Howie Liu: Providing strategic context is the hardest and most vital leadership duty
Howie Liu · 20VC: Airtable's Howie Liu on Potential Consolidation In The Collaboration Tools Market, The Transition From Peacetime To Wartime CEO & How To Make The Move To Remote Work Successful; The Process Beyond The Tools · Apr 27, 2020 · at 8:21
Howie Liu, founder and CEO of Airtable, discusses leadership bottlenecks and alignment strategies across fast-growing teams.
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“What really then becomes the bottleneck in success is, I think, ensuring that everybody has the right strategic context, not just given the specific tactical instruction of do this very narrow problem, but really has the broader framework of understanding why we're doing this thing, how it connects to the bigger goals of the company, where we sit in the competitive landscape, and in terms of the journey ahead over the next few years, and getting that in the military world, what you might call the commanders and Intent, you know, imbued in everything we do so that everybody understands not just the specific next five feet of what they're doing, but why they're doing it and what to do if things change. I think that's the hardest part and also the most important part.”
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