It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.
People work better when they know what the goal is and why. It is important that people look forward to coming to work in the morning and enjoy working.
At around 50 employees, you get to the point where you can't see what's going on all the time. So you start to have weekly check-ins, and you have days that go by without knowing exactly what's going on.
The challenge of the retail business is the human condition.
It is incredibly fun to run a company like AMD.
Since the earliest days of Eventbrite, we've made our people core to our mission. Our culture is an ever-evolving manifestation of those on our team. As people join, we believe in earning their trust by demonstrating we'll embrace them and help them grow.
We know that recognition and intrinsic motivation are important to our success, but the key is finding ways to effectively operationalize them.
I don't think value to the customer is achieved at the expense of employees' welfare.
Public hangings are teaching moments. Every company has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand CEO speeches. CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It's just cultural. People just don't want to do it.
No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings.
A company is a group organized to create a product or service, and it is only as good as its people and how excited they are about creating. I do want to recognize a ton of super-talented people. I just happen to be the face of the companies.
There is almost nothing more painful for a leader than seeing good people leave a growing organization, whether it's a priest watching a Sunday school teacher walk out the door or a CEO saying goodbye to a co-founder.
Unless you are building a new company from the ground up and can install caring as your businesses' cornerstone, you have to be willing to embark on a completely cultural overhaul so that, like a local mom and pop shop, every employee is comfortable engaging in customer service, and does it authentically.
I think management is about just that - managing people via man-to-man skills.
Everybody understands that you're supposed to say 'our employees are our most valuable asset' to the point where, even if it's really true, they're not going to really trust you until you've earned that - same with customers.
The majority of our happiness at work is determined by the people who surround us. Strong teams produce more content, launch more products, and sign more contracts. And most importantly, they have fun doing it.
All of my employees have passion, the philosophy of caring about the customer as an individual customer.
Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers. You can buy a person's hand, but you can't buy his heart; his heart is where his enthusiasm is. You can buy his back, but you can't buy his brain. That's where his creativity is. Treat employees as volunteers just as you treat customers as volunteers, because that's what they are. They volunteer the best parts - their hearts and minds.
Wal-Mart is an amazing success story. What I particularly admire very much about the late Sam Walton was his policy of valuing his employees. Giving value to employees is very rare in the retail industry. I also admire the strategies Walton used to build up his discount store concept.
Something as simple as transparency is really scalable because it quickly impacts the culture. And the culture is something everyone feels. If upper management is really transparent with everyone, that has this amplifying effect. Then you tend to attract players who operate that way, on the same wavelength, and coaches and fans.
Since most startups operate at a break-neck pace, with a concept to prove or a product to launch within a rapidly shortening runway of financing, company culture often gets shoved aside. This is a big, big mistake: Nobody serious about their business should put culture in the corner.
I like having young assistants in my office; they have energy, and I spend time with them to make sure they understand what we're doing. By investing in them, I'm investing in the magazine. All over 'Vogue,' 'Teen Vogue,' and 'Men's Vogue,' there are people who have been through not only my office but also many other offices at 'Vogue.'
You know, I think when people are in important positions in big organizations, they often get tied up with the minutia of managing money, managing things. They often forget that people deserve to be led.
A company's employees are its greatest asset and your people are your product
You'll get the maximum potential out of everyone on your team when you create harmony, when you treat each employee well.
