Sheryl Sandberg - Leadership, Growth, & Operational Excellence - [Glue Guys, EP.28]

Early in my career, I'd spend hours alone in the film room thinking I was being productive. But the truth was, I had no idea what I was doing. I was just going through the motions. That's what finance leaders tell me. They're frustrated because they waste hours manually tracking expenses and reconciling statements when they should be focusing on driving their business forward. Be honest with me. How much of your time is spent on high value work? For many finance teams, it's less than 20%. But you can change that right now with Ramp. Ramp is a free corporate card that handles all the tedious financial operations automatically so your finance team can focus on what actually moves the needle. One CFO told me they cut their month end close from five days to one. It's no surprise over 25,000 businesses trust ramp, including Shopify, CBRE and Boys and Girls Club of America. Don't waste any more time going through the motions. Check out ramp@ramp.com GG and for glue guys listeners, Ramp is offering metal cards for the next 30 days. Just go to ramp.com GG cards issued by Sutton bank member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply.

I was sitting next to the CEO of one of the airlines. It seems like the airlines are pretty well run, but there's always catering delays and my bags keep getting lost. Why do you make like such small errors? Why can't you kind of get the small stuff right? And he said to me, he said, you know, we run a business where a huge portion of what we do, we have absolutely no margin for error. No maintenance problems, no drunk pilots, no error. All of our mistakes are going to be catering in baggage. To which I said, keep losing my bag. You and I are good.

I am so happy that we have my dear friend Cheryl here. You guys might know that we're very good friends. What you might not know is that the NASDAQ in aggregate is worth $30 trillion. And companies that Sheryl helped build make up over 10% of the NASDAQ. And I think it is a pretty crazy stat to think about that. So leadership legend, lean in, author, and generally a real mentor and somebody I really look up to. So I'm so happy that you're here. Thank you for coming with us.

Well, thank you for having me. And obviously that gives me massively too much credit for any stock index. But I learned as much from you and I'm so glad to be with both of you as well. And especially cause Shane's wearing a collared shirt.

That is a big deal. Big deal.

Big Deal. I'm trying to class it up, Cheryl.

This is the classic I'm a professional today.

We're not trying to downgrade your reputation. We're trying to lift you up. So I'm trying to bring some class to this joint.

And you are. And you are.

We're going to check the Doug McMillan footage, and I think Shane was wearing a T shirt for the Doug McMillan one. And so she's really putting you up higher, Cheryl, which we want you to notice. Okay, so the first question I have is, everyone knows you worked at Google. Everyone knows you worked at Meta. I don't think many people know you worked in government beforehand. And that is not an obvious path. It is not clear that someone would help create $4 trillion of market cap from starting in government. And so can you tell us about what you were doing there and how you got to Google?

Yeah. So I studied economics in college, and Larry Summers was my thesis advisor and real mentor, and he went to the World bank, and I went with him right when I graduated. And I studied economics because I really cared about global poverty and at the World Bank. I actually started my career working on leprosy in India, which is not something a lot of people have done. And I've spent more time in Madhya Pradesh than anyone I know who's actually.

From India, literally including my parents. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Most people don't even know where it is.

I've had this conversation.

Yeah, literally you've had this conversation with my parents.

They were shocked. I knew what Madhya Pradesh is, but it's an area in the center of the country that's had endemic leprosy. And that was what I wanted to do. And so then I went to business school. Larry went to the Treasury Department, and I went with him and eventually became his chief of staff. And I always thought I would never work in business. I grew up. My parents. My dad's a doctor. My mother was a community organizer and a very big activist. Business was kind of bad in my family. Being a doctor was good. The government was good. Nonprofits were good. So I would have thought I would have never gone, worked, worked in a business. In fact, when I graduated from college, the way they do the graduation at my school is all the schools graduate. And when the business school graduated and I was an undergraduate, they waived dollar bills. I know, it was horrible. And the entire undergraduate class booed.

Really?

And I didn't boo because I thought that was kind of mean, like, they are graduating. But I understood it.

Alex would have cheered because you don't know this, but Alex's nickname when he got drafted was Dollar Bill because he got a huge contract.

That's not a nickname I'm proud of.

I know, but I'm just telling you, I just wanted to introduce that your nickname was Dollar Bill. Yeah, you can call him that the.

Rest of the way.

Yes. Thanks, Paul. What did you want to be when you were a little girl? I mean, if it wasn't high powered corporate executive and leader, like what were your dreams when you were a little girl?

I wanted to do good and I really did. I wanted to help people who were poor, needed more help, didn't have access to democracy. My parents were very big in the Soviet Jewry movement, trying to get political prisoners and resistance people who wanted to be Jewish and practice their religion out of the Soviet Union and the then Soviet Union. And then when I was in the government at treasury was the Internet boom. And what I saw sitting in those kind of hallowed halls at the side table, let's be clear, in the hallowed halls, was that really big things were happening in tech. And it seemed to me that these little companies like Yahoo and aol, these were the companies that were small and getting and bigger at the time.

Hotmail.

Yeah, that's right, Hotmail.

Alec has a Hotmail account.

Yeah. Oh, really?

He's an og.

So Hotmail, we're having maybe even bigger impact than nonprofits. And so I left the government and went to Google because I believed that organizing the world's information was like a pretty real impactful, changing more lives, things to do.

Was there like disillusionment at all? Like when you were with the government, I'm saying, and like as far as like impact, then like you were seeing an opportunity to have a greater impact obviously in the private sector, is that fair to say?

Not really. I mean, I was a political appointee in the Clinton administration and we lost, you know, so I had to leave. But I wasn't disillusioned. I think it is, I think it might be very. In the decades that have since then passed, I mean, that day, that was the Asian financial crisis, I worked for Bob Rubin and Larry Summers. What the US treasury could do seemed to really matter. You know, people were going to starve in developed nations because of a financial crisis and financial systems that weren't well run. So I felt like we were having real impact at the time. But it was, you know, the next guys come in, you come out. I never went back, which I'm glad I never went back, but I wasn't Disillusioned, Maybe I should have been.

Well, then, what did you do at Google when you went there? So you go there, it's 2001, right? What was your job?

So I was hired. It's a fun story. I was hired to be the first business unit general manager. I had like a business card that said business unit general manager. The problem was there were no business units, and there was nothing to generally manage. But I had met Eric Schmidt in my dealings in the government, and he hired me, along with Larry and Sergey to have this job. And I kind of am not a total idiot. I knew that there was no business units. But when I was looking for a job, I was coming from business school and I was kind of organized and geeky. So I had a chart of all my job criteria, and I was offered jobs in Silicon Valley that met those job criteria. Like, I would have something to do. I would help to run a business, I would help to build something. My Google job didn't exist. And I looked at Eric and I had showed him my chart. I said, listen, I really, I love Google. Like, I love Google and I really want to work with you. And Larry and Sergey seemed great. I said, but this job meets none of my criteria. Like, it actually isn't a job. There are no business units. How can I be a general manager of something that doesn't exist? And he put his hand on my paper and said, don't be dumb, don't be an idiot. If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat, just get on. And I got on, and they told me they were going to reorganize into business units. They did not. And I had to find a job, and I found one working on the ads business, but I was already inside.

The thing that's so interesting about that is like, you know that story, Everyone uses that line now when they're recruiting, but they use it for non rocket ships too, right? And they just call themselves a rocket ship. And it's been like, bastardized in so many ways. And I think that I didn't know that you were actually the recipient of the original, like, rocket ship story.

I think so. And I've told that story a lot. But a rocket ship can be defined in lots of different ways, right? I mean, a rocket ship, the Google rocket ship, the Facebook rocket ship. And I've been really lucky in lots of ways that I was on two real rocket ships. But there can be lots of ways that things grow quickly or change quickly. But yes, some people Claim they're a rocket ship. We had 2% growth last year. We're a rocket ship.

But at that time, it was still unclear if it was a rocket ship. Right. Like, ad revenue hadn't totally been coming in just yet or.

Oh, yeah, no, there was no rocket ship yet.

