Ann Hiatt on Trillion Dollar Leadership (An Inside Look at Jeff Bezos & Eric Schmidt)
In this episode, James Currier interviews Ann Hiatt, discussing her experiences at Amazon, Google, and Yahoo, the importance of 'glue people' in tech, and her transition from Amazon to Google. They explore key strengths for success, characteristics of successful CEOs, and the importance of team dissent. Insights on mission statements, value-alignment hiring, and building significant companies are shared. The episode concludes with a discussion on Hiatt's book "Bet on Yourself".
Key Points
- Anne Hiatt emphasizes the importance of hiring for value alignment over core competencies, as aligning team members with the company's mission can drive motivation and efficiency.
- The CEOs Anne Hiatt worked with, like Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, demonstrated insatiable curiosity and humility, actively seeking out dissenting opinions to challenge their ideas and promote innovation.
- Betting on yourself involves taking calculated risks, volunteering for new opportunities before you feel fully ready, and methodically working towards a future where you've mastered the skills and challenges you aspire to tackle.
What few people see is that Trillion-Dollar Leadership focuses relentlessly on the “who.” Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt both aligned their companies around this question: Who are we serving and who is going to get us there?
Today, Ann Hiatt (former Chief of Staff / Executive Business Partner to Bezos and then Schmidt for 14+ years) shares with NFX Partner James Currier her insider stories, analysis, and patterns of Bezos' and Schmidt's leadership principles and mental models. She gives us intimate insight to:
- What crazy, long-term vision looks like, even in its earliest days
- 3-part framework for value-alignment in $Trillion teams
- How to hire and motivate people who will invent the future
- Tthe leadership mental models she learned from working directly with Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, for the benefit of Founders everywhere.
Read the NFX essay here - https://www.nfx.com/post/trillion-dollar-leadership/
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Transcript
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