“What we've seen through this crazy hiring spree over the last four years is that you've got kind of managers reporting to managers and like four levels of the management chain. You're going to have two people reporting to each other and you look at it on our org chart and you're like, wait a minute, like how is a senior leader ending up with only two direct reports? What kind of management job is that if you have two directs and then those two directs have two more directs each and those two have like 15 each, like that's a weird org design and something went wrong along the way.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading:
filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard
(the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
“I'm better off with single threaded leadership than not. And so you get single threaded leadership in a narrow and focused area for the customer. And you get that in a way that we have seen repeatedly is better than the alternative, which is a purely functiona…”
Saumil MehtaAug 31, 2023▶ 18:21An org-design masterclass from a Square GM | Saumil Mehta
Insight
Mehta: Centralized GTM teams optimize for overall company growth neutrally
“The reason I would argue that it makes sense for all the code market teams to remain centralized is because they can be completely square first and they can optimize for overall square growth in a way that is effectively neutral.”
Saumil MehtaAug 31, 2023▶ 23:33An org-design masterclass from a Square GM | Saumil Mehta
Insight
Mehta: Strong product-market fit often masks erratic and impatient leadership
“Companies use exceptional product market fit to paper over what is herky jerky, impatient, distracted behavior. Underneath the covers when you actually go talk to the leaders within those companies.”
Saumil MehtaAug 31, 2023▶ 1:09:05An org-design masterclass from a Square GM | Saumil Mehta
Insight
Mehta: Initial org designs must have only boxes and arrows, omitting names
“And so our principle is the first iteration that I want to see in an org design, it's only going to have boxes and arrows. I don't want to have any people names on it, like no people name, period. Show me multiple options, but never show me people names. And t…”
Saumil MehtaAug 31, 2023▶ 7:36An org-design masterclass from a Square GM | Saumil Mehta
Insight
Mehta: Reorgs must avoid creating 'junk drawer' teams without explainable charters
“So one of our Kind of little rules here is don't end up with a junk drawer team because that team is going to be miserable, right? And like the manager there is going to be like, why did you like give me this junk drawer team? And the PM is like, I don't want …”
Saumil MehtaAug 31, 2023▶ 8:47An org-design masterclass from a Square GM | Saumil Mehta
Insight
Mehta: Every org design has goals, trade-offs, and compensating mechanisms
“Any org design, it's going to have goals. It's going to have trade-offs and it's going to have compensating mechanisms. And you just have to pick what you're going to achieve and how you're going to solve for the trade-offs that come with it.”
Saumil MehtaAug 31, 2023▶ 15:32An org-design masterclass from a Square GM | Saumil Mehta
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, about 80 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.