So, I mean, there is a leap. There is a leap of faith. Were those things you battled? Was it just kind of full steam ahead? Did you jump right in? Was it natural for you?

I remember when I showed up for my interview, I was wearing a suit, like a pantsuit. I took one look in the building. I'm like, holy shit, I'm not getting this job. But fortunately, I had a T shirt on underneath. So I took the jacket off and I, like, tied the jacket, and I looked like I was wearing a T shirt. But it was like that moment of like, this isn't going to do. And then there's a very famous man out here named Bill Campbell. Do you know who he is?

Yeah, of course. He's a hero of ours, sports hero.

Hero of mine, too. And I work my first day. He said, what do you do? Hi. What do you do? I was at Google, and he was like, the coach at Google. And I was like, well, I used to be the chief of staff at the Treasury Department. He's like, what do you do? I was like, well, Eric hired me. I met him at Treasury. I didn't do anything. So I was talking about the past. He looked at me and said, it's the last time you're going to talk about what you used to do.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

That is amazing.

The problem was I didn't do anything. So I had nothing to say. And I looked at him, I said, well, I was hired to run business units, but there aren't any, so I'm hoping I can be useful. Do you have any advice? He's like, that's better. I do.

What did he say?

Well, he told me how to start finding a job for myself. And he said, go around and find a problem and solve it. But, yeah, it was the one thing I remember. Meg Whitman said this. I had talked to her about joining ebay. Eventually, didn't do that. Went to Google, and I said to her, I've never done this before. She said, none of us have ever done this before. I hired this woman named Kirsten Neville Manning, who's a very dear friend now, and she had never done hr. But I introduced her. She was my head of HR at my team at Google, and I introduced her to Everyone. I was like, this is our new head of hr. And she pulled me aside after the first day and she said, you know I've never done that, right?

Yeah.

I said, I'm not lying. I didn't say you did it before. I said, but none of us have ever done this. And in a lot of ways, yes, you can take jobs that other people have done. But all of these stories, you know, the story of this podcast, no one's ever done this before.

That is a very generous analogy. But yes, the way that three are.

Coming together from a different point of view about sports and leadership and friendship, that is different. I think knowing that no one else has, has the perfect answer, that there's freedom in that. There's freedom in that. I do think confidence is also a different thing for women and men.

Like there's this idea about confidence and leadership and strength. And I think there is an underlying like belief about masculinity buried in that. Right? And I struggle with this. Again, those very same things. When I got like to an NFL locker room, I was a 20 year old kid that was supposed to be on top of the world and I thought I had to like constantly promote strength and be. And I wasn't enough and I like stretched myself and I don't, I, I said and did the dumbest shit, right? Like, because I, I didn't think I was enough, right? And I, I think about like getting ready for this. I thought about you stepping foot in these rooms, right? Like some of the most powerful rooms in the history of the world. And you have to think not only about those things, you have to think about what you're wearing, right? Like your hair, like makeup, like I, I just think it's, it's such a different set of standards for women and I'm fascinated by that. So like, I don't know your thoughts on that, like maybe even misconceptions about leadership, your thoughts on it.

But the confidence point is interesting. You said it's very different for women versus men on confidence. What did you mean?

Well, it's interesting because I think, you know, I listened to your confidence podcast and it was, I think, great, great. Listen, if anyone's listening to this, this one or that one, go back. Cause it's really interesting, you know, Shane staying, you're, you know, in the NBA, like not having the confidence that people think you have. The stories you told about different parts of your career, the stuff you mentioned about Sequoia, all really interesting. But I think, and so men face it too. And I think it is harder as a man to admit that. Yes, but the data on this is actually really clear that when a man succeeds, he and other people ascribe that to their own core skills. When a woman succeeds, she and the people around them ascribe that to three things. Getting lucky, working hard, and help from others. That is very different.

That is very different.

Very different. Because if it's, you know, so you have that moment of doubt, but then you go on to do well in the NBA, you go on to be a great NFL player, you go on to be a great investor, and people then. And you are able to say, huh, I did that, and you gain your confidence. A woman will have that same doubt, though, in the beginning. But then once she succeeds, it's not because of her. It's help from others. Getting lucky, working hard is help from her. And this has been proven over and over again. And this is why men get hired based on potential and women based on what they've already proven.

I have two reactions to that. One of them, I think you'll laugh at at least one of them. So when I applied for the instacart job, okay, when I tried to go get the instacart job, Avni, at one point, very earnestly was sort of like, hey, like, do you meet any of the criteria that are on the job description? I told her very honestly, because it was, you know, 10 years of operating experience, having taken a company public. And I was like, no. And I was like, but those job description requirements are stupid. And so therefore, like, I don't care. Like, they would. I would do a good job. And she just sort of, like, looked at me like I had five heads, right? Because it was, you know, whatever. So that's like the positive version of this, which is that you can, like, not care about the job description. The interesting thing, though, that I take from what you said is I actually think, as we've gotten older, more of the attribution for any success any of us have been lucky enough to have. Sounds like what you said. The studies say that women say earlier on, which is hard work, lucky, and help from others. Like, a fair amount of what we talk about in the podcast, if we actually have any success to talk about, is like, attributing it to that.

Yeah, no one does anything on their own.

And everyone thinks that's wonderful and modest, and you sound great, but what they really think is, like, you're really smart, you're really smart, you're really athletic, you jump really high, tackle lots of people. You make great investments. And there's the modesty.

Yes, maybe it's false modesty, but I was trying to say I think there's wisdom in there.

No, I don't think it's false modesty. I don't think it's false modesty. I think it is true. But largely people are looking at you and thinking for sure. But with women they are looking at that.

You have had this ridiculous career. Right. But did you have that early on? Did you have the things that are, you know, attributed that are often correlated with women confidence wise, you know?

Yeah. I wrote a whole book called Lean in which is basically about like have more confidence because. Or lean in, believe you can do it, take your seat at the table.

Yes.

Your story about applying for the Instacart job, that's what the data shows. Men apply for jobs when they meet some percentage smaller of the job criteria. Women also only when they meet 100% or most of it. So yes, Avani wouldn't have applied. Or maybe she would have.

No, no, you're totally right.

Going back to Google, are you aware of all these factors that are just making your job tougher to climb that mountain?

I think not yet. I think not yet. So I came into the workforce and I looked beside me and you know, like lots of women, smart women in college and I looked above me and there's no women. And I've never worked for a woman to this day. To this day I've never had a female boss. A lot of people haven't. Women had some single digit percentage of the Fortune 500 jobs. Now it's 11%. I mean, I thought my generation was going to change it and we didn't.

Why do you think that is?

Yeah, because I think to this day, and I think it's a particularly dangerous moment which we can circle back and talk about, we really applaud ambition and success in men in ways that we don't in women. So the most interesting thing I learned along the way that led me to give the TED talk to. Right. Lean in was that as men get more successful and powerful, they are better liked. And as women get more successful and powerful, they are less liked. That is like you can't refute the data on this. I can give you a story for my life. It is like solidly experience proven. I mean, here's one real example I face. So somewhere along the way I decided there weren't enough female leaders and I got on a TED stage and I did something that everyone said was going to lend my career do not speak publicly about being a woman. That is a disaster. Your career will be over.

What year was this?

2010, maybe.

Okay, so you have a lot to lose at this point.

Yeah, but I'm the Facebook coo, so I have less to lose. Right? I'm already the Facebook coo. I was invited to give a TED Talk. It was TED Women, but I was supposed to talk about social media. And I said, I want to talk about why there aren't enough female leaders. And people said, your career will be over once you start advocating for women. Like real business execs don't do that. And I said, well, I can take this risk. I can take this chance. If I don't do it, it's not going to happen. And I'm watching my generation not change it. And the talk went very viral and it was broadly applauded. I'm not sure you could find a negative comment on the thing. And then Facebook filed to go public and I became publicly successful. And all of a sudden my TED Talk started getting attacked. Shouldn't speak for us. Who is she? It was unbelievable. It was exactly what the data showed. If I had been a man and I had given a TED Talk on here's how you can succeed in the workplace. And then I, like, became publicly successful, everyone would have been like, and he gave a TED Talk.

