5 Leadership Lessons from Interviews with Top CEOs

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5 LEADERSHIP LESSONSFROM INTERVIEWS WITH TOP

CEOSSpencer Rascoff, CEO, Zillow Group

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LESSON 1Inexperience can be your biggest

advantage, enabling you to see solutions that seem viable to you but not to others

who know your space.

@spencerrascoff

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Aaron LevieCEO, Box

“Silicon Valley – and tech innovation in general – thrives on a set of people every couple years who know nothing about history coming in and saying, ‘What’s Microsoft? What’s Google? We are trying to solve a problem.’”

@spencerrascoff

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LESSON 2Mature companies drive innovation by

focusing on people and giving them the best infrastructure to stay competitive.

@spencerrascoff

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Christa QuarlesCEO, OpenTable

“OpenTable was on a monolithic code base up until 2012. Now, we can ship every day. If you start thinking about rapid, iterative, A/B testing culture, that was something that wasn’t even possible for us technically just a handful of years ago.”

@spencerrascoff

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LESSON 3Servant leadership drives productivity and innovation. Managers should focus on what they can do for their people; they shouldn’t spend time relaying

orders.

@spencerrascoff

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Joel SpolskyCEO, Stack Overflow

“When you take away passing reports up and down the chain of command, you’ve eliminated the easiest stuff that managers used to do. What you’re left with are the hard things – dealing with the complex, human problems.”

@spencerrascoff

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LESSON 4If they’re just like you, hire someone

else. Diverse opinions and an environment that encourages dissent give companies a competitive edge.

@spencerrascoff

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Sallie KrawcheckCEO, Ellevest

The power of diversity is diversity, not bringing in a whole bunch of diverse people and having them act in a certain way.”

@spencerrascoff

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LESSON 5Missions help companies stay small while getting big. Employees feel connected to the larger purpose and understand the

role they play in its achievement.

@spencerrascoff

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Scott SvensonCEO, MOD Pizza

“Many of the brands in our space have interesting product and interesting stories, but not a lot of soul. When you walk into a MOD… it’s the feeling you get that’s most important.”

@spencerrascoff

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@spencerrascoff

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