If you don't know how to execute, every strategy will fail, even the most promising ones.Execution is hard, and great execution is scarce—which makes it another great source of competitive advantage.

No Strategy is Better than its Execution

Hiring is hard but firing is even harder. If we know that something or someone is not working out, why should we wait to pull the trigger? When there is doubt, there is no doubt.

Don't be Scared of Firing People

Nothing puts rocket fuel in your career tank more than what other people say about you. Bosses, peers, and subordinates will all have strong opinions about what you're like to work with.Smart managers know that for anyone well beyond entry level, exhaustive referencing builds a clearer portrait of a candidate than any number of interviews.

Care About What Others Say About You

It is common for people to ask to get back to others within a week or more. Instead of expanding times, you should start compressing cycle times.If we just change our mindset we can move so much quicker and this means working under a sense of energy and urgency.Good performers crave a culture of energy.

Crave a Culture of Energy

Good leaders are honest, they explain that none of us are truly safe in our roles for any length of time. If this fact makes people uncomfortable, that's good. You need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable because the only alternative is denialism.

Good Leaders are Honest

There are two kind of people in companies, drivers and passengers.Passengers are people that live with the "enough" attitude, meaning that they want to do only what is expected and nothing more.Drivers on the other hand get their satisfaction from making things happen, not blending in with the furniture. They like to take ownership, drive initiatives, motivate people...You should have a company full of drivers.

Drivers and Passengers

Try to apply the "insanely great" standard on a daily basis to everything you do and see how far you get.Generally people lower their standards to move things along, don't do that. You have to fight this impulse every step of the way.

The "Insanely Great" Standard

Culture describes how people come together as a group on a day‐to‐day basis. It is not about making people feel good per se, it’s about enabling the mission with the behaviors and values that serve that purpose.If you want to create a strong culture, you have to drive a more consistent set of behaviors, norms, and values and most importantly you have to focus on consistent and clearly defined consequences, day in and day out.You know you have created a good culture when most of the organization is willing to defend and promote those values and call out deviations on a day‐to‐day basis.

Building a Strong Culture

The key takeaways while creating a company are:<ul><li>Attack weakness, not strength.</li><li>Either create a cost advantage or neutralize someone else's.</li><li>It's much easier to attack an existing market than create a new one.</li><li>Early adopters buy differently than later adopters.</li><li>Stay close to home in the early going.</li><li>Build the whole product or solve the whole problem as fast as you can.</li><li>Bet on the correct enabling technologies.</li><li>Architecture is everything.</li><li>Prepare to transform your strategy sooner than you expect.</li></ul>

Key Takeaways

Seek to exploit every ounce of potential you are entrusted with.If you want to win big, imagine a radically different future that is not tethered to the past. This is why innovation always seems to come from the least expected places. They don't have a past to care about.

Don't Settle for Respectable Mediocrity

To truly inspire trust, underpromise and overdeliver.

“Priority” should ideally only be used as a singular word. The moment you have many priorities, you actually have none.

Essential reads for entrepreneurial growth, curated by Lenny Rachitsky.

strategy

Strategy

books

Books

startup

Startups

entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship

business

Business

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

productivity

Productivity

timemanagement

Time Management

Lenny’s Top Business Books

Frank Slootman explains in his book how to lead for hypergrowth by raising the expectations, increasing urgency and elevating intensity.

Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller The secret to leading growth is your mindset Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman is one of the tech world's most accomplished executives in enterprise growth, having led Snowflake to the largest software IPO ever after leading ServiceNow and Data Domain to exponential growth and the public market before that. In Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity, he shares his leadership approach for the first time. Amp It Up delivers an authoritative look at what it takes to transform an organization for maximum growth and scale. Slootman shows that most leaders have significant room to improve their organization's performance without making expensive changes to their talent, structure, or fundamental business model—and they don’t need to bring in an army of consultants to do it. What they do need is to align people around what matters and execute with urgency and intensity every day. Leading for unprecedented growth means declaring war on mediocrity, breaking the status quo, and making conflicted choices daily, all with a relentless focus on the mission. Amp It Up provides the first principles to guide that change, and the tactical advice for organizing a company around them. Perfect for executives, entrepreneurs, founders, managers, and leaders of all kinds, Amp It Up is a must-read resource for anyone who seeks to unleash the growth potential of a company and scale it to heights they never thought possible.

Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller The secret to leading growth is your mindset Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman is one of the tech world's most accomplished executives in enterprise growth, having led Snowflake to the largest software IPO ever after leading ServiceNow and Data Domain to exponential growth and the public market before that. In Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity, he shares his leadership approach for the first time. Amp It Up delivers an authoritative look at what it takes to transform an organization for maximum growth and scale. Slootman shows that most leaders have significant room to improve their organization's performance without making expensive changes to their talent, structure, or fundamental business model—and they don’t need to bring in an army of consultants to do it. What they do need is to align people around what matters and execute with urgency and intensity every day. Leading for unprecedented growth means declaring war on mediocrity, breaking the status quo, and making conflicted choices daily, all with a relentless focus on the mission. Amp It Up provides the first principles to guide that change, and the tactical advice for organizing a company around them. Perfect for executives, entrepreneurs, founders, managers, and leaders of all kinds, Amp It Up is a must-read resource for anyone who seeks to unleash the growth potential of a company and scale it to heights they never thought possible.

FRANK SLOOTMAN

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