The Power of People: Julie Zhuo on Building Teams for the Future

You ever wondered what was the secret sauce that turned Facebook into a billion dollar empire? Well, we're going to talk about that in today's episode. We're talking to Julie Zhu, who went from intern to VP of Product and design at Facebook. We're going to talk about the culture that was established at Facebook. We're going to go through the one trait that you should not tolerate on your team, but we guarantee you're probably tolerating it right now. We're also going to talk about how AI is affecting leadership. And if you're a new manager or a company that is promoting new managers, we're going to talk about how you can win the first 90 days. Because if you don't win the first 90, I promise you're not going to make it. Buckle up. Here's Julie Zhou. Ms. Julie Zhu. Julie, how are you doing today there?

I'm doing great. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for being here. Thank you for being here. You know, I was selling you offline. This book is so timely. I've shared it with family and friends. It's something I connect with because, you know, I'm writing a book as well. I just wrote a book and leadership and management is something that is changing dramatically, just like our society is changing.

Right?

And so we can't lead and manage the same way that leadership and management was done even 10 years ago. Because expectations have changed, people have changed. So I applaud you for the book.

Thank you. It was a joy to write, mostly for the fact that I was sure that if I spent time thinking about all these principles, I would hopefully become a better manager. And that's always been my goal. I love managing and I love just the people part of the job. I get to build products, I get to work in software and create new technologies. But it's the people part that gives me a lot of joy because I don't think anybody can do anything amazing on their own. Like, we are all connected to each other and we all have very different strengths and our unique gifts to be able to apply towards like a bigger goal or mission.

Totally agree. Totally agree with that. Which leads me to my first question. Julie. You know, on the show, I like to ask people what's their because, Right? That thing that's deeper than your why, that's really your true purpose. All the work that you do with helping leaders, helping managers, and now starting running your own company. Right? What's your. Because what's your purpose?

I think my purpose is really to connect with people and do What I can to. It sounds very silly to say, but just to enjoy working with people on really interesting, big problems that allow us to reach our full potential as human beings.

Yeah.

And today I started a company called Sundial with my co founder, Chandra, and that was really the premise. I'd reached this point in my career where really all I want to do is just work with people I really love on problems that are really big and interesting. And every day I want to wake up and feel excited to go into work, work and office and just feel how lucky I am to be able to do that. And I think it's hard. I think that's what maybe all of us want, is that freedom to be able to choose and to challenge and to grow. But it can be hard because there's obviously so many constraints that we face and there's so many we should do this or we have to do this. But that, to me, is ultimate freedom, just working with people you like on really interesting problems.

I agree with you completely. I want to start with your. Your business journey, right? So you're an intern at this little bitty company called Facebook, right? First, while you were interning, did you ever think that Facebook was going to be what it became? And then two, let's talk about that journey through Facebook.

So I would say yes or no. So I'll first say the no. No. I think if you'd asked me, I was 22 years old, it's my internship. And you would say, one day, Facebook is going to connect billions of people. And did you know you were going to ride this rocket ship and be a part of making that happen? Absolutely not. I mean, I was a kid. I had no. I had no idea how to even think about valuing companies. I was not thinking strategically. I didn't have, like an mba. I wasn't like, oh, let's think about, you know, risks and analysis, analyze this particular company. So, no, I just went there mostly because, you know, similar reasons as I was giving before. I like the product. I thought it was interesting, and I like the people that was there. But I would say yes in the. In the sense that at the time, Facebook was a college and high school social network, so nobody really knew about it. And, you know, my mom would call me and she would say things like, why are you going to this company? Like, this isn't really going to go anywhere. Why don't you go work at Microsoft or Google or something that we all know. And I did believe, and I think everyone at Facebook at that time believed that we were much bigger than just a high school and college social network that we are. Our dreams were much bigger, that there was like a lot that the world wasn't seeing about what, what we wanted. So I definitely feel like that vision. And of course Mark very early on had this very, very grand vision for what he wanted to do to connect the world. But I think we all believed that. And I certainly, I was like, mom, I'm going to prove you wrong.

Yeah. Yeah. So you go from intern to ultimately VP of Product design, which is phenomenal, by the way. I've read the book, so I'm going to ask you the questions. Right, but was there a moment when you were, I don't want to say fearful, but when you were nervous, when you were hesitant as you're making this.

