The Secret Sauce to Navigating Change with AirBnB's, Global Head of Community Douglas Atkin #5

After all, all art is experience. Hello and a very warm welcome to the Company Doctor podcast. In episode 5, intriguingly named "The Secret Sauce to Navigating Change," Gary will be dropping some serious knowledge on how to manage change at different scales and from various perspectives. We'll also be chatting to the Global Head of Community for Airbnb, Douglas Atkin. His excellent book, The Culting of Brands, explores how some of the most successful brands have achieved cult status and in doing so that inspired unwavering loyalty in their customers. He also has some pretty fascinating views on the importance of purpose when it comes to change or disruption. But before we wade out into the weeds, Gary, hello and how are you?

Well, that's very polite. I'm very well. You don't normally ask me how I am, so thank you for asking me. Is this because we're doing change, you're changing your introduction?

Yeah, I'm changing my ways. I'm trying to be more polite.

I like it. It's good. It suits you to be polite.

I like it.

Thanks.

Thanks very much. Yes, we're talking about change in this 5th episode of the Company The Doctor, and perhaps, you know, we're sticking to a fairly sort of strict timeline these days, so perhaps, you know, we'll move away from the niceties and just get bang into it. Change, navigating change, and what the secret source of navigating change is. I guess firstly, what sort of change are we talking about here, Gary?

Oh, that's a good question to ask. Well, you know, we're talking about all sorts of change, but our audience is business to business, so it's change in an organization, and it could be anything from something small to something very significant. And there's two sides to the story today. I want to talk about if you're a leader, you're a manager, and you need to make change. I want to talk about that. And if you're not a manager or a leader, I want to talk about you being on the receiving end on how to navigate change. Those are the two kind of sides of the coin that I'm going to keep flipping about with.

Great. Let's flip the coin.

Yeah, I like a lot.

Let's flip the coin.

Let's flip the coin.

Well, let's begin with, I guess, as a manager, perhaps, you're the one that's instigating this change.

Let's start with that, because I think the reason for saying this, by the way, is if you're a manager or you're not a manager, you're not off the hook. What you're going to get through today, and, you know, we've got a great speaker coming on later with Doug, you're going to see the importance of everyone's role in this and where you take the initiative. So, but I want to just give you a bit of a story, because when you talk to people about change, particularly in corporate life, Everyone knows of something called the change curve.

I don't, by the way.

No, I know you don't. Now we have visuals on each other. I can now see that you don't know.

Great.

The change curve is a very well-trodden path that people refer to, which is it shows that during any kind of change, you're going to be up and down and eventually you'll be against it and eventually you'll accept it and move on with life. And it's interesting and no disrespect to anyone who really likes it. But it doesn't tell me the reality of life. What am I going to do with that then? Yeah, I'm going to be up and down. Fantastic. But what do you want me to do as a result? So I want to share another idea that helps people in a more practical way because we like to be practical, of course. And what it is, is that during times of change, you're either thriving, surviving, expiring, or reviving. So you're either thriving, surviving, expiring or reviving, and organizations are different, and the kind of action you need against those different areas is different depending on where you are. So for example, if you're thriving, it's a bit of a haircut because, you know, don't mess with it too much, it seems to be okay. If you're surviving, it's surgery, and you don't want to treat it like a haircut, it's more severe. If you're expiring, it's a turnaround, so you've got to be sharp and hard and fast, and if it's reviving, it's a normal business improvement, which is a lot of change in business today. And then there's another angle, which is, well, that's very interesting, but where are you as a company in that, in that kind of space? Where are you personally? Where is your team or your organization? And where's the function? You know, so, and people might be in different places, and so change is not as simple as there's a change going on and What do I need to do about it? It depends.

That's the point. The first thing to do is to identify where on that scale you sit.

Yeah, absolutely. Because then you can decide on the course of action. Is it haircut or surgery? I guess at a high level. And if it's surgery, you better do something slightly more severe than, than if everything's not too bad, right?

Yeah. Taking it from the point of view of a sort of a team member, if you're on a personal level, you know, if you're expiring, but the company is thriving, I mean, that's quite a difficult one to manage, I suppose, isn't it?

