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Does your virtue distinguish your culture?
Your employees will test you on your cultural virtues, either accidentally or on purpose, so before you put one into your company, ask yourself, “Am I willing to pass the test on this?”
Cultural rules can often become bloated sacred cows.
When we founded Andreessen Horowitz, we made a brand promise that became the basis of our culture. We guaranteed that if you raised money from us, the general partner from our firm who’d sit on your board would be a former founder or CEO of a significant tech company. We made that requirement of our general partners because we were determined to be the best place for technical founders—the inventors of this new product, who presumably lacked management experience—to learn how to grow into being a CEO.
Frank: What did you think? Ben: She can definitely do the job. The question is, Does she want to do that job? Frank: What do you mean? She’s interviewing for that job. Ben: She’s more ambitious than you think. Frank: What does that mean? I got nose to nose with Frank and said, “Just make sure you keep her bowl filled with kibble at all times, because the big dog has got to eat!”
Culture is about actions. If the actions aren’t working, it’s time to get some new ones.
To do this, you must accept that you can’t change reality, but you can assign it a new meaning.
But if you assign meaning to the layoff before anyone else, and you do so candidly and convincingly, your interpretation has a decent chance of being the one that everyone remembers.
note the “before”. Being honest and first is implied.
State the facts clearly . “We have to lay off thirty people because we came in four million dollars short of projections”—or
If your leadership caused or contributed to the setbacks that necessitated the layoff, cop to that.
Explain why taking the action you’re taking is essential to the larger mission and how important that mission is.
There are companies that don’t care about trust. Some leaders foster internal competition. They pit their employees against each other and let the best person win. This dynamic often prevails in businesses where most of the employees have the same function;
kimchi problems, because the deeper you bury them, the hotter they get.
If you encourage bad news, you must be careful not to disempower people in doing so.
If you know about a problem, there’s a reasonable chance that you caused it and have no idea how to fix it. Revealing it to your superiors means admitting guilt, and who likes to do that?
Encourage Bad News
I’d say, “Isn’t it great we found out about this before it killed us?” Or, “This is going to make the company so much stronger once we solve it.”
Good CEOs run toward the pain and the darkness; eventually they even learn to enjoy it.
“I know, with great certainty, that there are things that are completely broken in our company and I want to know what they are. If you don’t know what they are, then you are of no use to me in this meeting.”
“What do you think we should do differently?”
Focus on Issues, Not People
Look for Bad News in the Regular Course
