LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, who sat down for a fireside chat with Reid Hoffman. Reid and Jeff met in February of 2008, started talking about how to build companies, and had the good fortune to work together at LinkedIn.
Q: One of the things you quickly started systematizing was how do we find and develop leaders.
A: First, there’s a continuum with problem-solving on one end and coaching on the other, and second, there’s a continuum with tactical execution on one end and proactive strategic thinking on the other. Founders tend to be people who do stuff, so their knee-jerk reaction is to solve problems, rather than coaching people to solve them. You have to coach people to solve their own problems, and coach people to coach people to solve problems. That’s how you achieve scale.
I try to carve out 90 minutes on my schedule so I have time to think ahead. If you don’t carve out that time, you’ll spend all your time firefighting and playing catch-up with your competitors.
When you’re a 15-person company, you’d better be good at problem solving and getting shit done. As you start to get bigger, you need to start evolving across those two continuums.
Read More: CS183C Session 19: Jeff Weiner, LinkedIn [LinkedIn]
More Posts from Across the Internet
The New American Dream: My Life As A Minority Startup Owner [Tech Crunch] – Every statistic on the subject of entrepreneurship says that I am likely to fail on the secondAmerican dream. This is because as a woman of color, my ability to secure funding is severely hindered by the startup system.
What Is Periscope And How Can You Use It For Business Video Streaming? [Forbes] – As the year closes out companies are looking for the next tool or service to experiment with to advance their business strategy in the New Year. For many this new tool is called Periscope, a video streaming/ broadcasting service from Twitter. Learn how it works and why it matters for businesses in 2016 below.
4 Reasons Why a Traditional 40-Page Business Plan Is an Insane Waste of Time [Entrepreneur] – Here are four reasons you’re wasting your time.
The Top 3 Startup Lessons I've Learned The Hard Way [Forbes] – The funny thing is that, despite having read virtually every hot business book out there, the most important lessons I’ve picked up while nurturing my business from scrappy startup to even scrappier, slightly more mature, startup, were learned the old fashioned way: by living and learning. I submit to you the top 3 startup lessons that I learned the hard way.