Journey throughout your career, the entire, I want to say seven years of my first seven years where I became a manager, I was asked to because our team was rapidly scaling. So we were at the startup, we were in hyperscale mode. And the person who was leading our design team, I joined when the design team was about seven or so people. And so a couple years in, you know, we had hired a manager and she, she basically said, I, you know, we have new, two new designers joining. I don't really feel like I have the time to meet with them. Can you just take on managing? You get along with people? Why, why don't you do it? And that was my qualification. You know, I got along with people and I, but I didn't know anything about managing. And I would say that was true for all of us. Like we were, many of us were just recent college grads just like a year or two or three ago. And we didn't really have like, you know, a long standing model because of how quickly we had scaled from, from being a very small company. And so I certainly felt like an enormous imposter. And I would say that feeling was fairly consistent for about seven years after managing. And then maybe after year seven, I started to think, okay, well, I still feel uncomfortable, but at least I think I'm getting a little bit more of a sense that discomfort is part of the journey. And I'm more comfortable with the fact that I am uncomfortable.

I get it. I get it completely. That's where growth happens, right? Like, we can't grow when we're stuck in comfort. For the listeners and viewers, talk to us about that culture at Facebook, right, Because I've heard all the stories about how such a tight knit community it was and how it was Just an awesome vibe. You know, my wife is from the Bay Area as well, and so, you know, all the companies that are there, it seemed like Facebook was the one that was for like that new, whether it was millennial, Gen Z or whatever, but it had that type of vibe. Talk to us about the culture.

So because the product did start out built by young people for young people, it was very much a company full of employees who were very, very young. And so that has a bunch of pros and cons. In its early days, I think one of the pros is like, we just didn't know what we didn't know. And so we can kind of think about a lot of things. Not just, oh, this is the way it's always been done. But hey, we're taking on the problem. We're kind of thinking maybe how should we solve it from our own vantage point. I think that allowed us to be more innovative in certain respects, but certainly earlier on we also. The downside is you didn't have great models about how to do things. The good news is, as Facebook scaled, we hired in some really incredible seasoned leaders. I think Sheryl Sandberg had a really large role to play in terms of the management and leadership culture and just brought a little bit more discipline and really great grounding first principles. But what made, I think, the Facebook leadership and management culture a wonderful place to grow and learn was this idea that it mattered. We cared about people. We were a social network. We really, really cared about people. We cared about each other. We cared about transparency and feedback. And so it wasn't one of those places where you never talk to someone, but you kind of resent what they're doing. This idea of open feedback, of being able to think about feedback as a gift. And we're all in it together. We're all trying to do this very big and bold, ambitious mission, but let us support each other in doing so while being direct with one another about what we think we can do better. So I think there was this. It was a very growth oriented company in terms of personal growth. This idea, not, not nobody was like, we all know the answers. We've done this million times. We were right. Like, nobody thought we were right. It was always this, well, we probably can learn and we can grow and we can get better. Then there was this. We really care about people and we think people are the core of what will make this company and our problems to be able to get solved. So that, that, that pillar of care was there. And then I think finally there was that Feedback is a gift. And directness and being able to work and work through conflict. That was the other third pillar. And I think those three things came in to make it, I think, a really great place to learn how to manage and grow in that craft.

No, I agree with that. And that actually lines up with a lot of the things that you talk about in the books. I'm going to keep promo in the book because I want everybody to see this and go get this book because it's going to change your life as a manager. Julie, I want to hit a couple of things head on because we agree we are in alignment. One of the first things you talk about is, you know, managers aren't born, they're made, right? And I have the same thing with leaders. Leaders aren't born, they're made. You might have traits, right, but you still have to develop them. I try to parallel it to sports. If you grow to be 6 foot 10, you have a better chance of going to the NBA than somebody who reaches 5 foot 10, right? But there's still a lot of skills that you have to develop to actually make it to the NBA. And it's the same thing with managers, right? Like, you can have traits that you're born with, but there's a lot of things you need to develop. So talk to us about that.