Yeah, totally.

You can learn from his wisdom. And even little girls know this. Little boys will raise their hand in class because people are going to like them if they know the answers. But by middle school, and I know we have some daughters here, by middle school, if you are a girl and you answer too many questions, you can be less liked.

How does this make you guys feel as, like fathers of daughters? Like, I only have sons.

I know for me, like, you know, my daughter is like, has way more chutzpah and way more swag than I ever had as a 13 year old. But I see the moments where she shrinks in the moment and it just pains me. And so, like, my message to her is like, kick everybody's ass. Like, you are so good. Like, kick everybody's ass. So they have to, they have to put you on the soccer team and they have to, they have to respect you in the classroom. And like, as a kid who was always ostracized because I was mixed and I was tall and I was poor, like, that was my mindset. So trying to, it made sense for me. I don't know if it makes sense for my daughter, but my message has always been, you are a Star. All right. Just. Just beat everybody. Beat everybody. And they'll know it.

I think there's such an interesting dynamic parenting wise when you have a boy and a girl. Like, I just inherently felt more responsibility with my boys to. I'm far more demanding, right. Like, on the demanding and supportive spectrum. Like, I'm way more demanding of my boys. And I think. And this isn't something I've ever consciously thought about, but, like, I need to help them become a man. With my daughter, I am just all support. Like, I think about Shane doing the fun dance costumes with his daughter. Like. Like, when I pick my daughter up, I go to. I'm a dance dad. I go to the dance competitions, and it's like, it's just all fun. I'm just, like, cheering in the crowd. And, like, when I, like, drive around in our discussions, like, my role is just far more. Joy.

Yeah.

As a dad, and I don't know why, like, you know, and again, the different relationships, obviously, with the sexes, it's different that way. Like, and again, this isn't something that I've ever consciously thought about, so. And it is natural, again, with my boys. Like, I can look at my boys the right way and, like, impose fear. Like, I know. I know how to do that. My daughter has absolutely zero fear of me. Like, I've. I've barked at her, and she barks right back, like, you know what I'm saying? Like, and. And. And I think probably that's all embedded in the same thing, and I don't know if that's right or wrong. Right. Like, from a parent. Like, I. I do think about this.

I want to ask Cheryl. So, like, is it different now because my daughter can look at you and say, man, Cheryl is a badass. Like, I can be Cheryl. You know, I don't know if you had that as a young person trying to figure it out, but, like, don't you think it's a little bit different? Because there are great examples that people can, you know, especially little girls can see themselves in power positions and very successful positions. Is it different?

Yeah, it's getting better. It's just not getting better fast enough. So here's. It sounds like your daughters are super lucky, and that sounds like a wonderful, joyful thing. Here's what's happening in a lot of homes, and people don't pay attention to it. Girls do more chores than boys, and they do different chores. Boys take out the trash, which takes, like, a minute, and girls do the dishes, which takes, like, 35 or whatever. Or whatever. It is. Boys get a higher allowance than girls in a lot of families. Yeah. It just, they don't even. People don't even think about it. And this is really important. By age 14, a girl, if you have straight parents, so you have a man and a woman in the household. A girl who sees her father doing household chores has broader career aspirations than one who doesn't really. So no amount of sweetie, you can do whatever you want really matters as much. Even though that's terrific, let's say that you gotta do the dishes.

My wife and I start dating. We're both in our early 20s and, like, you know, figuring it out. And so we used to have this deal, like, whoever cooks dinner doesn't have to do the dishes, right? And it was like roughly a 50, 50 split back then. You're just cooking for us. We ate out a lot anyway. Like, it didn't, you know. Well, then my wife has ambitions. She's a phenomenal cook, but she has ambitions to go to culinary school. So now, like, I, I, I cook zero percent of the time. It's like, very emasculating. She's even taken over the barbecue. Like, I don't even get, like, I've lost the smoker. Like, she, she, she watches what I do, and she's like, get the hell out of the way. Like, let me, let me handle this. And so I, I do 100% of the dishes in our house.

That's awesome. Like, and that will matter.

And I obviously just fell into this. I had no idea you were going to say that. But I do love the idea. And we constantly talk about this, I think, in any kind of any relationship, like, I think people get so caught up in the words, right? And like, and again, telling your daughter she can become anything, like, yes, that's great. But it's far more the example that you set, the things you do, the, that what she sees every day. And Shane has this great quote, right? Like, it's not what our parents do or say.

It's we learn, it's we learn from our parents when they're not trying to teach us something, you know, those are the lessons. Well, okay, so I have a question for you. So I have two nieces who I dearly love, okay? And when I hear you talking about, like, the things that naturally happen to girls when they're in middle school, because that's where my nieces are, I'm trying to figure out what I can do to actually help, right? And I don't live there, but is it bringing up that these things happen and then we fight against it and whatever? Or is it like, no, come to work with me and see this? Like, what can I do as, like, an uncle who deeply loves my nieces and doesn't want them to feel what you're describing?

Well, I've met them, and they are pretty spectacular. They are pretty spectacular. I think, yes. And yes, it is great to say that stuff and great to do this. We actually. My foundation, it's all up there for free. At Lean in, we have a Lean in Girls program you can look at. And one of the things we realized is that. Do you say to a middle school girl, hey, sweetie, it's gonna be tougher?

Yeah, that's what I was trying to figure out.

Are you demoralizing them? The answer is pretty much, yeah. You say, listen, like, being smart is just as important. Yes, it can be harder, but it's not gonna be for you because you're. Or it might be for you, but it doesn't have to be as hard because you're going to be aware of what matters. And one other thing that I think is pretty relevant here is sports. Sports for girls. I am the proud investor in the local. Ravi comes with me all the time. Bay fc, the women's soccer team. My favorite quote is, girls who play today lead tomorrow. I am an exception. The hugely great majority. It's like 80 or 90% of women who achieve positions of leadership in industries played sports. It is a massive, massive thing.

One thing I'll tell you, actually, on women's sports, that I am very. I'm very, very, very happy about. I'm not proud to admit this, but when I was growing up, I wasn't that interested in watching women's sports. Okay. But my kids.

No one was. Yeah, but my kids, there were no women's sports. There were very few, other than tennis. Like, very few women's sports to watch.

But when my kids go to the BFC games, they like it as much or more as the MLS games. And that is awesome. Like, my. My three boys are, you know, in the front row. They are out there asking for autographs. They are begging. And, like, that is fantastic. And so I do think that women's sports. Alex is a big proponent for girls flag football, you know, and so we got to turn that into a. Yeah.

Probably the, like, I mean, the ultimate bastion of, like, it was just masculinity, right? Only men can play. Like, Title IX doesn't even really apply to football because there's no female counterpart. Right. And I think the emergence of flag football is a start.

You'll like this. My daughter played on our school team, and Steve Young was her coach. Was her coach. In fact, the local news has Steve throwing a pass to her and her catching it.

Oh, really?

That was a big moment.

That's huge.

And one time he threw a pass to her and apologized that it wasn't a good pass. She was like, I'm good, Steve.

If you ask Steve, he believes that women in football were, like, made for each other more than men. Right. And he's talked a lot about this. Offensive football is very choreographed. Right. Like, he. He talks a lot. Like, there's a lot of dance kind of terminology, especially about playing quarterback. And again, steps and footwork and rhythm that you play with. And Steve is like, a firm believer since he's been coaching, like, and how. How inherently it makes sense to women and. Right. Like, we've had this all wrong all along and so fat. You know, that is crazy interesting to think about.

Cheryl, you said where it's getting better, but I know in some ways you're. The moment we're in, maybe it's not getting as much better. And so can we talk about that, too? Like, you. You told me something the other day that kind of blew my mind on this regarding mentorship and, you know, the impact of me, too. And so I'm very curious about this.

I think there's a couple challenges we should talk about, but let's start with the first one. The first one is that, you know, there are always these unintended consequences of men. So let's be clear. Me too, is super important. Like, I never had any. I shouldn't say I never had anything particularly terrible, but I was grabbed, like, multiple times in my career by multiple men. It didn't even occur to me, you know, like, grabbed under the table. Like, that was just part of life in your jobs. In my jobs you were at.