Yeah, it is. And in this kind of the second part of this conversation, I want to talk about context because context is really important because it's kind of what does it mean to me? Or if I have a team, what do they need to do as a result? Do they care about it? Now, when companies do all these kind of rah rah, this is where we're going, most people roll their eyes and don't care, sorry to say. And our job as a change agent is to be able to connect people to that change if it's important enough. And that's the next bit, which is probably the number one thing in any change for it to be successful, is there needs to be a sense of urgency. Because if it's not important enough, no one cares. I mean, they don't tell you they don't care. Yeah. But I don't know if anyone has managed a team before, they normally roll their eyes or they just don't respond. And so one of the most important things as a change agent is to create a sense of urgency. And people are in for a bit of a treat. Hang on this episode, because when you get to to listen to Doug Atkin, and he talks about purpose and from his experience at Airbnb, and it's an amazing story. It's not a locker room slogan. It's a real compelling event. And that's what we want to talk about.

Yeah, because as you say, people hear about, oh, there's a change coming, and a lot of people will have been through lots of different changes in their professional careers. And as you say, it's an eye-roll moment for a lot of people. So this is about convincing them that this is this is not only necessary, but it's actually something to embrace.

Yeah, no, definitely. And if you think about, you know, what you do for a job, you know, you're a professional storyteller. Is that a good way to describe you?

Yeah, that's great, actually. Yeah, no one's ever said that before, but that's how I would describe myself.

Well, amongst other things, George, you're a good storyteller. And in order to be successful in change, you've got to be optimistic about why you're going to go through this pain. Because by the way, when you, if you're leading a change or involved in it, it's bloody painful. No one actually likes change. But when you ask people, do you like change? And I would say yes, but no. So if you're going to go through the pain which you're going to go through, let me tell you, you better be believing it enough to want to go through the pain. And therefore you need to create a story, a narrative about why we're doing this and taking people on this kind of an emotional journey about what it's going to look like at the end. So you've got to have this end state view. That's key. So therefore you've got to be optimistic, even if it's a difficult change, like you're closing something down. You need to explain the rationale so people get it.

And what's the best way to do that? What's the best way to bring people along on this sort of narrative, as you say? Because you're right, it's one thing for you to believe it, even if it's been a case of you convincing yourself that it's the right thing to do. You know, you believe it. What's the best way of convincing others around you? How do you best tell that narrative?

Yeah, I mean, and that's an important part of your task as a change agent to do this. And we've got a section on communication, which is an obvious one, but actually the one before that is really about not telling— this is going to sound a bit odd. We normally do odd stuff, right? Don't tell anyone about your change until you've thrown rocks at it, you're really sure you're convinced about it, and then share it with a slightly bigger audience. You know, everyone has like a mate or someone that they can confide in at work, or someone important in the chain of command, and road test it with a small group. Because you know what happens when you tell someone something?

What do they do?

They go, oh, that's never going to work, you're going to die from that. So, and they will do that, and there is a time for that, but initially don't tell anyone with it. And then just expand the view, but do get people's input because there's a psychology to this. When it's more fully formed and you're throwing some rocks with it, then get a wider group of maybe people that normally disagree with you, which is not a bad idea, to be honest. It sounds counterintuitive. Yeah, at some point you've got to go, right, this is it, we're doing it because it's an important business reason, or it's really As I said, it's either a haircut or surgery, something very important. But by then you've kind of worked out what the story is. Okay.

And I suppose you don't want to, in terms of that end state vision, you know, that end goal, there's no point in setting that out, as you say, until you know it's achievable, until you know it can happen. Because I suppose the only thing worse than forcing someone through a change that they might not want to actually go through is to set the wheels in motion for that and then for it to actually be pulled back, and, you know, it turns out we're not going to, we're not going to reach that end goal. We've made a huge mistake.

Yeah, and that's what happens. So, you know, most, most people are listening to this will have experienced yet another change initiative the company's rolling out, and they know what's going to happen. If I wait 5 minutes, it's either going to not— it's going to abort, or they're going to stop it, or they're going to change it. And so people's history is this isn't going to happen, and that's what they're expecting. And they're right, because to be honest, there's too many examples of that. So when you're designing a change, that's why I think you need to— it needs to be important enough, otherwise don't do it, I would say. But if it is important enough and you're leading it, and by the way, you might be on the receiving end, so let's talk about that as well. But then you've got to design it with the end in mind, which is when you walk away and it's finished, it needs to stick, and you need to design that in. Otherwise you'll end up, you know, it will be yet another example of something that never happened. Yeah. And then on the, on the receiving end, if you're not a manager and you're not leading the change and it's being done to you, which is uncomfortable, all I can tell you is that in my career and in anyone else you can speak to, their career moments where they got promoted, their biggest opportunity was during a change. Depending on your attitude to that change, that's the time to supercharge your career, I would say. Okay, be positive, be on board, make a difference.

