productive in a very
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predictable manner that's hard and that's exactly right that is where the focus should be because if I have to hire brilliant sales people even though even brilliant sales people can't sell a lousy product there aren't that many of
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them so that's not a scalable model would you go as far as saying a great product sells itself almost um I've certainly seen that um you know with my own eyes uh in in in in various companies you know I used to say about snowflake it's like a
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two-year-old golden retriever all I gotta do is uh just separate them around and everybody's gonna want one and uh it sometimes wasn't that far off because it was the the benefits uh were amazing I mean you benchmarked
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these products and sometimes they were order magnitude faster you know because of all the the architectural breakthroughs and the the provisioning of the workloads um so people were like wow this I mean that wow experience is just it's just
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Priceless right so all you have to do is get people to try it and they go like yeah this is a no-brainer and so in that sense it almost sells itself I mean we used to see that with with companies like VMware as well I mean you know once people were sold on virtualization I mean all they were doing is picking up orders right this is this is actually you know a bit of a problem because you know you hire people from a very successful company
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um they've never really sold because they were just riding the momentum you know what I mean and then they get into a company where they do have to really sell and they do have to campaign and they do have to fight and they have no
33:46
idea because we didn't we never had to do that before right so I I like to hire sales people who have really been in fights because that breeds you know the type of skills and focus that you really want to have rather than people
33:59
that are good at uh you know quoting and picking up orders you know so that's an incredibly valuable point I don't think I've ever heard anybody mention that before what are the methods of thinking that you would use sort of in the first 90
34:12
days to assess the degree to which the problem is not sales or or product like how would you go about determining where that problem lies do we have the wrong sales organization the wrong culture do we have the wrong product and and
34:27
obviously it's probably a little bit of both but how do you go about thinking about that yeah and by the way it is often a little bit of both which is what creates the confusion uh you know around these topics but look you know I'm
34:41
I can't tell you how many uh customer slash Prospect calls have already been in this week it's Friday you know and there were numerous levels to talk to seven or eight Banks this week you know the cios CEOs look I I experienced
34:54
reality the way the sales people are obviously a little bit differently because I talked to higher level people and organizations but you know I experienced things firsthand what you don't want to do is sort of you know
35:05
rely on information you know because you just get a second hand third hand fourth hand and you don't know whether you're dealing with a feeble person that has no fortitude or whether you're dealing with a real issue so there's no substitute
35:19
you know for in inspecting things at the front lines and really be part of it I always tells people as if I can't sell it I'm not expecting you to sell it okay so if I if you're going to get your nose blood I'm going to get my nose bloody
35:31
right and so you need to get to reality in other words you need to see things as they really are so you got to be very very careful with what second and third hand you know uh information and sometimes you know I I gotta whip people
35:46
up the hill it's like look you know you guys you guys are basically you know you're intimidated by the marketplace um you know your Your Own Worst Enemy because you just lack fortitude and confidence and you can't you know
36:00
articulate things and that's you know that's all under the header of sales enablement right and uh you know I personally get after this um I'm very aggressive in terms of uh you know really uh pressing our case in front of you know the customers in the
36:16
marketplace because I need my organization to do the same thing if I'm not doing it you know then then you know they're not either or they're not going to go at it with the same confidence and fortitude so leadership is important there you want to set an example that people go like oh I guess that's the way it is then then you know I should be too so you you bring forward but you know people see me talking in front of a customer they go
36:41
and they see the customer react and they see the customer ask questions they're like hey I can do that too okay now there's no better learning than right in front of where the action uh happens so um you you want to bring that today if
36:55
you just want to post some data sheets and some videos and what what have you and then sit back and wait for things to happen you're going to get killed you know so you you want to press all the way into the end zone and then people go
37:06
like okay I think I can do it you know I've seen it the results are there it works you know we talked about positioning yourself for future success and we sort of use the the analogy of running the billiards table what are the
37:19
ways that an organization positions themselves for Success tomorrow that is hard to do today that's hard to compete with but makes tomorrow easier I've always told told other CEOs especially people that are sort of first-time CEOs
37:35
and and new um that you can count on the fact that you will be confronted with a need for transformation because it happens to all of us and the question is will you recognize it will you recognize it in time and will you be able to execute on it
37:55
these are all super big questions because you walk into a situation it works and then one day you wake up it's not working as well anymore the world has changed and the world does change the technology changes and we see a lot
38:10
of that right now with AI obviously people's perspectives and and narratives they're all up for grabs I mean it's one of the most disruptive things I've ever seen happening uh in in the world of software in all my years
38:22