In Silicon Valley.

And I don't even consider myself to have been particularly sexually harassed, even though it meets the definition. So what I'm saying is there's massive sexual harassment. None of that should have happened. None of the more serious stuff that happened to women should happen. And me, too, was hugely important. Hugely important. However, not harassing us is not enough. You can't ignore us either. So 60% of male managers in the US are afraid to be alone in a room with a woman and do a common work activity, like have a meeting one on one. Mike Pence famously said that he wouldn't be alone in a room with a woman unless his wife was present. That's the no promotion rule for women. Like I would say to audiences, raise your hand if you've ever been promoted or promoted someone you've never had a meeting with. The answer is no. And so we need to be. Most of the men, again, like 90% are still managers, senior managers, CEOs are still men. They need to be able to meet with women one on one. Leave the door open if you must. You gotta travel with women. Travel does not mean your hotel room travel is a public airport, dinners, that's a restaurant, not your flat.

Yes.

Yeah.

And that really has changed. Can you imagine? Like, we live in a world where people are afraid.

Don't you think? Cancel culture has been a big part of this? Right? Like, I do tv, I'm scared to death that I'm going to slip up and say something at some point that's going to get taken out of context and then you get, you know, you get crucified for it. Right. Like, and so I think there are a lot of men that are well intentioned and this, I'm not excusing this behavior at all. But like that, for that same reason, like you're saying, or like, well, I just don't want to be in the situation. Yeah, right. And like, and that, that, that pendulum, right again of like, people, you can't make a mistake, right. You can't learn from it. There isn't like a dialogue. It's like, you know, I don't know, like, I do feel like that, that, that has been a part of the same culture that has restricted women.

Absolutely. No. People are protecting themselves. People HR departments will tell people, don't be alone in a room with a woman.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Which I understand where it comes from, but we have to recognize what the cost of that is. You know, it's also the case that we need to recognize that those are the opportunities you go on the trip, that's when you get the downtime, that's when you get the extra time. Those are the people, those are the people that get promoted. So we need for men to be able to say proudly, like, I mentor women and you have to see the upside. Like, no risk is worth taking if there's no payoff. Well, here's the payoff. The payoff is if you work from the most junior employee to the most senior CEO or team owner, team leader, coach, if you can work better with 50% of the population, you're going to outperform. And so the reason you would take What I hope is not a risk of having a one on one meeting with women is if you're not going to do that, you are hurting yourself and your own performance and the performance of your group, your team, your company.

This topic's obviously incredibly polarizing right now, right? Bunch of companies kind of retreating on things, other companies like doubling down. If you're leading today, like, how do you set a culture that like cuts through all the crap, all the noise and like actually moves the needle on this stuff?

I mean, look, thank you for the question because I am really worried about where we are today. And we kind of did get to a bad place. We got to a place where a lot of men were feeling discriminated against for gains that were actually pretty modest. I mean, again, 11% of the top jobs is not 80. And so it's a bad situation. And there's still massive discrimination against women, massive bias for women, massive bias for women of color particularly. All of that is still existing. But the moment we're in I do think is really dangerous. Where people are trying to say like there's a full meritocracy. So women get 59% of the college degrees and they have 11% of the top jobs. So you have to believe that men are 12 times more talented and skilled. That if you're running a real meritocracy, that's where it ends up. That's like hard to argue. You kind of can't get from 59 to 11. So something else is going on. So what's going on? Systematic bias for women as leaders, for ambition. He's ambitious. It's a compliment. Ready?

Yeah.

She's ambitious.

There's like an undertone.

Yeah, there's an undertune. Little girls are called bossy. Much more money. Many, many, multiple times more. If you say that little girl isn't bossy, she's got executive leadership skills. That's pretty funny. I can make a thousand person audience laugh every time. Let's try it the other way. He's not bossy. He's got executive leadership skills. There's no humor because executive leadership skills go against our expectations. And so we need to recognize that we systematically again. As women get more powerful, they're less liked. As men get more powerful, they're more like, we need to change that culture. I also think we need to recognize there's an economic reality here. And this is something I'm really worried about. There's huge polarization on every issue. There's almost no issue I would even want to talk about. Here that there's not sides. But, you know, there's one issue there's no polarization on, which is we need a strong economy. Everyone wants it. You want economic growth, it creates jobs, families are safer. Our country is stronger. That takes women. So let's look at Japan. It is a cautionary tale for us. Japan had 30 years of complete stagnation. Everyone knows this. Caused by three factors among others. But three main factors. Low population growth, basically none. No immigration. Low immigration and low workforce participation by women. In fact, famously, Prime Minister of Japan Abe had womenomics. Remember womenomics? They were going to get more women into the workforce. Where are we? Population growth in the US is declining rapidly. In the next 10 years, it'll hit 0.25%. That's basically zero. Whatever your views of immigration are, it's going down. No one thinks it's going up. And female workforce participation in the US is now behind Japan's. And all the other OECD countries have gone up, or most of them in the last 10 years, and we are not going up. So where are we? This is like a core economic issue. Female workforce participation, women in the workforce, women in leadership roles is critical to our economy. And I think people recognizing that is what needs to happen. And that should be all parties, all sides. And I think everywhere on the political.

I think that's a common thing too. Of just like as a supporting data point to that, like, hey, listen guys, there are lots of qualified people that are capable of doing a lot more than they are given the opportunities to do. This is not about giving something to somebody that doesn't deserve it. This is just about starting. Let's just start with college graduates and we can just go from there and we can do that. I think one source of alpha in investing is making sure that the right leader is at the place. And I asked Fiji one time who you mentored and is this fantastic CEO and friend. I asked her one time, I said, you are an amazing CEO. How do I find other people like you? And she told me, she's like, there should be more women in the slate. And I was like, well, I don't really want to have the political discussion. She's like, no, you asked me about the effectiveness discussion. And I was like, okay, cool, tell me why. And she's like, look, she's like, if you agree with me that there are things along the way that make it tougher to be a woman leader, then in order to be in the fucking situation where I even am on the list, I've had to go through a lot of stuff. I've had to actually go through a lot of things. And so I'm heartened. You know, I have actually seen a lot, and a lot of these candidates have actually seen a lot, and they might have seen more than you might expect. And I was like, that's a good argument that I thought was like, a very helpful thing. As I thought about, you know, if I'm ever in a CEO interview slate, it's not about, like, doing the right thing as much as it is just like, hey, there might be candidates that are actually really good that we're not looking at because they've had experiences that we're not considering, you know, and if.

You believe that other people are discriminating against, they will. There will be more of them out there. More good ones will be overlooked by others. So if you're just fully meritocratic, you might have more.

Yes.

How do you view that role of mentorship? Right, for the. For the women you have mentored? What do you wish young girls knew that are trying to advance their careers in a professional setting?

So it's interesting. People talk about the difference between mentorship and sponsorship, and it goes to how you're asking the question. Sponsorship is. You're, like at the table saying, fiji should get this job. You know, which I was along with others, and Fiji should get the job. And she did, you know, she should get lots of job jobs along the way.

No, no, no. She should get no other job. She should be in the job she's in now.

That's what I mean. All the way up, all the way up to this. To this role, to this role. I think it's different messages for different audiences to the men and the women, but the men on top. We, again, we need to tell men to mentor and sponsor women. There aren't enough women to do. To do the women because of. Because of the numbers. To the people looking for mentors, I do think that women are told so often how hard it is to get them that sometimes women will have the wrong approach. They'll walk up to you and say, will you be my mentor? Well, I'd love to. The best way to get me to be your mentor is be like, listen, we have a problem. And I noticed this. Here's my solution. Or, what can I do? I tell people going into the workforce, you have no idea how powerful it would be to go into a meeting with your boss. And rather than say, how do I get promoted? Or is my work getting valued enough? Say, what can I do. To make your life easier. How often does this happen now?

Not enough.

I tell this to all the. Think about that. Walk in and be like, my job is to make your job easier. What can I do to make your job easier today?

