Insight
Reese: Firing high performers who destroy trust is worth short-term revenue hits
“At the end of that time period, if it has not gotten remarkably better, the person needs to go. And you need to be willing to take the hit to revenue or product delivery or whatever it is that that person was so amazing at, but I guarantee you the short-term h…”
Opinion
Reese: Tech's speed culture and unicorn storytelling erode organizational trust
“And in technology, we worship at this altar of speed, and moving fast, and breaking things, and for crying out loud, people refer to us as mythical creatures and unicorns. And the deities, and the myths, and the, and all of this storytelling is actually the ve…”
Insight
Reese: Missed commitments require a public apology without excuses to prevent mistrust
“No, if you commit, you also deliver, and if you don't, you apologize. You apologize publicly, and you don't give a long backstory about why you could have done. You say, I'm sorry, I committed, I didn't get it done, and that's unacceptable because we hold ours…”
Insight
Reese: Hiring purely for specialist capability without evaluating trust is kryptonite
“Really, really bad kryptonite is urgency to hire a role-related specialist. I need the best engineer. I need the best salesperson. I need the best finance person. So I'm gonna screen only for their capabilities against that role-related need. No, equally, if n…”
Assertion Supported
Reese: Google found top teams excel via trust, not individual talent
“They cross-referenced a bunch to come up with the teams that performed the highest were not the smartest people in the room. They were not the best Positional players in their particular spot on the field. They were a team that had engendered this sense of tru…”
Insight
Reese: Building trust slows nominal metrics but drives high performance
“And importantly, this work is not fast. It can go faster sometimes, but it's actually slow, and it may slow you down at a nominal level against whatever scorecard you're tracking, but it is the biggest lever to high performance.”
Insight
Reese: Homogeneous teams stifle innovation through the common information effect
“There is a ton of research, and from experience, maybe you all relate to this, that when you surround yourself with sameness, it's pernicious, because you're not getting new and novel ideas. People often, with rare exception, will default to what is the best w…”
Insight
Reese: Leaders must equip teams to reset from passenger to driver mindsets
“The trick is not to try to always, or not to, it's not even possible to always be in the driver's seat, but you can equip people to recognize when they're being pulled into a passenger mindset, and then get them back to a driver mindset.”
Insight
Reese: There are only five acceptable responses to a direct request
“And if you've made the request a non-compounded question, then there really are only five acceptable answers. And I will challenge you to write these down and see how crisp people commit versus how vaguely they commit. So five answers. Yes, I commit. I'll do i…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Reese: Gusto serves 100,000 small businesses and has 1,000 employees
“Gusto now serves a 100,000 small businesses. We have 1000 employees across three locations. San Francisco, Denver, and New York. And everything in the past four years has grown by more than 10 X. Our customers, our employees, our revenue.”
Insight
Reese: Any team member arrival or departure creates a new team
“Every time someone comes or goes, your team is in a new state of formation. It's a new team.”
Assertion Partly supported
Reese: Edelman data shows employer trust rising while institutional trust declines
“This is from a trust study by Edelman trust barometer done globally. In this year alone, there has been a precipitous decline In people's trust for their governments, for the private sector at large, for NGO, and for media. But the one raise that we saw was pe…”
Disclosure
Reese: Gusto COO role changes entirely every six months
“My job as title of COO at Gusto has, in title only, remained the same. Every six months, it's an entirely different job. The expectations are higher because we have more customers. The complexity gets bigger. Our product set has expanded.”