um you know of doing things but you also you know the early adopters you know and in Jeffrey Moore style of of thinking uh are very very different than you know when you get across to Chasm and you're dealing with a more mainstream customer
38:37
um because they they buy differently you know I people ask me you know why why do you think this is sort of a late adopter I'm like well because he hasn't bought yet that's why he would have bought already but he was an earlier adopter
38:49
okay so by definition he didn't why didn't he okay so he has different ways of assessing and thinking you know about the value about the risk all these kinds of things and these things are are difficult to observe sometimes you know
39:04
you just wake up and you're like you know what things are different though they have changed just in in the aggregate you just sense the change that is that is that is happening um and then this becomes a question okay you know
39:16
um we have to adjust with the change we've got to do all these uh you know all these things but the need for transformation people don't expect it because we have a we have a very you know humans have a very linear attitude
39:27
about the world in other words it's just going to continue as it is if we rinse and repeat and it will never change no it will change and it's just a matter of you know can you recognize it and can you do it in time and then will you know
39:40
you know how to successfully deal with that and a lot of people can't they'll fail on recognizing it or they fail on the timing of it or they fail on the only execution of it and we've had a lot of great Enterprises obviously that we
39:54
all know I mean you look at uh you know the the 1400 the 14 500 I mean how many companies are still there that were there 20 years ago and 30 years ago and 50 years ago right um so you gotta as as a leader as a CEO
40:09
you got to be extremely open-minded about what is happening right and not assume the linearity of the of the business so you know um it takes many forms some things are incredibly disruptive you know some things are um you know are marginal
40:27
um so that's you know by the way the rest of your organization will not have this posture because it got their heads down they're very much in a pattern in the mode so that means that you really you don't want to have that that mode about you as
40:40
the CEO as a leader you want to be basically you make everybody else work you got your head up when they have their head down you know you mentioned AI is the most transformative thing you've seen talk to me a little bit
40:52
about about AI well you know I I've been in the world of data uh I've not always been the world data but I started out very early uh in in my career in the world of of data and I've gotten back to it again and again and again so I've seen the
41:07
challenges from the early days on um you know just being able to take transactional records and and being able to put them into a format where it was sort of human readable and and sensible uh you know for humans to
41:22
consume and I mean this is going all the way back to the late 80s you know when we have what we back then called decision support systems we needed I mean we didn't even have the term of business intelligence or none of those
41:33
terms even existed back then but you know especially and then by the way and there was only certain verticals that did this like retail was really big on us you know they would be able sort of break the skus down by you know by by
41:44
location and channel and store and all these things very very granular detailed data these are a massive Mainframe processes that would that would run usually on a monthly basis you know let alone on the 24-hour cycle so every
41:56
month you would get there that was already a big deal back then so things have have progressed our relationship with data has progressed you know very uh very slowly painfully difficult and uh obviously the the biggest change we
42:10
had until now was really the introduction of search right I mean it's not 25 years ago I mean I became a search junkie I still went to this day because I find it so empowering in terms of your relationship with data but search now feels old because you know it matches on strings uh it's it's stateless I mean it doesn't remember a damn thing from one search to uh to the next and it has no context you know if you search some snowflake you might get
42:35
the weather you might get you know you might get the the social phenomena or you might get the company because it doesn't know it just knows the word um so we now have opportunities to to massively enrich and contextualize
42:50
you know search you know uh searches for data so I really see what data is going to just get catapulted into the future here just just unbelievable we'll be able to ask harder and harder and harder questions um of our own proprietary data and get
43:06
better and better and and and more you know valuable answers I mean it's it's fairly easy you know to use natural language interfaces now the whole text to SQL has become you know table Stakes I mean you you can you can interrogate
43:21
you know uh you know a sales force data on snowflake you know what just just text to SQL and it's really nice by the way I mean oh it's a whole lot better than using dashboards uh for for the most part not all of it but for the most part
43:34
so fine you know let's just step forward but you know I want to ask very business specific questions you know yeah the insurance company may say Hey you know I have disproportionate you know bodily injury claims in the State uh compared
43:46
to the surrounding states you know a what's going on B uh am I going to have it again next quarter see what might I do about it right should we just stop you know underwriting in this geography altogether which is what's happening in
43:59
California right now and uh or or you know we obviously it's a pricing issue because how do we price risk you know uh is it a policy issue those are questions that you know God analysts will be launched on right because people would do their reasoning not the system um and uh you know I I find it almost intoxicating to think about that you you basically you know um the system becomes like a an advisor to you in in in literally in damn near
44:29
real time so this is this is this our relationship with data is going to get amped up here to use a term in ways that we just can't even uh imagine obviously content generation is is what everybody's looking at and they find it
44:43