I tell people this. To your point on that, I tell people at companies all the time. I'm like, I promise you, I would love nothing more than for you to be promoted and have a ton of equity, because that means our company is worth more. But, like, the job is just please make our company better. If you do that, there's so much that we want to give to you, but don't ask me about it. Do it. Do something. You know, and we've stolen your there are more problems than we have people line every time. Like, I promise you, we have more problems than we have people. Like, let's just. Let's go solve those together.

How can men mentor women? Like, what role is there for, you know, in the workplace for that? I'm curious, because I've worked. I work in the most male dominant industry ever. Right? Like, there's a few female trainers, but, like, that's it. And so I'm personally very curious about this.

Well, I'm so grateful for the question. Like, anyone who asks me that question is already the person who's doing what they can. But you've got to look out for those opportunities to find women to mentor and sponsor and volunteer and make sure you're giving them the equal opportunities to travel for the meetings, for. For the. For the business dinners.

Men being aware of their surroundings isn't really a strong suit.

They can do it. Look. Look at the question you just asked. He's got a collared shirt on.

He's got a collared shirt.

He can definitely do it.

That's true.

He's got a collared shirt. He can definitely do it.

I know, Jenny. He can do anything. He's very. Okay, so I have a different question for you. 2015, right. You are professionally on top of the world. Right. And then Dave dies. We talk about resilience on our podcast, and our examples are, a lot of times, stuff from work. It was Alex's crazy leg injury where he almost died. You know, it's some of the things that have gone on in Shane's life. Your experience with it is pretty different than anybody I've ever talked to or been close friends with. And so, like, what was that like when it happened?

Yeah. For those of you who may not know the story, I was married very happily. I had a 7 year old and a 10 year old. And I walked into a gym and my husband had died. He was on the floor just suddenly. We had no idea it was a heart arrhythmia, but we had no idea there was a heart issue. Learned it all later through medical exams and autopsies, but no idea. Just the shock of a lifetime. And it really does blow up your world. And talk about losing confidence. I mean, I. I thought I would lose everything else too. I mean, I used to walk into rooms before that at Facebook and I was pretty friendly and everyone would talk. After Dave died, I could silence any room by just walking in. I would literally walk into the room and it would be dead silent. I remember when I first came back to work, I made like I fell asleep in a meeting. And then I thought someone worked at Google who worked at Microsoft, which sounds like a stupid mistake, but in our industry that was like a big deal. I thought, I'm not going to do anything and no one's going to have faith in me and I'm not going to have faith in me. How am I going to get through this? And it turned out to be. I would never wish it on myself or my children ever. But it's a lot of what I've heard some of you say on resilience, like it's the coach K next play, right? Like, what do you do? It is not what happens to us, it's how we handled it. And I learned more from that experience. And it's interesting if I ask you to raise your hand, like raise your horn if you've heard of post traumatic ptsd, like all of you, right? Have you heard of post traumatic growth? No. Shane may have because he was part of the book. Adam and I wrote on it, Adam Grant and I wrote on it. But actually many more people experience post traumatic growth and post traumatic stress disorder by a lot. And what post traumatic growth means is that you face a real trauma and you grow from it and your life. And this is what's tricky. Your life is better. Not that you would wish it on yourself, you know, ever. I would never. But there's things about your life that are not just you recover, but you rebound closer relationships. The people I am close to in my life who got me through that joy. I mean, to this day, when I go to go to sleep at night, Tom, my now newish husband, like, kind of wraps his arm around me and I'm like grateful he's alive. Yeah, like alive. Like I feel his breath on my neck and I can't Believe how lucky I am. Did I go through life with Dave, who again, I was like really happily married to grateful he was alive? No, it didn't hurt of me to be grateful a 46 year old was alive. Birthdays, if anyone ever makes a joke, oh, I'm growing old. I like try not to jump on them, but I kind of do because it turns out there's two options. You grow older or you don't. Staying 25 is not an option. You know, I turned 50 with joy. I celebrated Tom's 50th with joy. Like it is such a privilege to turn 50, to turn 60, to turn 40. And those are ways my life is deeper, richer, more meaningful than it would have been without that loss.

I think we have a view sometimes that stress, like listen, we view stress on the body as a good thing, right? Like you go run to your heart health, right? You lift to stress your body because it's going to respond and grow, right? You go get in the sauna under extreme heat again to stress your body so that like something good happens. But we don't have that same view for like life stressors, right? And so often when they do happen again, we view them as a negative and then it just compounds, right? Because you have this negative view of what's happening to you and we never view stress as a positive thing in life. And I think that that's part of the problem. I know I've suffered from that. You know, again, the pity party, like the woe is me. Why is this happening? Those types of things, I guess, you know, I think changing that perspective where you're grateful, right? For stressors, right? Because you don't know what can come from it. And they're hard though, right? Like I personally, it's easy to look back on my leg at this point. I am very grateful for it. I can't, I don't, I don't remember what it was like to wake up with a normal looking leg, but it's hard. Like my daughter right now who has brain cancer and had three surgeries. Like it's like it's overwhelming and suffocating and like it's hard. But I do relate to like every single night, like she's still in the.

Bed with us a lot.

Like just because that's where we're at right now. And like I am grateful. I can relate to the breathing and like just there is a gratefulness and an urgency that I have that I hadn't, I didn't have before. But I don't know if there's a question in there.

But I mean, look, you can't be grateful your daughters bring cancer. Like you can't be grateful when your husband dies. You can't be grateful when you have a life threatening leg injury and your career depends on it. But you can recognize that on the other side, when you are through it, you will recover. I said I wrote a book on this and I signed that book to people who lost spouses. And I did two this morning. And I always write the version of the same thing, which is, I promise some of the most joyful days of your life are ahead of you. Sorry, like emotional for me to say that. Because in those moments you feel like you will never feel pure joy again. And you will. And you do. Psychiatrists talk about three Ps, the traps of trauma that can keep you from getting through it. Personalization, pervasiveness and permanence. Personalization. Blaming yourself. I went through that. So, so much like I'm not a doctor. Should I have known that Dave should have been on a statin? A statin probably would have 10 years of it wouldn't have been a week, but could have saved his life. Like he wasn't on a statin. Why not? Shouldn't I have known that? Isn't that obvious? Most of your listeners should go get on statins. Like literally almost everyone should be on a statin. But I didn't know that. I blamed myself. Pervasiveness. Oh my God, I lost Dave. I'm not gonna be able to parent these two kids and I'm gonna lose my job because I walk into a room and people will not look at me anymore or I'm not gonna be capable. How can I do this? I'm crying all the time. How can I do this job? I'm forever grateful for Mark's belief in me that got me through that. But I wasn't gonna lose. It's not all aspects of your life. So you still have so many other things going on while you and your family are facing this challenge with your daughter. And your daughter herself has so many other strengths. And then permanence. And that is the big one. It's interesting. As human beings, we are just biologically programmed to feel our emotions as if they're going to continue. And there's a very good reason for this. You know, a lion's running at you. You feel fear.

Yeah.

If you could project forward and be like, ah, it's probably going to turn around. I'm not going to be afraid in a minute. You'll just sit there and you will be dead. So you feel that emotion. And Adam and I in our book wrote about this. So if you put people's arms in cold water, like freezing water, and then you ask them to describe what it is to be cold, they do a great job. Like a great job. If you take that arm out of the cold water for just a few minutes so your arm is still cold, and you ask them to describe what's being cold, they can't describe it very well. That's how clearly we feel the emotions of the moment. But looking at someone who is going through something really hard and saying, it will get better, it will get better, I promise.

Talk about the role, support in all this. Knowing Alex's story and the story of how much his family was behind him and loved him and told him how he'll make it through it. I think about, you know, my, my own trauma, my brother passing away. And I did not come from a family that was, was very open and we did not believe in therapy and we were very tribal family that we didn't let people in. And it wasn't until I was able to, to really understand how supported I was and, and those people who supported me came out of the woodwork that the growth really happened. Right? And so talk, talk about identifying support and embracing some support when trauma happens.