Yeah. So if you haven't been properly convinced, so say if your manager hasn't done a very good job of convincing you that this is the right thing to do, or that the end vision is the best for the company and for you, when we speak to Doug later on, he sort of says that if your leaders haven't bought into the idea, then get the hell out of there, which I think, you know, we both agreed with at the time. You know, if you haven't been properly convinced of the idea, do you still think that it's the best thing to do is to sort of really push forward and try and supercharge your career, as you say, or would it be better at that stage to perhaps start looking on? I know it's different for different people, obviously.

That's a good question. So if you're a manager or a leader and you're trying to initiate change, then, or you're influencing it, you've got to get leadership commitment to it, otherwise it's just going to wither and die. If you're on the receiving end, my advice is, you've got a couple of choices. You can be a passenger and keep your head down, you can leave, or you can get on board. And historically, I can point you to loads of people that their careers have accelerated. I'm not saying you should do something that crosses your values, Don't get me wrong. Don't be part of the problem. You're in a better position if you're inside the tent, then you can help shape it. That's what I would really recommend. And then if you don't like it, you can always leave. Sounds easy, right?

Sounds really easy. You're making it sound like a walk in the park.

Well, you know, and this is my trigger for saying that you need to create your own path. Again, if you're a manager or a leader, don't wait for the Godpod to tell you, this is where we're going. I mean, yeah, obviously there's a big company direction, but You should read the tea leaves. If you're a manager, you should be adapting your team to the market. You shouldn't wait for someone to tell you, you can work out what you need to do. It could be big or small, by the way, it doesn't have to be keep moving things around. And if you're on the receiving end, you should absolutely create your own path because otherwise it's not in your control what's going to happen to you.

At that point, you get the choice to be a passenger or not, and you can either be a passenger moving along with this change, sort of tutting and rolling your eyes, yet another change, or you can really make it happen for yourself.

Exactly. So basically what happens in change is you have people either for or against the change, and they're either passive or active. And what that means is, so someone could be for the change, but they're passive, they don't say anything, and that's a missed opportunity, and they're mad not to. And basically not very helpful, to be honest. Likewise, if someone's against the change, and they may have good reasons to be, and they're passive, they're a victim. They're telling people by the coffee machine, but they won't do anything about it. And then on the other side, you've got people that are for the change, but they're active. So they're either— they're a chameleon, they're adapting, or they're just trying to suck up to you, tell you what you want to hear. Yeah. Or they could be against the change and active, which means they're either protesting or they might even be a saboteur. So there's not one state that people are in. They can move in and out of those things. And our job as leaders is to deal with those people. And I've got a little name for those people. Do you want to hear it out? I do. Thanks, good answer. I call them the Angry Bears and the Golden Nuggets.

Nice, I saw that written down on a really neat note, the neatest notes I've had so far.

They are the best, aren't they? Yeah, definitely.

I'm adapting to the change. Yeah, so go on.

After your rebuke.

The Angry Bears and the Golden Nuggets.

I guess you want to know what they are, right?

I do, yeah.

Good answer. So basically, there's some people that are against the change, they're angry, and by the way, sometimes they've got a right to be. It might be closing down a building, it might significantly affect their role or their job. Yeah, some people just don't like change and they're just angry. And then you've got people that— gold nuggets. It's not, it's not always the people that are senior are positive. Sometimes it's the opposite. And sometimes further down the organization, there's some— I call them gold nuggets. They're people that are very well trusted and they kind of get it, and they're, they're more proactive and positive. But they might not be senior, but they're, they're potentially influential because people get them and respect them. Yeah. And they can be really important Yeah, some people will call them change champions. You could use them as a beacon of magnifying your change. Yeah. And certainly getting them on board and they can defuse the angry bears. The problem is everyone who runs a change will try to deal with the angry bears and then take their eye off the ball because you're not going to— it's not religion. You can't convince everyone to do this, right? So you've got to defuse the angry bears as much as you can, but use the golden nuggets as beacons.

That's interesting, because as a completely inexperienced person, when it comes to this sort of thing, I definitely would focus my attention on trying to convince the naysayers. I'd sort of be getting them into a room and trying to convince, wasting all my energy trying to convince them that this is the best thing for the company, whereas actually, I suppose there's a bit of that, but as you say, utilizing the people that already believe in the changes that's happening is as important, if not more so.

