Ryan Breslow, CEO of Bolt, on leading a multi-billion dollar unicorn

In this episode, Silicon Valley's next Bill Campbell (Matt Mochary) and the first CEO he coached (Ryan Breslow (CEO of Bolt)) share the lessons they've learned. In this episode Matt and Ryan tackle leadership and what it takes to effectively lead a team in a high growth environment.

If you want to be a better leader and get valuable insight into what it takes to lead a multi-billion dollar tech company, then you need to listen to this.

FULL VIDEO 🎥
https://youtu.be/dkdDU64Zcpk

RESOURCES ✨

- Praise: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aXFhFbtIxmUdrUe9y341ghd-EJ89hJZ7g9tOKnw16FI/edit

- Motivating your team: https://docs.google.com/document/d/14kFZcqm3zaS5uY4QmG307BViQyoSbDDS1U04NpYhmes/edit

SOCIALS 🐦

- Follow Ryan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/theryanking
- About Ryan: https://ryantakesoff.com/
- Check out Conscious Culture: https://conscious.org/
- Check out Bolt: https://www.bolt.com/

- Follow Matt on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattmochary
- About Matt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Mochary
- Learn More About the Method: https://www.mocharymethod.com

- Podcast produced by: https://www.twitter.com/_rpgbx
- Podcast produced  & edited by: https://twitter.com/MedleysMind

Want to join the Mochary Method software team? 💻
- Apply at https://mocharymethod.com/careers

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:28 Effective leadership in a nutshell
• 1:31 How Ryan motivates his team
• 4:39 Alignment teams on goals
• 7:01 Closing thoughts

Transcript

0:00

- So I'm here with Ryan Breslow, CEO of Bolt. Ryan, thank you so much for being here with me now, really appreciate it. And I think what we want to talk about now is leadership and how to be a good leader, an inspiring leader, a motivating leader, an understanding leader. And I think rather than sort of talk about any specific thing, let's just sort of you and I riff off of what you do that seems to be effective. And I'll share what I do, that I think is effective. And then we'll see what commonalities there are.- To riff on leadership, there's so many things that go into good leadership. I used to think that this is something that MBAs study at business school, and it's kind of a BS concept. In reality, it's actually a really, really important thing. Probably the most important thing you can do well. And so we run into a lot of issues scaling Bolt. I'd say the majority of our issues were caused by weak leadership in different parts of the organization. Leadership is about this really delicate balance of having a vision, being mission-oriented and having really high standards for executing. But doing so in a way that brings people along and that demonstrates that you really care about the team. And then if they go all in on the mission, the vision and execution, you will go all in on them. Well, there's a lot more to unpack, but that's leadership in a nutshell.- And how do you achieve that, Ryan? Because the key part, I mean, I think a lot of people have mission, vision, values instead of top down, here's what we want to do. But the key thing that you mentioned was bringing everybody along. If people feel like they're being talked at, they rarely get excited and motivated. If people feel like, "I believe in that but because it's a part of me, I came up with that as well. I want that." It's not being told to me, it's being generated from the inside. That I think is where motivation or attachment, people get brought along, but how do you achieve it? You may do it in a completely different way.- Well, as a leader, you have an idea in your head about where you want to go. Others may not have that same idea, right? You shouldn't assume that. And so the first thing is aligning on where you want to go at the highest level, so that you can increase autonomy at the mid ranges in terms of the how, right? Until you want to get to a point where you're aligned on the what, but you're flexible to some degree on the how, right? Not completely flexible, but mostly flexible. And so that's the first thing, right? An offsite, investing the time and talking about where we're going, why we're doing what we're doing, right? Mission, vision, values, all of those fundamentals that any organization aligns on. And then you go to the day-to-day execution or leading a leader or a teammate who's in charge of a certain domain. And so what I like to do with folks that I manage is make sure that we're aligned on the three things that matter. So what three things do we need to deliver this month or this quarter that if we deliver we'll be a 10x for the organization? And then if we're aligned on those three things, nothing else matters, right? They can have full autonomy in the how to go achieve those three things and other things that they may want to add that they care about. But as long as they're focused in delivering on those three things.- And Ryan, when you say aligned on the three important, most important things for the company, do you mean the three most important things that the company can achieve? And then they see how they can support those. Or the three most important things that they can achieve, which will then deliver to the company overall? Or is it both, start with the company, then go to them and cascade on down the line?- It's both directions, so I'll give you an example. If you're managing your infrastructure engineer or infrastructure engineering team, one thing you might do is go with them through a series of projects and debate the different projects that may unlock the organization. Another is you say, "Hey, we're at three nines of reliability, we need to get to four." And if you can do that in six months that's a 10x change to the organization, and you're in charge of figuring out how we do that. And so instead of you micromanaging the how, you're aligning on the what.- Perfect, and then let's say there's a key point. How do you get the actual alignment?'Cause it's one thing for you to say,"Hey, we're at three nines, we need to get the four nines." But that's you pushing it on them. How do you get them to say,"Yeah, I agree, that's one of the three most important things we can do." And have it be an honest, as opposed to just saying yes, because you're the boss and you said it?- I always like to give my team the first pass. So I asked the prompt,"In the next six months, what do you think is going, your team can accomplish, that'd be a 10x to the organization?" And I tell them to think big, and I tell them to give me an answer. That's not a tactical answer, but a broad answer, a metric that we can measure for the business, right? And so then from there, you've now given them a chance, it's not going to be 100%, the final answer. Then you'll have opinions and you'll tweak some things or maybe you'll kill a thing entirely and explain to them why that doesn't matter to the organization, and insert something. But at least now you've partnered with the person to determine those three things versus say,"Hey, we need to do these three."- Yeah, I mean, you nailed it, that's it. It seems to me there's three ways that people get motivated. One is, you tell them what to do in which case they won't be motivated. Two is, you tell them, "I think this is what we should do. What's your feedback, what are your comments?" Before you finalize. And that gets them a little bit more motivated, but the third is what you just described. You just say, "Hey, what do you think?" Without giving them any ideas. Then once you hear their ideas, then together you can create the answer. But now they feel like the idea fundamentally was generated by them, and that's when they have the most motivation and buy-in. So yeah, you go right to the most effective, no surprise Ryan, you're a great CEO. It doesn't surprise me that you're effective in this area.- And that's classic Mochary Method. I learned that from you, top-down, straw man, or blank slate. Those are the three that you just outlined. Top-down is the fastest, as you write in your book. Straw man is the second fastest, blank slate is the third fastest. But blank slate could still be pretty fast, where you can say, "Get me a proposal by tomorrow. And then we're going to decide, within 24 hours from that." A blank slate approach doesn't need to be a long drawn out process. Especially for goal setting, I don't want people thinking a lot. I want them to kind of tell me their initial thoughts,'cause those are usually some of the best thoughts. And then we could take our time to refine over time. But I'm like, "Think big, tell me what could we achieve that would level up the organization." And they should know that if they're smart, right? And so, and then let's take it from there.- Ryan, that was awesome. Thank you very much. I hope we continue to do this'cause this is a lot of fun.- So much fun, Matt. It's such a pleasure to do this with you.- Awesome my man.(uplifting music)