It's so important. When Adam Grant and I wrote, wrote a book on this topic, he would say all the time, he said, there's a huge self help section in every bookstore, but there's no help others section. We want our book to be in the help others section. So it really matters. And look, most people going through trauma don't want to talk about it all the time, but they do want to talk about it more than anyone else brings it up. Right? For the first week, everyone would say, like, you know, kind of, how are you? And then after that, no one brought it up. People who have lost children say almost uniformly that no one will mention their children. And they want to talk about their children. Not every minute, not all the time. But what most people do is they ignore it. And I think giving people permission and the language, how are you doing today? Not how are you? How are you today? Implies it's a light way of saying something's going on. How are you today? Or hey, at work, you may not want to talk about this, but I know you have like a serious illness going on with your daughter and I'm here to talk about it anytime, or how's your daughter? How Are you with your daughter? So I don't know how many people in your life regularly say it, but what I think most people find is people will talk about it for the first minute. Month, week, year, not going on. I keep in my calendar for anyone, friends I have, and I never did this before Dave died. It never occurred to me. The anniversaries and birthdays of people that they've lost. So on the anniversary of a loss, on the anniversary of a birthday, I will ping and say, you know, I'm thinking about you and Andrew today. I'm thinking about you and Laura today. You know, may the day pass gently, like, just showing up in an ongoing way and people realizing that they need to do that. The other advice is, what is not? I mean, people mean it well. So I'm not, you know, saying anything about motive, but is there anything I can do? It's hard to answer that question right, but here's dinner. We had a story in our book where we talked about my friend Dan. He had a child who he eventually lost, had cancer, you know, in the hospital. A friend showing up and saying, I'm in the lobby. I have hamburgers for you and your wife. Come get them. Or, I'm in the lobby of the hospital. I've got a big stuffed animal for your daughter. I'm gonna leave it here. She's like, no, no, no, let me run downstairs. Like, just do something. Is better than, is there anything I can do?

When I read your book, when I read option B, it actually has stuck with me in a way of, like, I can be a better friend to my friends. Because when you're not the one going through it, you're afraid of that you're gonna cause somebody to think about something that they're not thinking about. And I think the thing you said in the book is, like, they're always thinking about it. You're not. You're not at risk to do the thing you think you're at risk of. And so it made me ask Shane about how he was doing after his brother died. It helps me. I ask Alex how Sloan's doing, and it's because of that. Because otherwise you're so afraid that you're going to make it worse for these people that you love. And what you taught me in that, amongst many things, was sort of like, no, no, no, no, no. Just asking is making it better. I didn't know that. I had no idea until the book.

Well, yeah. Shane, if someone says to you, you know, how has it been since you lost your Brother. You're not like, oh, I lost my brother. I forgot. You don't forget, right? When someone says, like, how is your leg recovering? You're like, I had a leg injury. Yeah, I forgot. You didn't forget. When someone says, you know, are you a. You know, I know it's the anniversary of Dave or Dave, I sat next to someone last night at the warriors game who looked at me and said, I didn't know if I could say this to you, but I worked at Bain in 1989. And I knew immediately she worked with Dave. And she said, I hope it's okay to say that. And I said, okay, that's wonderful. And then she told me and Tom, my now husband, about my late husband. She said, dave was wonderful, and it's 1989, and she was afraid to say that all of those years, I wasn't like, oh, I was married to someone named Dave. I forgot. There's no forgetting. Right. Forget you lost a brother, and so you don't have to worry that you're gonna remind something of someone, of someone they forgot. And that showing up is a really beautiful thing.

It is. And I think, like, so often people, I think, again, polarize, but, like, they don't know what to say or the right thing to say, and then they don't say anything at all, and that's, like, the worst thing to do. And it's so funny. And I've struggled from this big time. Like, again, I so badly want to do these things. My whole life, I had wanted to, right? Like, when people are hurting or people around me or something. And again, just then I. I end up not doing anything from just, you know, paralysis by analysis kind of thing. And again, how much it meant to me. I had a lot of people reach out to me, like, the week of my leg, and then it was just this, like, slow decline after. And again, it was this. Still this, like, long, grueling process for me. But the people there were a select few that did, and they were just like, the dumbest little things again, that, like, made a little difference. Like, even just, like, I told you this, I was like this. But, like, Larry Fitzgerald would text me, like, we're buddies. We're not that good at buddies, though. And he would just, like, send me the stupidest little, like, note totally every, like, every six weeks, eight weeks, kind of just like, hey, checking in, bud. You don't even need to text me back. Like, just thinking about you kind of thing. And it was just like, how much those little things mean and so like, for me, again, coming out of that, like, to what you're saying, like, trying. Well, like, I need to be a better friend, right? And like, I need to be more aware of people around me and what they're going through.

Well, it doesn't also have to be so big, right? Like, that's what I'm saying. And like, small, like, yeah. Like, the other thing is the event doesn't even have to be that big, because one thing you're very good about is, like, I'm sometimes embarrassed. Talk about something that's going on with me, with Alex and Shane, because they've had real things happen, right? And so all of a sudden you feel like your shit is small. I had a bad day at work or whatever. And it's just like. But your real friends, one thing you're very good at. And Shane, we haven't talked about this, but Alex does this a lot of. Like, if you ever try to minimize the thing that you're going through, he'll be like, no, no, it's your thing. I want to hear it. And I think that one thing that you can do, even for people who are going through small things, is that same text, right? Like, hey, I know things aren't great at work right now. Like, I got you, you know, do you want to get dinner tonight? Whatever. I think it doesn't have to be a death, it doesn't have to be a sickness. It doesn't have to be any of that. You can still be a good friend.

Yeah, I remember. And I don't mean to shock all your listeners, but sometimes women complain about their husbands. But after Dave died, I don't mean to be shocking here, and probably not the three of you, Avani's never complained. I'll give both of your wives myself. Not that they would use it for this reason, but after Dave died, no one would complain.

Oh, yeah, yeah, of course.

At all. And finally, a few months in, I'm like, listen, if you're not gonna ever say anything's not perfect with your husband, like, I'm gonna have no friends. Like, I get it. Dave dying is bad. And it is worse than your husband, like, forgetting to show up at the parent teacher conference, like, it's worse. I get it. But I still want to hear about that.

The theme when you go through trauma that we all gain is really just presence, right? All the stories that we've talked about today is just having appreciation for presence and being a present friend and being a present husband or spouse. And it really is a gift. And When I finally felt I was through the fog and through the woods, that was the growth. I feel, looking back at it, that just to have an appreciation for the presence and an appreciation for the here and now. And I think that's really the growth that you're talking about.

All right, so, Cheryl, I want to go back. And when we talked about the market cap that was created, the sheer scale of the companies that you helped build is genuinely insane, right? Hundreds of thousands of team members, hundreds of billions of dollars of revenue, and it is almost unapproachable in terms of the leadership that had to go on and the lessons. And so I actually really want to learn for real, what is it like to lead in that kind of scale, and what are some of the things that are actually approachable for someone who is an aspiring or current leader to take from some of the lessons that. That you had?

I mean, most of the things I learned are from either mistakes I made or moments where I was not particularly on it, but one of the most important scaling and operating lessons I ever learned, I learned by asking a really stupid question. So I was invited for the first time to the Microsoft CEO Summit, which was pretty exciting for me. I wasn't actually a CEO, but that was the kind of thing I did not mark. And there was this, you got to go to dinner at Bill Gates House, and there was like, a boss that took you to the dinner from the conference. And I was sitting on the bus, and I was sitting next to the CEO of one of the airlines, and I asked a really stupid question. I said, I've had this question for a really long time. It seems like the airlines are pretty well run, but there's always catering delays, and my bags keep getting lost. Why do you make such small errors? Why can't you kind of get the small stuff right? And he said to me, he said, you know, we run a business where a huge portion of what we do, we have absolutely no margin for error, no maintenance problems, no drunk pilots, no error. All of our mistakes are going to be catering in baggage. To which I said, wow, am I an idiot? Keep losing my bag. You and I are good. Like, just keep losing my bag. But, like, the plane should. And then what I realized is that I think in a lot of situations, people identify themselves as they're like a tight operating manager and everything runs well, or they're someone who lets people have a lot of freedom and take risks. And actually, no one should have that approach all the time.

