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Lead, Lead Again / Innovation = Managed Chaos

Sun, October 17th, 2017, 11a: PART 1: Theory: I believe to lead an organization to scale, you have to be as skilled at breaking plans as you are at making them.

In just 6 years, Facebook grew to 2 billion users and 14,000 employees. How? Well first, they hired COO Sheryl Sandberg. And she knew that to lead a fast-changing organization, you have to be as skilled at breaking plans as you are at making them. Great scale leaders know how to pivot. Every day, there are new competitors, new threats, new opportunities. There’s no simple, straightforward set of marching orders. It’s more like a dogfight. You and your team will be flying upside down and at an angle sometimes. Sandberg shares her practical, tactical on-the-ground lessons she learned at both Google and Facebook — everything from hiring people for roles that never existed before, celebrating birthdays for an enormous team, and navigating make-or-break crises as a management team. She also reveals the slow, professional courtship of Mark Zuckerberg.

PART 2: Theory: I believe the smartest companies don't tell their employees how to innovate, they manage the chaos.

Google has succeeded by innovating again and again. Not just search, but GMail and GoogleDocs and even self-driving cars. Their secret? They don’t tell their employees how to innovate; they manage the chaos. Eric Schmidt—CEO of Google since 2001 and now Chairman of parent company Alphabet—shares the controversial management techniques he created to cultivate an environment of free-flowing ideas plus disciplined decision making that lead to breakthrough ideas. He reveals the hidden secret in Google’s famous “20% time” policy, their approach to hiring smart creatives, and the parallels between leading Google and piloting small airplanes. Plus, his “roommate” at Google, and the decision he made to support a crazy idea that he was certain would bankrupt the company.