I love that basketball analogy because, you know, I live in the hometown of Steph Curry, and this goes back to like, yeah, you can, you can be great. And there are so many important skills and traits. I think you're absolutely spot on that there are many things that we can do. Now, all of us are unique. We have our own specific qualities that we bring in. And I think a lot of what it takes to be a really great leader is to be able to figure out how we can amplify those strengths, how we can become aware of our blind spots and figure out how to augment them. It doesn't mean we have to be perfect at every single dimension, but we do need to be aware so that we can often build a team or surround ourselves with people that. That can augment what it is that we are weaker at. So I think the most important quality of, of. Of being a great manager is, is like, do we have a good understanding of what the role entails? And is that something that's interesting to us? Because I know that when I first started managing for many years, I almost thought about management as a series of tasks or jobs per se, right? Like, oh, the manager hires people, the manager fires people, they Fig gets promoted, they have meetings, they do one on ones and tell people what they're doing wrong. Like, these are, these are my mental models of like the activities or the tasks of a manager. But I realize like all of them are actually just a means to the end. And the end, which is the true goal of what we're asking people to do when we ask them to be managers, is to get better outcomes from a group of people working together. Right. And the outcome has to be contextual to why are these people together? You know, if I were a superintendent for a district, the outcome is better education for children. If I run a hospital, it's about saving lives. If I work in software, it's about building products that, that solve a problem for people that get used frequently and, and, and are valued. But you know, we have to first understand the problem and then we have to understand, okay, so how. So there's a group of people and this is the outcome. So my job as a manager is how do I get that group of people to do either better work, higher quality work, or faster work? Because that's what's going to help us get to that outcome better. And I think as a manager, this is just the most important thing. And if that's not what really you care about, like maybe there's a, I know that for some people, right, and that you can be like somebody who loves doing an activity and maybe the craft of that activity and that's what you're drawn to. And you wake up every day and you want to get better at heart surgery or you want to get better at actually educating students, or do you want to get better at painting or design? Like you, you can be a, you know, a stronger and stronger craftsman in that particular field. But the difference to me between that and, and being a leader, a manager, is that you care more about the outcome as the manager and your specific task or role may change, but that is the almost like the most important thing. And so whenever people say, hey, I'm thinking about getting into management or leadership, this is the question I ask them. Do you really care much more about the outcome? And are you willing to play many different roles or do many different tasks to get to that outcome, or do you actually love one particular activity so much that you want to continue to deepen your love of the craft and your quality of that particular craft? Right. And I think the world supports both. Both are really valuable, but we kind of need to know that about ourselves.

I agree with that statement. I actually did a video a while Back on for leaders, outcomes versus outputs. Right. And if you care more about the outputs. Right. The outcome will never be what you want it to be at the time that you want it. You can ultimately get to the outcome, but it usually doesn't happen the exact way that you want it, when you care too much about the output. But let's talk about outputs for a second, though. You know, today, huge topic, AI, Right. And we talk about leaders and managers. I think why Julie is saying you need to focus more on outcomes is because at some point AI and technology will start doing the outputs for you.

Right.

Not saying that it's going to replace us as humans and that we don't need a human to overlook those outputs, but the grind of the outputs, and I'm starting to see it in the things that I do and the clients that I have. AI is starting to take place a little bit. So I'd love to get your thoughts on AI and how that is starting to intertwine with leadership and management.

