The Guiding Principles of One Of The World’s Best CEOs

Frank Slootman has excelled in his role as CEO at Data Domain, ServiceNow, and currently at Snowflake. What is his secret sauce for getting results?

I’ve always admired leaders whose track record shows that wherever they go, the organization gets better. Out of the many CEOs and business people I come across in my readings and podcast consumption, few stand out quite like Frank Slootman. Upon finishing his book Rise of the Data Cloud, I had to dive further into his leadership tactics. Listening to some of his interviews (my favorite is below from “Invest Like the Best”) and then reading his famous blog post makes it clear why he gets results.

Narrow the Focus, Increase the Quality

Why are his companies ones that experience significant outperformance? His companies are run and built for performance, amping up the pace and intensity to an uncomfortable point for some. Frank is able to do this by:

1. Increasing the velocity- The meter of pace and pressure typically isn’t dialed up enough because at first it feels uncomfortable.
2. Raising standards- The people who kill your organization are your B players.
3. Narrowing the focus — If you are unable to do this, it typically means you don’t have your priorities straight. Frank wants to create blinding clarity about what’s important.

While these are great principles for a company to live by, they are nothing unless Frank’s actions and own other traits support that. What are those?

• He describes himself as a human Bayesian — Developing ideas, talking to a lot of people to make it better, and if it turns out to be a bad idea, drop it
• A no-nonsense guy who starts off every executive meeting with a lightning round, where each leader tells others what they need to know in their area
• “Pride signals satisfaction with the status quo”, “I focus on the distance from where we are to where we can and need to be”
• Values are just feel good statements of intent until you work up the courage to act on them.

I think applying Frank’s 3 rules for the scaling phase of a company above to the level that he has applied as CEO of his companies could produce outsized returns for organizations of any industry. Often times, organizations fall short of these results because there is either lack of clarity as to where everyone should be going or too low of a bar & pace.