Yeah, and you do need to deal with them, by the way, and I'm going to talk about it in the next section, because you can't leave them to chance. Leaders know this, you know, people in your team that create drama take most of your time, and actually you don't spend the time on the people you need to spend the time with. Yeah, I'm not saying we shouldn't spend time on them, but here's the thing. So bear in mind that most people think, oh, another bloody change initiative, here we go again. Just wait 5 minutes, it's going to change. So the most important thing you can do beyond the sense of urgency is to implement something, bloody implement something, to do something quickly that shows that this is not another initiative that's not going anywhere. I'm absolutely— look, we're making progress. We've already done this and we've done this. Show people this is actually happening. Yeah. Now, but of course, if it's a turnaround or something significant like surgery, you need to do it very quickly. Yeah. And you don't have to be all pretty about it. But the best thing you can do is implement something quick.

So just show them you mean business, basically. So this is definitely happening. There's no burying your head in the sand and hoping it all goes away. This is 100% happening. And this is why. And this is how.

Absolutely. If we move on to the connected piece, the communication piece, most people will tell you, oh, I've been through change, no one ever told me anything. And we, for some reason, not the people listening to this, but some managers will like treat people that are stupid. Let's not tell them anything until we know everything. Or let's not tell them because it's a secret. That doesn't make any sense. I was working with a company recently where because they didn't know all the answers, they didn't tell anyone anything. That's not great. If you're on the receiving end of that, that doesn't feel good. People want to know what's going on, and people are smart. So don't give them a shiny story about how amazing it's going to be when it's not true. And one method of communicating is a little model for you— well, not for you personally, but for anyone that's listening— which is, you know, think about this. You know, our job as a leader is to define reality and give hope. Define reality and give hope. And what that means is if I treat someone like they're smart, let me tell them the truth. They're smart people, they'll work it out, right? So giving hope is why are we doing this? What's the story? Your lovely story from before. And then what's the reality is what's the effect? What might happen as a result of this? They're already thinking it. You might as well call it out. Then you have a balanced communication. You've gone, we're doing this because it's a business imperative, blah, blah, blah. And this is the effect. This is what might happen. And then, you know, another hope thing is what's the payoff? What could happen as a result of doing this? It's a good thing. And then finally, another kind of reality moment. What's the risk? And if you balance the why, the effect, the payoff, and the risk, then it gives you credibility in your communication because you're telling people the truth. Now, of course, there are sensitive things that you shouldn't share, but in reality, then you can get into a kind of a rhythm of communication.

And you're seen to be communicating, which is really important, because there's actually nothing more demoralizing than the idea that you're being kept in the dark whilst all these sort of senior members of staff are off discussing the future, leaving sort of regular team members in the dark.

Yeah, and you know this, the heading of this is The Secret Sauce to Navigating Change. Do you want to know what the secret sauce is?

I've been waiting for this, yeah.

I'm going to ask you a question, see if you know the answer. So what matters most to people when communicating change? What's the number one thing that's on their mind?

What's in it for them?

Yes, exactly. So everyone knows that the number one thing is, what does it mean to me? We know that, right? Yeah. But people know that intellectually, but then they just ignore it. If the number one thing is, what does it mean to me? Then we need to think through that lens when we're talking to people, because that's all they care about. They don't care about your strategy, sorry. They don't care about where the business is going, sorry. They don't care about anything other than what it means to them. And so part of your communication needs to take that into account. And if you can get into a regular cadence with people about what's happening and, you know, and obviously it may affect them badly and you need to deal with that at the right time in the right way. But not all messages are happy. The majority of things are fine, by the way. But either way, let people know what's going on and there's a positive in it. You know, you might be— your business might be growing and therefore, you know, we're adding more things or we're consolidating buildings because we're growing and we're duplicating or There's a story in there that is positive. Tell people. Then the final thing is, you know, we're kind of networking specialists. We always talk about networking together, don't we?

We do.

Well, networking has never become more important than during a time of change. You should make it part of your DNA. You know, I have a little model for people, which is my second secret sauce, or my third one, actually.

Yeah.

You want me to tell you? Okay, good. And it's basically, you should schmooze your stakeholders with what I call the 10-3-1.

10— I do like it. I can't decode that.

No. Okay, let me decode that for you, right? So the 10 is choose 10 stakeholders, the people that make a difference in what you're doing, to cause an effect of what you're trying to do, that matter to you and matter to them. 10 key stakeholders for this change. The 3 is 3 messages that are in context to them because it matters what it means to them, right?

Yeah.

So 3, 3 messages in context to them. And the 1 is 1 group message, the part of the story, and plan to do this every 30 days. You might find a second group of 10 so you can get to a wider community. And if you use those change agents, those golden nuggets, you might be able to multiply what you do by doing this with them. But 10-3-1, and if I had a leadership team, I would get them to do that with their teams. So then I'm multiplying out. I'm not trying to be, you know, kind of bottleneck myself.

