Self-guided hires reduce management overhead

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

1. 29:10

   And then if you support innovation in certain parts of the machine, you need to spread it as fast as possible. Yeah, and so this idea that you kind of hate managers that just pass along what to do, correct? You've eliminated them from your company? Yeah, exactly. I've seen so many by now, the last 10 years. Just simply what they do, they take information from their individual contributors and then they pass it to stakeholders, right? I mean, it's like, what's a value add, right?

2. 29:41

   Did you change direction of the team? No? I mean, they know what they're doing. Okay. Did you bring any innovation? Did you identify the easiest way to achieve the roadmap, right? No, not really. But I mean, what's your job? Like, you know, just, you know, taking numbers from them, passing them to myself. I just don't get it. You prune your team. is what I've heard, and you're searching for, I think, what you call self-guided missiles?

3. 30:04

   Self-guided people, yeah. It's almost like a founder and employee forum is what you're going after. I always joke that, you know, self-guided people are self-guided missiles, right? So you've got brilliant people. You don't even need to tell them what the goal is. They self-identify the goal, and then they self-reach it, right? So they're like self-guided missiles, which also identify the goals. then people who are good but not excellent you need to tell them the goal and then there without any kind of iteration they they will reach the goal average people you tell them the goal and then you need to spend weekly iterations with them to direct them to tell them what to do and then they will reach the goal right so you spend management time that's what i i don't want and then below average people okay you you gave them the goal uh you spend time on them and then most

4. 30:55

   likely they will not hit the goal, right? So that's the problem. So in order for you to have as many direct reports as possible, you just need to minimize management time spent on each of them. Let's just assume you've gotten rid of all your below average people anyways. How do you identify the average people and then do you just fire them as well? I do, yes. Like a lot of people I know who are very good executives, they struggle with this.

5. 31:19

   Why do you think they struggle? I think it's just, you know, they much more care about being empathetical to other people rather than caring about winning. So I think if you're much more weighted in terms of winning, right, your empathy to other people is second place and then you will do right decisions even if they are tough decisions. And then people who are kind of more empathetic and less attached to being a winner, then they might prioritize being number two or number three or number four rather than prioritize getting better people in their team.

6. 31:55

   Have you heard how Elon speaks about this? No. So he would tell the people managing the engineering team, he's like, if your engineers like you, you're not doing the right job. And his whole thing was exactly that. He's just like, we're here to win. We're here to achieve the goal. and then how people feel is like completely secondary to that. Yeah, exactly. That's more how you think. I think it's very important, whatever you hire an executive or you observe executives, like people who are very likable by their direct reports, they might not be the right people.

7. 32:29

   I think the best... Executives, they're very tough, right? Well, they might be likable, right? But then likable is never the goal for the executives. The goal is always to achieve the goal, right? With the minimum number of resources spent. So they're the best. Say more about this, because I've heard this, like, you like small, you like large outcomes that come from small inputs. You just said something like that just now.

8. 32:52

   Like, achieve the goal with the minimum amount of resources. Yeah. So it's almost like an art to, like, I know you don't think of yourself as an artist, for sure. But, like, there is, like, an art. You're trying to, like, it's not just you want to win. You also want to win, like, the right way. Where it's, like, you could win and you just expended way more resources than somebody else. But it's like, no, I want to try to find the minimum input possible for the largest outcome.

9. 33:13

   Yeah, exactly. If you think what founders do, what entrepreneurs do, what are, like, great executives do, okay, they have the goal.