Oh, yeah, I like this that some.

Stuff is Catering in baggage?

Yes.

It doesn't matter that much. You can take risk. It can be a little sloppier and maybe a little messier and maybe more room for risk taking and creativity. And some stuff is flying the plane. And if you approach scaling an organization or even running an organization that everything is maintenance, you're never going to get a product out the door because you're going to check it 8,000 times and your competitors are going to be long past you. And if you approach everything as if it's baggage and catering, like people's bags are going to get lost constantly. And I went back Facebook at the time, now meta, and I said, all right, we got to know what's baggage and catering and what's operating. And look, data security, that's operating the plane. We couldn't have data breaches, could we launch reels with an imperfect feature set? Yes, sure. Can you launch threads before it has everything a competitive product does? Sure. Get the product out the door and then iterate. Yeah, there's areas. And actually the most important thing to learning how to scale is, you know, a little company, you can run anything you want, but as you get bigger, you gotta figure out, like, what is maintenance and what is baggage.

Ravi Instacart, what was your baggage and what was your maintenance?

Yeah, you know, dude, that's such a good question. Shane. Okay, so it changed over time. So what's interesting was if you think about the actual, like, thing you're doing at Instacart, right? You are saving someone a trip to the grocery store, if they have to go anyway, then you haven't actually done the job. Right? And so one of the things that you actually have to do was you had to define what were the items that were critical for dinner or the meal that they were getting. And like, even if the you have to do anything to go and make sure that those are delivered properly. So if somebody orders a steak, right, you can't have a mistake on the steak, right. Whereas if you replace Rosemary with, I don't know, sage or something, like, it's okay, they can still make the meal. And so I think that one of the big things the product team had to do was, like, not all replacements, not all issues are created equal, right? And so then they would go and ask the customer which are the things that do not replace, which are the things you don't even want the order if we can't get it, because grocery stores don't always know. So that'd be one thing. Another thing that would be like, that is like, know, customer and shopper safety. You know, like, you have to make sure that the person coming to your house to deliver this thing is somebody that we are telling you you can trust. You know what I'm saying? Like, no matter what, you can trust that this person should be able to come to your door to hand the food, hand the bag of groceries to your children, you know, whatever. That's one of those. I'll give you some examples of things that were, you know, baggage, though. That was the operating the plane. The baggage there was, for a period of time, our margins on certain orders. You know what? Like, we could afford to lose some money on certain orders because the most important thing was making sure we had a great customer experience as long as we knew what we were going to do about it, you know, later. So that would be something. We're like, no, okay, that's okay. Another thing that would happen is when we would launch a new market, right? Shopper utilization. Shoppers don't want to come to Instacart if they're not going to get orders because they don't get paid enough, you know. And so one of the things that's hard when you open a new market is there's this really big debate, which is how many shoppers do you staff? Because there's not enough orders to keep a lot of shoppers busy. But if somebody makes an order, they gotta have the magic of click a button and they get their stuff in 30 minutes or 45 minutes. So one of the big things there was like, we should overstaff the shoppers and we should just solve that problem by paying them some minimum amount of money for every hour that they work. And so I really love this. I had never thought about, you know, it in that framework, but it was like the cannot get wrongs, right. Versus the we can solve that problem tomorrow, you know, and there was a lot of that, you know, for us.

And I think another one is not thinking, you're too important. So when I started at Google, My team was four people. And by the time I left six years later, it was 4,000. So that's a lot of growth. And I thought it was really important if you were going to join my global team that I interviewed you. Yeah, like, I had to interview. Even those interviews got shorter and harder to schedule. And when the team was about 100 people, I was in a meeting of my direct reports, like the six or seven of them, and I said, you know, I know it's like taking a while for me to get to all the interviews. Maybe I should stop interviewing. And what I fully expected was people to say, oh, no, Cheryl, your interview is a critical part of the process. How could we hire without your blessing? They applauded. They applauded like, yay. And I realized two things. One, I was a bottleneck. I was massively overestimating my own importance to this process. But two is no one told me.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna ask.

That was such a failure. I said, okay, I'm stopping and interviewing today. But what did I do wrong that you didn't wrong that you didn't tell me? Not what did you do?

Yes.

Yes, that you didn't tell me. What did I do wrong? I think another one. And this took me a long time to learn. I used to at Facebook. I realized we had never done this before at all. Mark was 23 when I joined. I was 38, but I'd been at Google. But I wasn't COO at Google. I wasn't in that position. But none of us had ever done this. Once a year, we would take a whole management team trip. Mark and I would take everyone to learn from another company. We went to Walmart. That's why I know Doug. I thought he was great on your podcast. Great, Great interview. Went to lots of places. But one of the more interesting ones we went to is we went to officer training for the Marine Corps at Quantico.

Huh.

Marine Corps Commandant Red lean in and reached out to me. It was a really nice story. And said he wanted to learn how to make things better. And he flew out when I spent time with him, and I said, yes. And then he looked at me and said, is there anything I can do for you? And I said, yes. Can I bring my team to Quantico? And he looked at me and was like, okay. So we went, and I learned a couple things. I learned how terrible I was at following orders when people are screaming at me. I was a disaster. But the Marines debrief every exercise. Not just everything that happens in the field, but every exercise at Quantico. So there's like, they've got, like, a big wall, and you can't see over the wall, and you're supposed to climb over the wall. And sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, but they sit down and do a full debrief. And that really changed my perspective on a few things. One is, if you only debrief when something goes wrong and you only debrief when something goes really wrong, those become finger point of exercises. But if debriefing is just part of the culture, like hey, we're going to spend 10 minutes at the end of every meeting talking about what went right and wrong. No holding back, no finger pointing. But like what did we not do? Well, it becomes so regular that surfacing mistakes becomes easy to do. But the other. And this goes to something I heard you guys talking about celebrating success is what surprised me the most is they do the full debrief when it goes right.

Yeah, totally.

Like really, you've got to debrief. But that is just as important because you would understand again, it helps you figure out what's maintenance and what's baggage. Why did this go right?

Yes.

What did this matter? Because not everything, not every single thing you do leads to that success.

Well, so on that guys, when you guys do game film as athletes do you do. Of course I know the negatives are pointed out. Are the positives pointed out too consistently like for what Cheryl just said? What happens when you're reviewing game film?

Yeah, I mean I think good coaches will mix in. The positive of this is the example of what we want to see. I mean obviously the, the, the errors get way more playing time, more, more screen time, more playing time in film session. And you did your best to stay out of that, out of that ire.

But.

The ratio probably was way more skewed towards negative plays and positive plays.

You know, But I wonder if you might learn, would you, Shane? Would you learn as much from the positive? Maybe not.

That's a good question. It's you, you only have in a film session, you only have like so many minutes of like attention. And so you know, in general you're trying to get the most out of every statement you say to a player. You know, so you only have so many reps until players tune you out, good or bad. So I think coaches are always paranoid. Look, and coaches also, they want to show they're worth their paycheck. Right. I'm sure managers feel the same way that like you're paying me for a reason. And my, my reason is I'm giving you feedback of what you could do better. Right. That's a, that's a human, a human fault of us all. And so that was, that was the case in at least in my experience as well.

You know, basketball is such a continuous game. Football, you watch every single play of every practice. Really, you even watch walkthrough.

I didn't know that.

Right. So like, because, because think about with the stop start of the snap and then the End of the play. I mean, every, every play lasts on average like four seconds, some last six or seven. Ooh, a long play. And you watch them from two angles. I've told you this, like the all 22, which are, these are dead silent copies. Like you watch the sideline version and then the end zone copy of all 22 of every play. So like we even watched walkthrough because you can imagine, let's say a practice takes an hour and a half, right? You have individual periods, then you have small group and then you do your full, like team drills. Well, like that's all getting filmed. That gets edited down to like, and spliced to like 15 minutes.

Yeah.