No, no, that's great.

That's what I'd recommend.

Nice. And it's great, you know, we can use all the things that we've learned in the first 4 episodes. They all contribute towards this as well, which is really handy. You know, obviously the networking genius, but yeah, all of this is contributing, which is fantastic.

You're a George genius. See, look at that.

Fantastic.

Yeah, definitely. But I agree. I think if we, you know, all of our episodes are kind of interlinked and, you know, basically, you know, the networking and the building relationships is all part of this. But the key thing is, you know, in this time of change, you've got to communicate regularly. You've got to bring people with you to go from A to B. You know, if you can't bring people with you, then you failed. Now, obviously, if it is some more severe surgery, Sometimes you can't do all the niceties about bringing people with you, and that's the difference, I would say.

That's the secret sauce.

That is the secret sauce. Have a, you know, basically have a sense of urgency, compelling event, a big reason, a purpose, which we're going to talk about next with Doug. Yeah. You know, make sure that you understand your bears and your nuggets and communicate like crazy in context and make something happen.

And so those are the big 3, those are the big 3 takeaways.

The big 3 Chinese takeaways for me are: you need a sense of urgency, you need a compelling reason and purpose, you know, because people need to— it needs to matter to people enough that they believe in it. It needs to be in context to them because they care about what it means to them, and if you ignore that, do that at your peril. You need to implement stuff to show people visual progress because most people expect zero to happen. And finally, communicate with this kind of balanced approach where you're not trying to give everything a positive spin, but you're communicating people, you know, with treating them intelligently with the kind of balance of the positives and the negatives. Never not say anything. Keep that communication going. That would be my 3/4.

There's always a secret 4th. There's a secret 4th. Thank you very much, Gary. That's fascinating stuff. I found that really interesting, especially the stuff about, you know, identifying whereabouts you are on that sort of 4-rig scale. You know, I think that's, that's really interesting. And certainly the communication stuff as well is absolutely vital. So thank you very much. And speaking of fascinating and interesting and vital, it's time for our chat with Douglas Atkin, who started out with an ad agency, became a brand expert, worked as Chief Community Officer at Meetup before moving to Airbnb, where he is the Global Head of Community. So Gary, over to you.

Hey Doug, thank you so much for joining us on this episode. We're really looking forward to having you this time.

My pleasure, always good to chat with you, Gary.

This episode, Doug, is, is basically the secret sauce to navigating change, and we've shared some ideas with people, some practical ideas that most of the people on this podcast are business-to-business people. My first question to you is, you know, I love your articles, by the way. You've got lots of short articles that you've written on Medium, particularly around brand. I think maybe a good place to start is to talk to about Airbnb because, you know, you created Belong Anywhere about how to live your purpose. Tell us about that because it's fascinating.

Okay, um, so I kind of entered Airbnb in a weird manner in that, um, I had written a blog, a series of articles on my own blog about community. This was in 2011, 2012. And Joe Gebbia, who's one of the co-founders of Airbnb, had read them and had read my book, and he reached out to have breakfast in New York. I mean, I lived in New York at the time.

As you do.

We met, we got on really, really well, and he asked me out to do a gig at— well, actually, the first thing he asked me to do was a fireside chat at Airbnb in San Francisco. HQ. And a fireside chat in Silicon Valley is sort of outside experts coming in and talking to the staff. So I did. I went out there for a couple of days and did this talk about community. Um, then they asked me to come back and do a gig. So I flew out there, met up with Brian, um, again, as when I landed from New York. Brian is the co-founder. There's three founders: Brian, Nate, and Joe. Brian is the co-founder and CEO. And he said, hey, you know a lot about brands, can you help us figure out what ours is? And that was— yeah, good, good, except it wasn't the gig I was expecting. I was expecting to do a gig about community, and since that's what I've been there, you know, doing previously, talking about previously. So I said to him, ah, okay, very nice of you to say that, but I've been out of the branding world for about 6 years, but let me have a think about that and I'll come back tomorrow with a point of view. And so I did. And in the morning I said, look, I think we need to figure out Airbnb's purpose rather than just the brand, because clearly you've got an incredibly strong community here of hosts and guests and employees who are both hosts and guests. Why? Why are they so committed to Airbnb? What role does it play in their lives? You know, what are you doing that makes, that creates this kind of commitment and passion. If we can sort of identify that, then we can help figure out what Airbnb's purpose is in the world. It's why, if you like, you know, why does it exist? And I said, once we've done that, then we can figure out everything else super easily. I mean, once you figure out what the purpose of an organization is, then it's super easy or relatively easy to figure out what the brand is, sure, but also everything else. Like, um, what products you should launch, what customers you should have and not have, what companies you should acquire and not acquire, how to decorate your offices, who to hire and fire. All these things are much easier to decide if you have a very clear reason why you exist, your purpose, which should never change over the years.