Yeah, there's a couple of different things that I think about when I think about AI. The first is exactly as you said, which is that AI is a tool. And ideally it's a tool that helps us do certain aspects of our job better, faster, higher quality. And as somebody who thinks about the outcome, I definitely think every manager and leader should be thinking about how can our team be 2x as good or 2x as fast, or do 2x is better work, or 3x or 10x because we're using better tools. And that does require that we change perhaps the way that we work. Right. Maybe there was a very specific way that we were, I don't know, publishing books or doing other things. And now with the AI tool, certain things that maybe we were doing by hand, we were very manual about, can be automated and AI can do them and take on some of the load. And now, of course, that can also be very jarring because, you know, maybe the people on our team, we all had a sense of like, our identity and our identity, which sometimes comes from, like, I am a kind of person that does ABC or whenever this type of problem happens, this is the playbook that I follow. And whenever there is a disruptive new technology, it changes things. It's like, wait, wait a second. Like, maybe I'm not the person who does abc because now I have a tool that can do B and C, or I'm not necessarily. This is not the playbook that is tried and true for how to do it. And so I think that anytime we Have a new disruptive technology like AI, it will necessitate change. And change is hard. It can be very destabilizing. And it can especially, you know, if it's about, like, well, who are we? Like, what are. What am I good at? Like, what do I think of as my identity? Which leads me to the second thing I think about in regards to management, which is the role of a manager more than ever, is also to try and really be sturdy, to recognize, to not just put your head in the sand and think, hey, I'm not like, la, la, la, the world's changing, but, like, it's not going to change us. No, we need to embrace change, but we also need to provide sturdiness for our people. Like, I think it's very, very important to be able to go to a team and to help the team embrace change, but do it in a way where we can still be focused on kind of what are our first principles of what matters as humans. Because there are things that only we humans can do that AI will never be able to do, at least at this point. I could be wrong. Talk to me in 10 years, it's anyone's guess how the technology will evolve. But my strong hypothesis is that the why. You started this out by asking me, what is the why, what is the because? And that's a very human thing. Only we can have a sense of what really matters to us and why does it matter, and what are the problems that we mean to solve. Only we can have a sense of what are our values. We can certainly say, hey, maybe the outcome is we're running a business. Obviously we want it to be profitable. Obviously we want to make as much money as possible. But I'm sure if I were to ask you, well, are you willing to go in, you know, sell a bunch of drugs to people if that's going to make you more money? You're like, no, because you have values. And values are very, very human. Right? So it's not always just about what are we getting from it. It's like, what are the things we stand for as a company, as an organization, as a group of people? And I think that that's a lot of the role of leadership and management, especially when things are disruptive as they will be, and in very, very rapid times of change as, as what we're seeing right now.

Agree with you completely. And I want to double down on something talking about values and culture, going to your book. So one of my principles of leadership is that every good leader knows their team better than their team knows themselves. So you know how they think. You know their personality. So I want to tie this to your book, because in your book, you say there's one thing you should not tolerate. And I'm gonna go down this path because one, I agree with it, and two, it made me change something not in my circle. You say don't tolerate the asshole. Right. We all have that person that maybe they're the best salesperson on the team, but deep down, they're just an asshole.

Right?

You might have that person that's the lead developer. Deep down they're just an asshole, but people tolerate it because they're perceived as the best or they can't be replaced. Talk to us about the importance of getting rid of that toxin in your culture.

Yeah, I think that. And I've also gone through this myself, which is often when we have someone who is really good at whatever is the role or the job or the craft, I think we get really afraid, oh my gosh, if this person isn't here, we're just going to lose all this output and we're not going to be able to reach our goals or be able to get to the outcome. But I think the thing that we often are not weighing, we undervalue is to what extent does that type of asshole attitude actually suppress everyone else in the team from being able to reach a higher potential and to be able to do better work? Because what often happens is like, that person commands a lot of attention. They kind of put each other people down. You know, they're very, very difficult to work with. So everyone's like, trying to accommodate. And. And as a result, other people, you know, their star is not able to shine in the same way because of. Of the fact that they're all trying to make it work with this one person. Right. And maybe they're. Everyone else is a little more demoralized. And if they're more demoralized, they're probably not, you know, coming into work every day excited, ready to do, because this person is sucking a lot of the oxygen out of the room. And so my sense is often we underweight that, right? We think, oh, if this person goes, I lose their output. But we don't realize that sometimes when that person goes away, everyone else has a chance to shine and to do so much better. And if, like, there's seven people who now can do twice as good of work, like, our team is going to.

Be better off completely. And I say I extend it to friends in your circle as well too, right? Like, you have people in your circle that, you know, they're just a butthole. You really don't like being around them. Definitely in solo environments. And when there's a group or team around, it's like everybody knows, okay, they're so and so they're just going to go.

Also after we hang out, what am I feeling? Am I feeling kind of worse or I'm. I've timed again, we ignore it because we're like, oh, I don't want to confront this person. I don't. It would be rude of me to do X, Y and Z. Right. But we kind of also have to stay true to ourselves.

I think that's so new manager or the leader that's promoting a new manager. What are some 90 days to win over yourself, to win over your team.