very cool under this you know um but how is it going to work in medicine how's it going to work in education I mean it's just uh it's just it's going to be a renaissance you know in in intelligence and Computing and and the how we mobilize data for for
44:59
purposes um yeah it's uh it's a great time to be uh be alive and I think uh The Innovation will derive a lot of uh a new employment we will also you know have a lot of uh you know obsolescence you know in jobs and even even functions and industries and processes but that's the nature of um you know of of a capitalist you know free economy creative destruction is just the nature of stuff and uh we do pretty well with that even though it can
45:28
be disruptive I mean we we used to learn one profession and that would last us for our lifetime now you need to shift gears more than once a year lifetime because it's moving so much faster right than uh anything we've ever seen so the
45:42
acceleration is going to be dizzying there's no no two ways about it you know is there anything that gives you hesitation about AI yeah well you know yes of course and then people talk about this you know all the time I mean social
45:54
media create the fake news phenomenon because you know so many people use social media to inform their reality which I don't I don't recommend that by the way I always tell people turn that off man because you know you're
46:06
distorting what you how you really should be interpreting uh thanks and and I don't like that uh but social media had a lot of good things uh you know obviously but it also had you know the the flip side you know is that you know
46:20
people uh it became very very powerful influencing people in terms of how they experience the world uh obviously this can take that to the nth degree you know I mean it can change the realities completely you know uh the fact that we
46:34
can create avatars and voices that you will never be able to distinguish from from real um you know How's that gonna go right you can see the uh the opportunities for for abuse becoming extraordinary yeah we're gonna have to deal with that you
46:52
know but uh we have to still count on The Good Will of men and women because you know that's all we have at the end of the day right so one of the things we talked about earlier I want to come back to you just before we end the interview
47:03
is you talked about we all make mistakes how do you handle a mistake at the moment you how do you recognize that you've made a mistake and then what do you do when you've made a mistake me personally or in general you personally
47:15
oh so you know I I use Mystics uh as uh I don't want to say not though right word maybe but it's like a an up and it's a cultural moment and a teaching moment because uh it's actually good for me to go oh I really screwed this up
47:32
because it sort of you can do really well in the world by being a fast course corrector what is devastating in organizations is when people defend bad decisions okay but if if you can fail fast I was devastating nearly used to
47:46
say to fail fast if you can fail fast and correct you can do really well so mistakes can become a real cultural moment like hey you know I really screwed this up let's unpack this and understand what were we thinking you
47:59
know what were the assumptions that were wrong right and then you know that's a good culture because now everybody goes like look I I can revisit my dumb decisions now all right in other words fail fast you know have urgency around
48:12
your bonehead you know those issues that you made and the things that are not working that's really what you want and uh when I do it you know it's basically now it gives permission to everybody else to do it I I'm basically politically neutralizing you know the
48:27
idea of making mistakes because making mistakes everybody who makes decisions will make mistakes you know people always asking what are your biggest mistakes well my biggest mistakes are always around hiring you know it's like
48:38
you know I I've hired a lot of great people over the years but I also made my share of mistakes because that's just the nature of things right but if you're willing to confront it I sometimes I I talked about this in the book as well I
48:50
said look you know I make I may make mistakes again and again on the same topic you know I said but the one thing I will tell you is I won't stop until I get it right okay and I will in other words I'm willing to say again and again
49:02
that I screwed it up but I won't stop you know until we're in the place that we uh that we need to be so that's that's very powerful message to people to say look this is the behavior we want confront your demons basically uh you know go after the things that didn't work that were wrong um God if you can get people to because most people you know they're afraid they're going to defend their decisions and uh and especially when it's a gray
49:28
zone right in other words it's you know some people are you know not good enough to keep not bad enough to fire you know the those are the worst cases because like well you know a person looks nice speaks speaks well articulate you know
49:41
but but they're the ultimate passengers they never move a dial right and and you know those are the ones that always survive you know way too long you know until we have mass layoffs and all this kind of crap going on but you can get
49:53
people to say no you know when there's doubt there's no doubt you know have a higher bar you know have high conviction that's hard you know trying to get your organization to get to that level you know of of you know basically the very
50:05
unyielding uncompromising that's hard because most people want to lay the bar Lower and you know not rock to boat not be confrontational because all that stuff is hard hard you know those passengers are probably the easiest ones
50:18
to hire too because they get to the interview they say the right things they check all the right boxes and then they come in interviews are notoriously like difficult to to hire with I would imagine because you just really want to
50:29
see on the job performance how do you how do you assess that well uh you're exactly right interviews are uh far less valuable uh not for all roles I mean there's roles where our interviews like for example in engineering I mean
50:42
they're like they put them in front of a whiteboard and say here here's you know yeah write code that does this so so you you can you can very much you know test people's skills uh you know that way but you know in in in the other roles where
50:57
you know um you know people become good at selling themselves right because they've learned that over the years and they they talk well they look well and they're very pleasant and they're getting along and all these things but