So you go in and watch and rehash every single play from twice. And, and then again, I think, you know, the teams within the teams within the teams, like within your position unit. It's very, you are very detailed. And then like the good and the bad and everything in between gets talked about and discussed. But I think the bigger thing here from a, from a leadership standpoint, the head coach, like, what are the things that get emphasized at the team level, right, to like really set culture. And to Shane's point, the good coaches do both the plays that went above and beyond a guy that, hey, listen, this play may have seemed insignificant to everybody else. This was a huge difference maker in the game, right? And emphasizing that or a high effort play or whatever the things that you're.

Looking to, it was extraordinarily positive. Like play. Right. Like the mundane positive play never got play.

But you know, what's interesting is in business, I, like, I'm so interested in this point you just made because Bezos famously is like, look, you can't think of business like sports because if you hit a home run in business, it's not limited to four runs. It could be a thousand runs. There's an infinite upside if something goes really well. And so if you think about not celebrating the success, you're really holding yourself back. Because what you need is for people to do things that are like non unbounded in their upside. So you have to celebrate it. And most people don't. But I think it's actually like very bad for business not to. Because you're ignoring what the potential upside is if somebody gets it right.

But to Sheryl's point, if you keep celebrating the, the overly positive, do you fall victim to overestimating your importance?

Oh, yeah. The cheerleading. Just the cheerleading. Yeah. Great job. Great job. Great job.

Do you start to believe that, like, I am I'm different and I'm special and when things go bad. Well, you told me I was different, I was special. Like, you know what's up.

Yeah, it has to be behavior driven, I guess. And I guess you do have to just remember like no matter how important you think you are, you're not as important as you think. I think you need somebody in like your get back coach, but for your real life. I'm just like, you're not, you're not as good as you, you're not as special as you think you are.

I guess to think of like the size and scope of these companies you're at and led like the connectedness, the culture, like it just inherently gets worse, right? It is like by sheer, just like obviously again the physics of these, these companies were those things you consciously, you guys like talked about and tried to combat. And how are, like, what are some of the things you guys tried to do?

Well, it can get worse, but it can also get better, right? I, it's probably a stupid story, but I had a friend who had like, who came over and I have five kids now, but she had five kids and they were like really well behaved. And I realized having five kids is kind of like having a big dog. You know, people have to train big dogs because like you can't not train a big dog. But like little dogs are often like not trained at all. The company's a big dog. Like big company, like you have to have systems in place. And a lot of times with small companies there'll be all kinds of stuff that goes wrong because like you can kind of get away with it. So it's not always worse. I do think culture is a really interesting word and companies have different companies for it, so. Or companies have different words for it. At Google, we called it googly or Googler. And there was a thing on an interview which is, is the person like a Googler a googly? And you're like, it was completely undefined and actually studied it later on. And what you realized is by not defining it, everyone decided that was what they were. Like if you were an introvert, what you were looking for is someone who's going to like quietly work at your desk. If you were an extrovert, you were looking for someone who's social. And so I think one of the things about culture is you really have to define what you mean because if you don't, you throw out the word culture. And without saying it, everyone is talking about, about very different things. What happens as companies get bigger is I think people start to try to measure and reward the specific things people do. And if you optimize the subsystem, you often sub optimize the big system. So I'll give you a sports analogy. Not when I use this is the one sports analogy I use all the time. So you have a soccer team and it's a bonus driven, performance driven soccer team. You hire someone like me or Ravi and you know, Fiji, and they're gonna bonus the team on winning games. Like if they win games, they win the game, they get paid more.

Yeah, yeah.

And then someone comes along like us, and says, actually the offense scores goals and the defense defends against goals. So really we should bonus the offense on scoring goals and the defense on protecting goals. What's wrong with that? Well, now you have an offense.

Yeah.

That would rather lose a game 10, 15 than win a game 3, 2. And so by optimizing like your role and your role and your role, you can often forget that the whole system needs to work together. Which is why I'm a big believer in companies and equity compensation. Equity compensation is everyone rises or falls. And it's not to be too stockfit driven, but everyone rises or falls on the profitability, the growth, the growth of the company. And so you have to find that balance as a company grows of how am I judging your performance and judging it both what you specifically do, because you have to have some metrics in place for that, but also how you contribute to the overall.

I'm just baffled by these Google terms, business units and Googler.

Googler, Googler, Googly Google.

It was a long time ago. I'm sure they don't say this is.

Like straight out of the Silicon Valley, the Silicon Valley show. Like they come, you know, kind of think we're in a funny time post Covid. We kind of talked about this before the show, like remote work. Shane we love to kind of make Gen Z's approach to leadership. Right. Like AI is like, you know, obviously here, if you were, if you were leading today and you could like start from scratch, like what. What are the important things like that you would build from a leadership perspective.

Like for a company, try to hire people ahead of when you need them. It's not like a cheerful message, but we usually fire people too late. It's not good for them, it's not good for you. They're in the wrong place, really. Direct feedback, it really matters. It's hard to do, but it's worth doing from the beginning. And cultures that are defined where the group, the winning the games is what matters, not just what individuals do. What is your impact on other people? Well, the other one is tolerating. I'm gonna have to draw for this. Can I draw?

Yeah.

I don't know if you can show it. Ready here. I've had it.

This is amazing.

This is the first time I'm draw. I'm gonna draw a two by two matrix. So this is giver, taker, pleasant, unpleasant. In this category are people who are really nice to work with. They're pleasant and they're givers. Check. Everyone likes them. People who are unpleasant and takers. They're really selfish. No one gets these confused. Everyone wants this. Everyone wants this. Here's where it gets confusing. People who are pleasant but takers organizations often like celebrate these people because they don't realize they're really nice while they're stabbing you in the back, while they're not helping you at all. People get confused. And where people really get it wrong is unpleasant givers. And in many ways Facebook weighed a lot of this. You know, your product's a disaster. Don't you notice no one's even using it. Look, I stayed up all night and I redid it. Here, here's what you should do. That's a giver.

Yeah, totally.

That person's not say grumpy team player, but like really like sitting down and being like, I looked at all your metrics. You're doing this totally the wrong way. I'm free at 3, let's do it together. It sounds terrible. You have to tolerate that. You've got to get rid of this and tolerate this.

Yeah, yeah.

People get very confused by how people act, not what they're doing. It's like parenting to take it back full circle.

You know, Cheryl on that. That's so funny. Shane has this quote from Pat Riley which is, you can't have 12 milk drinkers on a team. You need some people that drink Jack Daniels. And it's like this similar thing too of like, look. Yeah, it can't just be one type. But I think the thing that you're saying is like, look, they gotta be givers. You just have to actually have some space for an unpleasant ui. Right? Yeah. You can have the standard of they have to be givers, but they can't all be one type of givers. I like that.

And it goes to diversity.

Yeah.

You know, you get to diversity of thought with gender diversity, with racial diversity, with all that. Also personality types, people who are introverts. Again, like try to Hire introverts. They don't even realize. Golf players hire golf players. Tennis players hire tennis players. Like people who are strong people, pleasers and hire those.

So, Cheryl, one of the questions we always ask our guests is people. Our podcast is all glue guys, right? And so it could be glue gals meet glue people, but they're basically people that are connectors and that make your life better but are often underappreciated. Those are the people that are called glue guys on teams. Who are some of those people in your life who are hugely important and have been hugely important, but haven't necessarily always gotten the recognition for that.

I don't know if they haven't gotten the recognition. I mean, the first person that comes to mind is Tom. I'm really lucky. I have an unbelievable husband and we are parenting five children and we're investing together and working together and definitely the first person place I go to for advice and I feel really lucky, really lucky to have that Mark Zuckerberg. Not that he's like underappreciated or under known in the world, clearly one of the most famous people in the world, but he is an incredibly supportive boss and friend. I mean, from when Dave died and his wife Priscilla all the way through, you know, I think people don't see as clearly the caring side of him that is really there, really there and really is a big part of the success that Facebook and now Meta and Meta has had. My friend Marnie, my closest friend, we've worked together, we worked together at treasury, we worked together at Facebook and Meta. She'll always tell me the truth. You just have to have those people.

That's great.

And I feel lucky to have gotten a chance to spend this time with all of you.

We are very lucky.

Yep. This has been amazing.

Thank you guys for having me. Sam.