Management Lessons From Keith Rabois

Keith Rabois is a very successful operator and tech investor. A couple of weekends ago, I listened to this talk he gave at the First Round Summit back in 2013. He shared some great insights on management and leadership in here, so I jotted down some notes on the things that resonated with me the most:

1/ Optimize around hiring people that are "relentlessly resourceful". 

2/ When managing someone, ask yourself if you're "writing" or "editing" their work? If you're writing for them, you need to fix it or replace them. For a sales leader, are you closing their deals for them, or are you coaching and tweaking little things?

3/ Everything can't be perfect. One of the hardest things President Eisenhower found when he became president was that he had to sign letters that were below his writing standards. There's too much to do. Get comfortable with 80% perfect for most things. Seek out the things that are important and get those right.

4/ A huge piece of hiring someone that can scale is finding someone who knows what they know and what they don't know. Knowing the difference is so important. People that know what they don't know will avoid big mistakes. 

5/ Be transparent. Seek to be so transparent that everyone on your team would make the same decision that you're making because they're operating under the same context.

6/ Politics in a company is driven by different people having different information. Avoid widespread politics by giving everyone the same information.

7/ Hire thought diverse people but pay attention to important first principles (particularly when hiring leaders). e.g. if you want to build a closed software platform, hire people that support that approach. Otherwise, you'll spin and keep coming back to first principles. 

8/ Hire and promote people that see things you don't see. This is invaluable. And create an environment where they can freely tell you what you're missing.