51:09
the way to find out anything about people is to fully surround where that person has been okay and you know if they've been at company a you know you go find out who in my company was at company a while this person was there
51:23
and let's go I'm gonna go ask inside the company first who knows this person because they you were a contemporary and you know what was that person's reputation and and so on you'll learn a you learn a whole bunch of things very
51:35
quickly you don't even have to go outside of your own company to uh you know to find out and then you see if if consistency you know are of information is is manifesting or it's still confusing and contradicting and all this
51:48
kind of stuff and then we go outside you know we we go call people that we know or have known and say hey um you really and you you really want to hear from people that have directly worked with them and say what was the experience
51:59
like it doesn't have to be an indictment type of conversation it's like look I just want to know more about this person how did this go you know tell me some stories you know because now now you start to really get color and texture
52:11
around a person as opposed to the sniff test which is what an interview really is and that the thing is you're going to learn you you're going to get great conviction now because you're like you know what I'm I think we're really on to
52:23
a great person or you're like wow you know I'm glad I think these calls because you know we were we were this this was not trending you know correctly at all and I find that people uh Rush especially in fast-growing companies you
52:38
know we have hiring targets and they're just slamming bodies and that's just it's the worst thing ever I'd rather hire you know more slowly but better than faster and I have to do a lot of you know course Corrections along the
52:50
way and people are lazy they're like oh yeah that's probably okay no probably okay is not the standard you need to know and have conviction and you need to take the time and do the work to develop that conviction especially in places
53:05
like Europe where so difficult to separate and so expensive and so time consuming the opportunity cost is enormous you really you know need to do the work right so you got to bring that into your recruiting culture it's like
53:18
it's not like a checker box see you on Monday no yeah it sounds like you just hit on something that I think is one reason that your cultures are always so successful which is you just Elevate the standard yep I mean I'm having eye
53:31
standards goes back to the insanely great uh Steve Jobs I mean he he had some really hard time dealing with with mediocrity in in any you know in any realm and uh it's very hard to live with by the way because Steve was super hard to live with I mean
53:48
everybody was a and didn't know people's names and all that yes I know it's hard to live with and personally I'm not that way by the way I know I've known three people that way at all uh but at the same time you know the
53:59
leadership needs to really reinforce we have very high standards and then other people will want to follow that okay they will they will do it because they feel like that that is the way that is the right way leadership sets tone sets
54:14
expectations and if you don't do that yeah you become the California DMV the worst goddamn place in the world to try and get something done you know and uh so that's that's the lack of leadership you know people go slow they go
54:28
substandard I mean it's just a hellish world you know it's like I feel sorry for the people who have to be there so as leaders let's create an environment where great people feel like yeah this is a good place this is a great place they have
54:41
urgency they have high standards they move fast you know all that that's what you want that creates energy it gives energy it just lets people the the right people will love it and some of the wrong people will go like you know what
54:52
this place is too intense for me I can't handle it you know I need to yeah the kids from school at four or four pm I get that right but it's like culture it doesn't mean that people are bad you know when they don't like the culture it
55:04
just means that they are not a fit they're just different you know uh we always end on the same question Frank which is what is success for you you know um it's just not a word that you know I'm constantly thinking about or you're
55:19
thinking about that you know at all um you know I'm I'm by the way your thinking gets sometimes poisoned by the type of words that you use and the concepts that you're preoccupied with I mean people sometimes ask me what's your
55:32
Legacy Legacy is not a word that I use okay um it's not I I find that very sort of a lot of self-absorption around that stuff like you know I I need to live beyond the grave I I really don't need to and I don't want to be you know feel so important that that's even a question you know so you know um I need to my Enterprises that I'm in charge of must succeed you know they must succeed because that is the contract that I have with all my
56:01
stakeholders you know there's not just investors obviously I want them to succeed because the investors succeed with us my employees are going to succeed as well and I'm trying to give my employees you know an incredible shot
56:12
at changing their their station in life advancing their careers where you know 10 years from now they still feel like oh that's the best thing I I ever did and I get a lot of that from from from people that have worked with us in our
56:24
prior companies and it's very personally rewarding to hear that that they still you know have you know sort of this warm feelings about the experience that they that they had not just the money they made but just the people they were with
56:37
the things they did and they became better than they ever thought they were right um that's what we that that's success to me is is is is achieving that in my my partner ecosystem I want them to be wildly excited about being our partner
56:52
they're succeeding with us right so so we we try to make all parties uh you know succeed in their own worlds you know with us employees have their own agenda they're families they have circumstances they have issues
57:05
um so you know we help them and and everybody else that's that's part of our uh our our universe I guess that's the best way I can answer that question you know thank you so much for taking the time today Frank that was an amazing conversation