Molly Graham
Founder & CEO, Glue Club. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveoperatorhost@molly_g ↗LinkedIn ↗glueclub.com ↗
Molly Graham is the founder and CEO of Glue Club, an executive and operator community, and host of TED's WorkLife podcast. She previously served as COO of Quip, VP of Operations at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, and held leadership roles at Google and Facebook.
Everything Molly Graham said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Molly Graham: J-curve career leaps lead much further than incremental corporate stairs
“Chamath, when he pitched me on this job, actually drew me a picture on a whiteboard. He said, you know, look, you can stay the way a lot of people do careers is a set of stairs. You can be boring to use Chamath and stay on these stairs. Just walk up the stairs…”
Graham: 80% of team problems stem from structural or dynamics issues
“80% of problems on teams actually happen because of structural issues or dynamics issues. So when there are problems on your team, where you start is at the top. You start structural issues.”
Graham: Annual headcount growth over 100% causes severe organizational pain
“Growing more than 100% every year is a bad idea. A hundred percent, the happiest growth rate is 50%. A hundred percent is manageable. Anything more than doubling and you are signing yourself up for a world of pain.”
Molly Graham only takes jobs she is highly unqualified for
“I only like doing jobs that I'm highly unqualified for. I like being on learning curves so steep that I'm scared I'm gonna fall off.”
Graham: A manager's only core goal is establishing clear roles and expectations
“Your only goal as a manager, if you do nothing else, is clear roles and clear expectations. That's it.”
Graham: Setting annual goals is a waste of time for early-stage startups
“When I'm building in seed stage, I'm setting goals every two months in a very iterative way. When I have an established business, I can actually set annual goals, but annual goals for early stage companies is just like a waste of time.”
Graham: The best hiring managers are only right about half the time
“I actually say most people are wrong half the time. Like the best people in the world at hiring will tell you they have about a 50% average in terms of being right.”
Graham: Managers must serve the business rather than individual people
“My mantra that almost always leads in a, in the best direction is serve the business, not the people.”
Graham: Managers should invest energy in high performers instead of struggling employees
“Our tendency is to actually spend time on low performers and it is not a good use of your time. See the point about firing people. But the other thing is that actively investing in and developing high performers is something that's important to get good at as …”
Graham: 80% of company culture is defined by founder personality
“80% of the culture of a company is literally defined by the personality of the founder.”
Graham: Learning capacity matters far more than current knowledge in hypergrowth companies
“What you know today is way less valuable than what you can learn by tomorrow. If you're inside of a company where the growth curve is like this, what you know today is like irrelevant.”
Graham: Leaders must repeat roles and expectations dozens of times
“Re-clarifying roles and expectations, re-describing the elephant over and over and over again is one of the hardest parts about being a leader because you feel like a broken record, right? You feel like an idiot. You're like, I've said this 45 times. Turns out…”
Graham: Facebook operated with only three top-level goals for five years
“Facebook basically had three goals for the entire time I was there. It was five years and we did, you know, six month goal setting. I think we did annual goal setting that ended up getting reset every six months, but whatever. So the three goals were this, the…”
Graham: If goal setting is not painful, you are not prioritizing enough
“If your goal setting process is not painful, then you're not prioritizing heavily enough.”
Graham: Every goal must have exactly one single non-CEO owner
“Two people owning a goal is no one owning a goal. One person owns the goal. Who is it? It's not you as the CEO. It's someone that works for you.”
Graham: Breaking uncontrollable promises is the fastest way to demoralize high performers
“Being really careful with promises of things that are out of your control, like stability or titles or never hiring over someone is like a flashing red light. Cause there is literally no faster way to demoralize high performers. Then going back on a promise, r…”
Graham: Disagreeing coworkers should immediately escalate together to leadership
“As soon as you are stuck, escalate. Go together. Go make your case to whoever it is. Go together up. That is unlocking, right? It's saving you a whole bunch of time.”
Molly Graham gave away her job every three weeks at Facebook
“At Facebook, I got to a place where I was literally giving away my job every three weeks. I was constantly rehiring myself essentially because you have to sort of grow as fast as your company is growing. If you really want to take advantage Of the opportunity …”
Molly Graham: Facebook's mobile phone project was a massive, costly failure
“The phone itself was a giant failure, like massive costly failure for Facebook.”
Molly Graham: Specific financial anxiety is far more useful than existential fear
“Specific financial anxiety is much more useful than existential financial anxiety.”
The other half of the tape: Molly Graham's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 1 episode across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Lenny Rachitsky 2
Statements about Molly Graham, by other people (1)
Co-founder Cameron Adams personally teaches 'giving away Legos' at Canva onboarding
“Molly wrote a great article which I actually refer everyone who joins Canva to in, ah, the cultural onboarding session which I give them. So I run everyone through the culture at Canva and what they conspect over the next few years as they work here. And one o…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Lenny's Podcast 2
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Molly's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Founder & CEO, Glue Club | 1 | 21 | — | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |