Jeff Weiner joined LinkedIn in 2008 as CEO and recognized the company's "unlimited potential" and need to define core priorities as it scaled.
Jeff Weiner emphasized the importance of clearly defining company mission, vision, addressable opportunity, strategy, priorities, measurable objectives, culture and values to provide a common purpose and language.
Jeff Weiner aspired to "compassionate management", managing with empathy to develop people and make tough decisions, which built trust and enabled faster, higher-quality decision-making.
LinkedIn pursued an ambitious "economic graph" vision to digitally map the global workforce, jobs, skills and economy, driving economic opportunity, enabled by key acquisitions.
Jeff Weiner looks to hire extremely intelligent, passionate and compassionate people he enjoys working with, quickly transitioning those who aren't a fit after coaching.
Meeting Notes:
Joining LinkedIn
Jeff Weiner found an incredibly talented group of people and a platform with "unlimited potential" when he joined LinkedIn in December 2008 as the CEO.
Even before his first day, Jeff Weiner had started familiarizing himself with the company through Reid Hoffman and investors at Greylock, recognizing there was much more to LinkedIn than met the eye.
Jeff Weiner realized there were a lot of different initiatives and bets placed by the founders to see what could generate critical mass at scale.
There was a need to define the core focus and priorities as the company scaled.
Defining Mission, Vision, and Culture
Jeff Weiner emphasized the importance of clearly defining a company's mission, vision, addressable opportunity, strategy, priorities, measurable objectives, culture and values to provide a common purpose and language.
This "narrative" provided a common language and sense of purpose as the company scaled.
Jeff Weiner worked with the leadership team to codify LinkedIn's narrative on a single page as one of the first steps.
Early on, there was demand from employees to define the culture as LinkedIn grew.
Jeff Weiner recognized that if a culture isn't codified, new hires will manifest the cultures they came from, especially when expanding globally.
The leadership team defined the values and culture they aspired to work in, focusing on "walking the walk" to manifest it.
Effective values are often the mantras leaders find themselves using most.
If leaders don't model the intended behavior, culture efforts become an "eye-roll" experience.
As organizations scale, leadership needs to evolve from problem-solving to coaching.
Leaders also need to develop strategic thinking abilities beyond just execution.
Jeff Weiner hired executive coaches like Fred Kaufman to help develop LinkedIn's leadership team and their coaching skills.
Fred provided deep insights on concepts like individual vs. organizational goals (global vs local maxima), which is rare for a coach.
Compassionate Management
Jeff Weiner aspired to a principle of compassionate management after an experience working for someone who made jokes at a struggling employee's expense instead of coaching them.
Compassionate management involves managing with empathy and seeing things from others' perspectives, understanding what motivates people, their hopes, fears, and insecurities, coaching and developing people instead of solving problems for them, and making tough people decisions compassionately when someone isn't a fit.
Compassion is different from empathy - it's objectively understanding someone's perspective to alleviate their suffering.
True unconditional compassion requires immense strength and self-confidence.
The most compassionate action is sometimes transitioning a struggling employee out of a role they aren't fit for.
Cultivating trust and shorthand amongst leaders through compassion provides a competitive advantage when scaling.
While seen as "squishy", compassionate management actually enables faster, higher-quality decision-making by aligning an organization.
Building a Global, Multi-faceted Business
LinkedIn faced the challenge of being both a consumer/web platform and enterprise business.
Jeff Weiner ensured "members come first" was upheld as LinkedIn's core value across the entire organization as it scaled globally.
This members-first value, championed strongly by sales leader Mike Damphousse, enabled building enterprise offerings on top of the consumer platform.
Operationalizing the Vision - The Economic Graph
LinkedIn set the ambitious vision to digitally map the global economy by creating a digital representation/presence for every member of the global workforce, every company in the world, every available job, every skill required for those jobs, every university and vocational training provider, and a publishing platform for knowledge sharing.
The goal was to enable all forms of capital to flow efficiently to drive economic opportunity.
This "economic graph" vision evolved from an aspirational idea to a concrete operational plan.
Jeff Weiner emphasized to teams that seemingly lofty goals like indexing all 20 million open jobs globally were serious directives, not just platitudes.
Acquisitions like Bright (job data) and Lynda (skills courses) provided key datasets and capabilities to realize this vision.
Today, LinkedIn has 5 million jobs posted, over 1 million publishers on the platform, and continues expanding the economic graph datasets.
Hiring and Decision-Making
When hiring, Jeff Weiner looks for extreme intelligence and very steep learning curves, passion for LinkedIn's mission, compassion to see from others' perspectives, and people he looks forward to working with, avoiding "assholes".
The most valuable lesson Jeff Weiner learned was not leaving the "pitcher in too long" - quickly transitioning people who aren't a fit for their role after providing coaching.
Once questioning if someone is the right fit, the answer is already known - the key is acting decisively while being compassionate.
Jeff Weiner values making timely, quality decisions, enabled by cultivating trust in the leadership team through coaching and transparency.