Snowflake CEO's Advice For Young Company Leaders

Coming up in today’s edition:

1. One quick win: from the CEO of Snowflake

2. One proven system: to go from a good team to a great one

3. One million-dollar question: from an Olympic gold medalist

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MY TOP FINDS OF THE WEEK 🔍

For your performance:

• NFL Quarter Back on the best piece of advice he’s ever received (Aaron Rodgers)

For your team:

• Man City manager shares the two essential team traits you need to become the best in your industry (Pep Guardiola)

For your health:

• Sports psychologist shares unique coping strategy Kobe Bryant used when facing setbacks (Bill Beswick)

1. BOOST THE INTENSITY

Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman had two pieces of advice for young company leaders:

• Boost the intensity

• Get used to confrontation

As humans, we are not naturally confrontational. But CEO jobs at the top level demand a high level of confrontation, according to Slootman.

He knows a thing or two about building high-performing teams after leading three companies to blockbuster IPOs. His most recent tenure with tech company Snowflake supercharged their revenue growth, hitting $2.8bn this year (up from $265m).

If you are experiencing a lack of urgency in your team, give Frank’s episode on the “No Priors” podcast a listen 🎧

If you don’t have time to listen to the podcast, here are the top three learnings I took from it:

1. Prioritise focus and relentless execution —> Rather than spreading resources across multiple initiatives, Slootman suggests concentrating on a few key areas where you can make the most impact.

2. Be market-driven, not product-driven —> Instead of focusing only on what your product can do, understand the needs and pain points of your customers and build your strategy around solving those problems.

3. Build a culture of high standards and accountability —> set clear expectations for performance and then establish a regular cadence for reviewing progress and providing feedback.

Ask yourself, what can you do this week to boost the intensity in your team?

2. CREATING A “HAPPINESS SYSTEM” TO GO FROM GOOD TO GREAT

Happiness can be your competitive advantage as a team.

After spending hours researching the topic of “happiness” I now believe it is one of the main differences between teams that are good and those that are great.

And it’s 100% free.

Here is just a snapshot of studies that highlight the impact of team happiness:

1. Research from MIT’s Human Dynamics Laboratory found that the most successful teams communicate frequently, energise each other, and have positive, happy interactions. Teams with these dynamics were 50% more productive than less connected teams.

2. Gallup research found that companies with highly engaged employees have a 10% increase in customer ratings and a 20% increase in sales.

3. Studies by Oxford University showed that happier employees take 66% fewer sick leaves compared to their unhappy colleagues.

4. And finally, a study from Deloitte indicated that employees who are happy and engaged are 87% less likely to leave their companies.

So what does this all mean for you?

Happy employees outperform unhappy employees across every metric.

So our role as leaders is to facilitate happiness as much as we can.

Yes, that all sounds great Alex, but how do we do it?

It’s as simple as ABC.

A) Combatting The Negatives

Negativity bias is a well-documented psychological phenomenon where negative experiences and thoughts have a more significant impact on our brain than positive ones. 

This bias is believed to have evolved as a survival mechanism. Our ancestors who were more attuned to danger, threats, and potential negative outcomes were more likely to survive.

One tactic to help combat this is to put negative emotions into words.

If you have an unhappy employee, get them to write down what they’re feeling, or talk about it with someone they trust (ideally you).

Brain scans show that simply putting your negative emotions into words diminishes their power, and is ultimately the first step in regaining control.

B) Leaning Into The Positives

On the flip side, the more positivity your brain experiences, the more optimistic you will become.

Anticipation is a rarely discussed tactic that can raise your endorphin levels by 27% alone, according to the science.

Matthew McConaughey’s famous Oscar speech about chasing his hero (him in 10 years) shows the power of anticipation in action.

So in every 1on1, ask your team about projects inside and outside of work that they are looking forward to in the future.

Another exercise to improve your happiness is meditation. In fact, research shows that the brains of monks who spend years meditating tend to exhibit growth in the prefrontal cortex – the part of the brain responsible for feeling happy.

Make a ritual of meditation and speak openly with your team about it plus any additional activities such as writing down three good things that happened the day before. This includes anything positive; it doesn’t have to be profound as long as it’s specific. For example, this could be a joke that made you laugh, an accomplishment, a strengthened connection and so on.

C) Taking Ownership Of Your Happiness

One of the other main drivers of our happiness, and as a consequence our performance, is the belief that we have control over our future.

Those who believe they have power over their outcomes enjoy higher academic achievement, career accomplishment and are happier at work.

Think of a successful athlete. The most accomplished ones rarely blame the referees or the weather when they lose, and certainly don’t attribute their wins to strokes of fortune.

Football legend, Robin Van Persie, struggled with his son’s reaction to a defeat and famously came out with this speech 👇

Your team needs to distinguish the features of the situation that they can control and those they can't.

One exercise you can use to do this is to make a list of two columns, one for things you/they can control and one for things you/they can’t.

If your team can adopt the ABC system above then you’ll be well on your way to driving high-performance.

3. HAVE YOU VISUALISED WHAT YOU WANT YOUR TEAM TO ACHIEVE?

Olympic swimmer, Adam Peaty, did for the recent Paris Games this summer.

Adam Peaty boasts three Olympic gold medals, eight world titles, and a string of world records in the 50m and 100m breaststroke events.

His recent LinkedIn post here shows how he used visualisation to know what it was going to take to obtain another gold medal and the potential moments throughout the season that might derail his chances:

He makes a great point about people setting goals but not having a clue of what it’s going to take to get there.

Using this method above, you can visualise what you and your team want out of the next 12 months and hold each other accountable at each of the hurdles.

During this period, December to March are punishing so you can see that in that period they made sure the team was communicating much more often to avoid losing margins to illness, injury or dips in motivation.

Here is G2’s list of the 15 best free collaborative drawing tools that you could trial with your team today if you want to put this into practice.

Thanks!

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Have an awesome week!

👋 - Alex