And then to also feeling more energized, more motivated, more alive. Like what is that feeling? And I think that that North Star that we have, it, it doesn't, you know, it's not wrong. And a lot of, and prove and say all this smart stuff and really impress people. And that actually is not usually the way to, to create trust. I think the best way to create trust is you have to be a good listener. You have to try and actually have people talk to you, be able to open up to you and have them tell you what are their expectations, what are their hopes and dreams? Like what would they consider great, right. So. And it's going to be very different, you know, so if I were to go into any context or any. And I'm trying to figure out how to establish trust in the first 90 days, I first want to sit down with everyone and just have a real heart to heart and say, hey, I'm new here, I don't know a lot, I'm going to need a lot of your help. But I want you to tell me what would it look like for you to have a really great manager or what do. Would you want a manager to be able to, to do. To support you or support the team. Right. So have them understand their expectations of what it would mean for you to show up for them. Second would be about the team. Like tell me about what's going on with the team. What is going really well and that I probably shouldn't change is going really well and what's not going well that are important problems for us to be able to solve that you would want me to know about. Again, I don't want to go and be like I'm going to be the person to solve them. I want to just identify what are these problems with the idea that we're all as a collectively, as a team, are going to solve them together. So I would, I would say that that would do that with the people who are going to be on my team as well as my own manager. So very important in the first 90 days, hey, you just hired me. You know, clearly you have a bunch of hopes, dreams, expectations for what you hope that my presence here will be able to do for the team. What are those? And we can get, you know, what is it in a year's time, what is it in six months time, what is it even in the first 90 days? So we can get very meta here about even thinking about how the first 90 days could unfold. And I think if you go in and you have a good listening ear and you're able to actually ask people these questions and they tell you, then you have a really nice playbook for what success looks like.

Right? Amazing. Amazing. So we've talked a lot about management and leadership, but Julie decided to be entrepreneur, which means that now you're responsible for a lot of things. Julie, like you, not only are you an entrepreneur, but you did it as a startup, so you didn't do an acquisition, right? Like, so startup, you get to see everything. I talk to leaders because I often get asked, nick, what's the biggest difference between being a leader, manager and an entrepreneur? And I simply say this. When you're a leader, you have an accountability department, right? Like you have a. You have walls. And even though you might know other things, you get to stay singularly focused on on this one thing. And yeah, there might be 20 things within the one thing, but you're right here. As an entrepreneur, you've got a thousand things and you're responsible for that. Plus, oh, by the way, the decisions you make affect if your employees can eat at night.

Right?

So. So talk to us about the journey of Sundial, a little bit about what it is and why that became a passion for you.

Absolutely. So my company, Sundial, we're still pretty early stage. We have about 60 or so employees. It's been four and a half years. And we were very much brought to doing this, my co founder and I, because of our mission. We really, really wanted to help people be able to make better decisions with data. And that's something I very much believe in. It's part of my philosophy of being a great leader. But just even how I want to live my life, which is, look, we're all biased. I know I've got biases, and I have a lot of things that the way that my brain works is often it's pattern matching, right? So based on things that have happened in the past, there's a new situation. I automatically come to some kind of conclusion. But a lot of times that conclusion is probably wrong because it's not grounded in, like, getting a lot of actual data points from reality. And that's true with companies as well. So sometimes, you know, we say, oh, this is going to be a great thing for the company. But have we really sat down to analyze it, to think through it deeply, to ask ourselves, well, have we considered other alternatives? Or what evidence leads us to actually thinking that this is the best idea? You know, again, sometimes we just get excited and we want to do the thing. And so I think my life philosophy is a lot of, like, I want to be the kind of person that's very thoughtful. I want to do as much as I can to understand what my biases are. Again, always recognizing that I have them. But I want more data and more information. And this is also very much true in how I think about feedback, because feedback is data, too. And so our company does that. It tries to use quantitative data, which is measurement of, like, everything that users are doing with a particular product or feature, and tell the story, using AI and the latest technology of what is actually happening, so that each of us humans can make better decisions. Because decision making is, you know, I think goes back to, like, what can A.I. it's A. It's a very human endeavor, right? We will all. There will never be a day where we don't have decisions to make for the future, and we'll always feel kind of uncertain about them because we can never fully control the future. But we certainly can make better decisions if we feel more informed. So that's what led me to wanting to do this. I feel very, very passionately about that mission. And I would say that the other thing that I wanted was to continue my growth of being a leader. And it's exactly as you said, right? I've had a lot of experience growing, and every time I. My team get a lot a little bit bigger or I had a larger scope of work, it was like, this job is totally different. And there was so much that I needed to learn and a lot of mistakes made, but a lot of growth that came out of that. And to me, the next step was like, to your point, being an entrepreneur, you have to think about many more dimensions of things. Like, for example, when I went to Facebook, a lot of the culture, I contributed to it. But a lot of the culture was also already there. It's already established. There were values that kind of came from Mark, the founder. I think when it's your own company, you have to be face to face with like, well, what is it that I really value? How do I really want to work? What constitutes the kind of company that is going to do work that I'm going to be really proud of and I have to own that and I have to. And it's like, I think it very much what I learned so much is like just being able to stare and look at myself in a mirror and get to asking myself these much deeper questions.