You're quite hardcore, Doug, aren't you? Because when you talk about purpose, because a lot of people that are listening to this are working in corporates where they have the locker room slogans up, vision, mission stuff. But you're hardcore because you say you should use it to recruit, review, reject everybody, including customers. You're kind of hardcore.

Tell us about that.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, well, the point is there's no point having a purpose unless you live it, unless you live it every day in everything you do. I mean, everyone should use it all the time for everything. And one of the great things I loved about being at Airbnb is that the founders, the three of them, but especially Brian, the CEO, took the purpose incredibly seriously. He says basically, and I've got a quote from him in, I think it's the second article I wrote about purpose and Airbnb on Medium, which is you've got to put the purpose first. It comes before everything. It comes before profit. It comes before growth. Comes before the people in the company, it comes before everything. It determines everything you do. So, I mean, he actually is really hardcore about it, which I loved. And so we implemented it in everything we did. I mean, everything. So we did use it to recruit people. For example, you know, you might have 10 interviews actually to get into Airbnb, and 6 to 8 of which are going to be around your discipline. So suppose you're in marketing, you'd be interviewed by marketing people at Airbnb to see if you'd, you know, you know your stuff, you have good skills. But then you get interviewed by two people who have nothing to do with marketing in Airbnb. And what they're looking for is to see if there is a fit between your personal values and the core values of the company and your personal goals and the goal of the company. And they have veto power. So even though you might be the best marketer in the world, if you didn't pass the two core values culture interviews, you won't be hired, which is pretty hardcore, right? Almost every company I've worked at before would say, oh well, he's so good, we've got to have him, even though he's a poor cultural fit. But no, we would never have him because you know that's a short-term, you know, you're satisfying a short-term need, like someone to fill the role, but it will screw you up long-term. And actually create more damage than you'll ever gain from hiring the person.

Oh, absolutely.

And actually, I was reading one of your articles and I want to ask you on this because a lot of people do talk about purpose and they struggle a little bit to get that sense of urgency. But when things go wrong, you've got a phrase about not screwing up the culture. I'll keep it clean, the clean version of it. Yeah, because when things go wrong and they do, and it was tested, wasn't it, in Airbnb? In New York, I believe. It would be interesting to share that because I think that really tested the purpose.

Yes. So this was in the middle of 2013, and we got a subpoena from the Attorney General of New York for all of our hosts' information in New York State. Now, at the time, New York was our biggest market by far. It was like 50% of our business, and that was about 15,000 hosts. And also about this time, and not coincidentally, you know, over that past few months, the hotels had stopped laughing at us and dismissing us. And so we're starting to take us seriously. These guys are growing. Exactly. And they were using various strategies to try and kill us off, basically, because they saw us as a big threat. So that was happening in the background. So anyway, the Attorney General of New York issued this subpoena. Now, every company always follows the attorney and agrees with and bends over and lets the Attorney General get his way, every single company. But we knew that we didn't want to do this because giving up the information of our hosts would make them feel very, very insecure, because only a few months previously, a host had been prosecuted by New York. The host was charged $30,000, which we appealed and actually got that dropped. And so he was never actually charged that amount of money. But that was fresh in people's minds in New York, and they were thinking, oh my God, if I hand over my information, there's going to be a witch hunt, and, uh, you know, these people are going to hunt us down. Because bear in mind, at the time, New York was not famous then. It wasn't— I mean, New York was famous, Airbnb was not famous.

So good they named it twice.

Yes, exactly. We were just this little upstart from California as far as the Attorney General was concerned. And so they were aghast when we finally turned around and said, look, no, we're not going to agree to your subpoena. In fact, we're going to take you to court and squash it. I mean, they even said to us, do you have any lawyers? I mean, do you have legal advice? Because do you know that no one says no to the Attorney General of New York? And just the week previously, they got billions of dollars out of all the major banks for creating the 2008 Great Recession. So even those guys had followed. The reason why we decided not to do this, and this is a huge risk for us because as I say, it was half of our business, early stage in the company. The Attorney General had the power to shut us down in New York if he wanted to. And so to say no to him was a huge risk, business risk. But we decided to do it because it was the right thing to do. And it was the right thing to do because we knew that instinctively, because one of our core values was be a host. You know, welcome, nurture, and look after other people, especially strangers. And so we thought, we can't say be a host if we're not actually hosting our hosts, if we're not looking after the interests of our host. So we need to walk in lockstep with them, really. I mean, the other thing about this is that the host's interests and Airbnb's interests are completely aligned. You know, if the host is successful, we're successful. Yeah, that's it. Because they are the ones who actually deliver the service, not us. And so we wanted— and this is one of the things I was banging a lot— it took took a week to decide this, by the way, because it was so huge a decision. It was, you know, late sweaty meetings at night, um, struggling.

