I had the pleasure of attending the first video pilot interview of LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner by Adam Bryant, New York Times Senior Editor for Features.
As a user of
LinkedIn and loyal reader of Adam’s
Corner Office columns I had high expectations for the live interview. I walked away feeling like a high school girl who experienced her first crush. And now I am writing a tell all!
Jeff’s open and compassionate leadership style keeps the company focused on growing at the rate of two new members every second (that translates into 175 million registered users in more than 200 countries) while reducing the business mantra to just two words: “Next Play.” Weiner borrowed the phrase from
Duke University basketball coach
Mike Krzyzewski, who shouts Next Play, every time the ball changes hands. Krzyzewski uses the phrase to make sure the
Duke University Blue Devils don’t spend too much time celebrating a success or feeling down about a miss. Instead, they are coached to focus on one thing: the next challenge. During the interview with Bryant, Weiner described how powerful Next Play has been for the company. On the day
LinkedIn became a public company, employees received a black T shirt with the company’s name and stock ticker written across the front and Next Play emblazoned on the back of the shirt. Even today 16 months after the
LinkedIn IPO, employees continue to talk about their Next Play and stay focused on delivering results.
During the video interview,
Weiner shared 10 lessons in leadership I think every businessperson should be aware of. They include:
1)
Define leadership in your company: At
LinkedIn,
Leadership is
the ability to inspire others and achieve shared results. It starts with defining a clear vision. In the case of LinkedIn it is to create economic opportunity for the 3.3 billion people in the global workplace by matching skills with job opportunities.
2)
Understand how to evolve from a start-up to a public company: A CEO and the leadership team must understand the importance of growing their skills from solving problems to coaching others to achieve business results.
3)
Prioritize your business goals: Start with asking yourself and your team if we could only do one thing, what would it be? This is a lesson
Weiner learned from
Steve Jobs and practices every day. Weiner’s advice is to focus on doing fewer things, and do those things well.
4)
Practice time management: Weiner carves out 2-3 hours each day to reflect, think and see the big picture. Weiner’s advice if you do not carve out at least an hour you are fitting way too much into your schedule.
5) Encourage all employees to think like an owner: Employees in a start-up must understand the business decisions they make are ones that have P&L implications. In the case of
LinkedIn, this means understanding how the decisions they are making impact the company mission of connecting the world’s 640 Million professionals and making them more successful.
6) Keep putting your customers first: At
LinkedIn, one of the values is simply stated as: Members First. So anytime the
LinkedIn product team considers new enhancements the first question revolves around: Is this putting our members first, or is this putting the company first? “If it benefits members, it will ultimately benefit the company.
7) Remember To laugh: Executing on a bold vision like creating economic opportunity for 3.3 billion people around the world is tough work. So humor needs to be a part of every executive’s day. Make time to laugh with your team members.
Weiner says he values his team members’ sense of humor and sometimes, on a tough day, that can trump their talent and expertise!
8) Find time to reflect on what’s important to you: Working professionals should take time to ask themselves: “If you had to look back at your career 20-30 years from now, what do you want to say you have accomplished?”
Weiner says he is amazed how many people he interviews cannot answer this question and worse yet have never thought about it. Instead, far too many focus on the next job role, next title, or next compensation package, without knowing what it is you want to leave the world. And
Weiner believes once you take time to articulate this to yourself, you begin to manifest this to others and before too long, you start on a path to realize your vision.
9)
Understand what makes you happy: Weiner lives by five keys to happiness: (articulated by
Ray Chambers, an entrepreneur who helped create the leveraged buyout industry, as well as a number of non profits such as
National Mentoring Partnership and
Americas Promise) These include:
- Stay in the moment.
- Step back and become a spectator to your own thoughts.
- It’s more important to be loving than to be right.
- Go out of your way to serve others.
- Take time each morning, to write down what you are grateful for and read it throughout the day.
10)
Communicate the importance of next play to your team: The faster a company grows, the more opportunity there is to experience both successes and failures. While it’s important to celebrate the successes, and reflect on a failure, you ultimately have to move on and focus on the “Next Play.”
So did
Weiner share
LinkedIn’s Next Play? No, for that, we will all have to log onto the site and see for ourselves.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeannemeister/2012/09/10/10-leadership-lessons-from-jeff-weiner-ceo-of-linkedin/