Amazing. Amazing. Who, in your viewpoint is your ideal client for Sundial?

I would say every company eventually want to think big. Right now we work with some really amazing tech companies. So OpenAI is a client of ours a lot of the up and coming generation of AI tools like Gamma. We also work with large companies like. But if we are going to think about what is our strategy, what should we prioritize as a company, we likely want to understand, well, what are people already doing? What are they? How is their behavior? You know, it does. That hypothesis of this feature is going to be awesome for whatever reason. Is that true? You know, and now that we launched it, is that what we're seeing people do? And so it's about keeping ourselves honest to our intention and also again, being having as much of our eyes open to what is truly the reality on the ground that is happening.

That's. That's wonderful. So I'm going to start sending people your way, Julie. Thank you.

I love it. I would love to work with just. And I, I love actually also working with different companies because it's part of my fascination and curiosity is also how do great companies operate because, you know, like people, everyone, every company is a little bit different. And I always learn so much too from, from, from getting to talk with people who work and lead at different types of environments.

Yeah, wholeheartedly, Julie. I know how busy you are. I'm honored that you spent some time with me today. And I know that the viewers and listeners are writing many, many, many notes because I've been writing some as well too. I'm going to get you out of here on my quick five. Quick fire, rapid fire. Ready?

Yep.

What's the. Your favorite leadership quote that you live by?

My favorite leadership quote. I'm not, I'm not doing this really well on the quick. Okay. First thing that came to mind is make it happen. I have a little banner behind me that, that says that.

Make it happen. I love it. Number two, what's the first app that you check every morning?

Slack. Yeah. Work emails or work Work.

Going to work. Yes, going to work. What's the most underrated habit of great managers?

I think think time, which could be journaling time or reflection time, but just having a block at the end of the week where you think, you reflect and you plan super hard. I mean, it's so important for us to ground ourselves, but hard to make the time for it because everyone's so busy.

Absolutely, absolutely. You're planning a vacation. What's the first place that comes to mind?

Europe. A city in Europe that I haven't been to before.

Okay, good stuff. Last. Last. Rapid fire. Who's your favorite California based basketball team and why is it the Los Angeles Lakers?

I mean, look, I'm warriors all the way. I feel very lucky to have lived in the Bay Area during a lot of very exciting seasons.

There you go. Good stuff. Julie, again, appreciate you so much. I'm gonna have all of your connections in the show notes. But while we're here live, where can people find and follow you?

I'm on Twitter. My handle is Julie J O U L E E On most social networks. I'm pretty active on Twitter. I'm active on LinkedIn. I have my website, juliezoo.com which links to, you know, wonderful interviews like with yours. You can find my book the Making of a Manager at bookstores everywhere.

All right, I'm going to have links. I'm going to put links up for Amazon and Barnes and Noble just so I can give you some love at those stores because I know how important that is. So Julie, thank you so much.

Over. I blog. I should have said this first. I have a substack. Yes, Looking Glass. So I write there a lot and it's one of my favorite ways of trying to clarify things in my mind.

See, I'm gonna need you to be my substack mentor. If you don't mind, we'll talk about.

Oh yeah, absolutely. I love. I'm a big fan of some stack, so very happy to.

I need to get started but I don't know what to do. So I'm gonna pick your brain.

If you don't mind much, let's talk.

Let's do it. Julie, again, I thank you for all the viewers and listeners. Remember your because is your superpower. Go unleash it.