Too much information.

Yeah, yes, we've been working a long time. So, um, but you know, one of the arguments I was making also was that— and why I felt a little more confident about it— is that what I was saying is, look, the hotels have enormous lobbying power and tons of money which they've spent lobbying. We don't. We have one lobbyist for the whole world. They— the hotel lobby has, you know, teams of people just for New York who have been seeing the Attorney General of New York. I said, but one thing the hotels don't have is people power. We have people power. We have people— our hosts and our guests and our employees love Airbnb. I think I can mobilize them to take political action with us so that we're working in lockstep to change the laws in New York and squash the subpoena and prevail. And so, you know, knowing that, we collectively made the decision, okay, we're going to refuse the Attorney General, which we did. And in the end, I did— I had some, um, some of Obama's campaign people, grassroots organizing people in his 2008, 2012 campaigns. They wrote the playbook on how to do grassroots organizing. So I got them and they helped us identify, train, and mobilize our hosts in New York.. And we did this amazing campaign over the next 6 months where, you know, we trained them how to go and talk to the senators and representatives in Albany, which is where the state assembly is, and do press interviews, tell their stories, petitions. We put up a petition and we expected 10,000 signatures and we got 236,000 signatures.

Amazing.

And the reason I like the story is it obviously reinforces the purpose. And obviously it's a testing time, but it sounds like you made the right decision. I need to just switch, switch tracks with you a little bit. Again, a lot of people listening to this edition because this is about navigating change. And one of the things that comes up, you had a leader who was completely bought into the change and to the purpose. What's your advice? And you've told me this before, but I'm going to ask you, if the leadership is not bought in, what do you do? Leave. You have told me this. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? That you didn't even think about it, you just said it straight away.

Yeah, there's no way. Well, because, um, you have to put the purpose first, you know, as Brian said, it comes before everything— turnover, profit, etc. And if you have a leadership team that doesn't buy into that, then there's no hope that you'll ever live your purpose. They'll always put short-term needs, exigencies first, right? So they'll think about the next quarter's profit rather than the long-term purpose of why you're in business, and you'll make the short-term decisions. So, I mean, if we didn't have a purpose and values and we weren't, you know, we were like most companies, we would have folded, as all— every other company had in the face of the Attorney General of New York.

But you know what, that just reinforces though, doesn't it? If you— from what you're saying, if purpose is more than a locker room slogan, it's something you live and breathe by the sound of it, then your, your immediate reaction is, without that, forget it. And I work in a lot of change initiatives and I sometimes, and I have asked you in the past and you've always said the same thing. So I think for people listening, I think it's a really powerful point. If you can bring purpose to life, then you have to live it. Okay. And then the kind of the follow-on question that is a big topic, but if you wouldn't mind a succinct answer to this one, if there was, you know, if you wanted to help someone translate, because I want to get your skills across here, I mean, you've got amazing knowledge and experience. If you wanted to help someone translate the purpose into a set of behaviors, How the hell did you do that?

Where'd you start?

And there's this thing.

Yeah. Okay. Well, our purpose—

gosh, that's a big topic.

I'll do my best. Yeah. Yeah. But so the purpose we ended up with at Airbnb, and this was, you know, after a lot of— by the way, we got to the purpose not just by putting a lot of senior people, you know, in an expensive offsite somewhere so that they could study their navels. We did a lot of research and and went out and talked to the hosts and the guests and the employees to find out what it was that was making them committed and find out what role Airbnb had in their lives. Because I'm a great believer that you need a purpose that's grounded in an experienced truth, meaning that it's got to be real. You know, you can't— if you don't do that, you are likely to have overreach. Like there are too many companies peddling colored sugar water claiming that they're going to free the world and do all these other, you know, ridiculously implausible things. So there has to be some plausibility to your purpose statement. Equally though, it should seem impossible. It should seem, you know, wonderful if you could do it, but, you know, but crazily ambitious. Otherwise, because you need to get people, you know, geared up and energized and incentivized to get up in the morning and do amazing things. So anyway, we had this purpose, which is creating a world where anyone can belong anywhere, or belong anywhere for short.

Absolutely genius.

Thank you. So that's the why. Now, why do you exist? What is the point? The how, how you get that purpose to be delivered is, that's the role of the core values in my view. Because they are the behavioral guidelines for an organization. They are the core values, tell you what you should do and what you should not do, basically. So we had, in the end, actually, we got it down to 3/4 core values. We had 6, we realized it was too many, and 2 of them weren't actually core, they were aspirational.

Good tip.

Which is a whole other subject. And they are really, really used all of the time. They are used together with the purpose, as I said before, as you said before, to hire or fire or retrain.

Can you give us an example, Doug, of what those, if you remember, I mean, it's a bit of a hard question to ask you now.

Yeah, yeah, the first one is champion the mission, which means basically, we called the purpose the mission. So basically put the purpose first in everything you do. In other words, it's not just turnover, it's not just profit, it's also the purpose. The next one was be a host, which I mentioned before. Yeah. And the next one was, uh, be a serial entrepreneur. And then the other one is embrace the adventure. And that's all about— and this is a good— but by the way, you know, this subject is about change, this podcast. I mean, I've talked and experienced that a lot in my career, but there's been no place like Airbnb for that because basically everything was— we was doing was changing everything. I mean, there was no playbook for what we were doing. We were inventing it as we were going along. I mean, really everything. And so even new human behavior, right? So no one would have thought it. In fact, many of the investors to the three founders when they first started said, there is no way you're going to get complete strangers to stay in people's homes and beds. You know, that's never going to happen, right?

So Well, and the rest is history, right?

So, so one of those, that one is about Embrace the Adventure, is about imagine the ideal, and then from that ideal situation, figure out what the practical steps are back from it to where you are now, so that you then have a path which will take you to the best possible outcome, which is— and that's going to be, you know, very different from what exists. The ideal is inherently change.

Yes.

So that's different. Most company practice is iterative. You imagine the immediate next step to improve things, like new improved Daz, right? It's like slightly better than before, if at all. Whereas the way at Airbnb we did it is, no, that's not good enough. That's not bold enough. You need to imagine the ideal and then work your way back from that and figure out the steps so that you can plot a way to achieve what seems impossible.

I love that, and it's obviously continued to be that way even now. I've got time for one last question, Doug, if you wouldn't mind. Now, if there was one key learning, and I know this is a hard one really to ask, that you would pass on to someone involved in a significant change, what would it be? If it was just one big thing, what would you tell them? Wow, it's hard.

So much. Yeah, well, I think really that, that last thing, which is, um, imagine if you're going to make a change, make it good, right? So imagine the ideal situation, but then be really practical about it and figure out what, what steps it would take back from the ideal to where you are now. And then just be very dogged and, you know, recruit and inspire a team around you to get through all those steps and get to the ideal.

That's amazing. I mean, it's been— it's taken a different course than maybe I expected because again, a lot of people are in this kind of corporate way of change. And the perspective you've given us has been really inspirational. So, Doug, thank you so much for spending time with us on this edition. And I'm going to hand you on to George. But thanks again.

Really appreciate it. You're welcome. It's my pleasure.

Yes, thank you very much, Doug. That was fantastic. Loads of really interesting stuff in there. I love the fact that we're talking about change and, you know, you and Airbnb literally changed human behavior. I find that fascinating. And, you know, talking about your the sort of the late night sweaty meetings. I imagine they were probably, they had a soundtrack. I imagine they were powered by some sort of musical interludes. And as we always do at the end of these sessions, ask our guests to throw a couple of tunes into our Company Doctor playlist. So what would yours be?

I've got one really, which I think is probably thematic. It's my kind of desert island disc, which is Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed. Brilliant. Because I mean, apart from wishing I had lived in that sort of sleazy, debauched, decadent era in New York in the '70s and with all those people, it's an invocation to not do things by half measures but to walk on the wild side.

Great.

Yeah, that's a great choice. That's one of my favorites as well. Well, listen, Doug, thank you very much again for your input today.

Thank you very much. Thanks, Rog. Cheers.

Just before you go, if you found Douglas's insights as useful and interesting as I did, you'll be thrilled to discover that he's done a series of 7 articles for medium.com, which delve a little deeper into this concept of purpose from a brand perspective. We'll post the link on our website, but if that's one click too many, go straight to the source by visiting medium.com/@douglasadkin. Enjoy and see you next time.

The Company Doctor podcast with Gary Gamp and George Collode. Why not subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts? Leave a review on iTunes if you have enjoyed this episode and find out more at thecompanydoctor.com.