Running Through Walls: Talk About (Your) Mistakes
Steven Aldrich, chief product officer at GoDaddy, has spent his career at a mix of large-cap companies, small businesses, and brand-new startups. He’s amassed a storehouse of lessons that companies at any place in their journey can learn from each other. It’s not just the large companies, he believes, that have all the keys to success. For one thing, big companies would do well to hold onto the “sense of urgency” that can fuel a startup’s growth, Aldrich told Venrock partner Brian Ascher.
“We need to find the burning customer problems to solve — and we need to find the hungry, smaller competitors who are nipping at our heels,” says Aldrich on why 900-lb. gorillas should operate like they’re scrappy startups. When companies get big (and perhaps complacent), leadership may “take some of that ‘eat what you kill’ urgency” off the table, Aldrich adds.
Another useful lesson from the startups: daring to fail. “Big businesses have gotten big by doing a few things well,” Aldrich says. “Then they get ossified — they’re stuck in what they do.” Large companies should rekindle the spirit of experimentation that got them to where they are, he adds, and be willing to tolerate projects that aren’t always slam-dunks.
At GoDaddy, Aldrich says, “we try to celebrate things that don’t go so well.” GoDaddy leaders periodically hand out a “Rubber Chicken Award” to employees whose projects go south. “You need folks to feel safe to experiment,” he explains. Aldrich is a fan of the “growth mindset” concept, popularized by Stanford professor Carol Dweck, which links the ways people deal with challenges to their capacity for success. People who believe their capacity for growth is limitless are more likely to take on tough challenges, while people who believe their capabilities are limited –the fixed-mindset people — will not tackle projects with uncertain outcomes.
Aldrich says he uses this concept to evaluate prospective employees. “I ask people what’s been their biggest mistake and why, and what they learned,” he says. “Folks with a growth mindset have no trouble talking about some big flubs — and they take personal accountability for that flub. The fixed-mindset people are uncomfortable talking about their mistakes, and will blame all sorts of people for why it didn’t go well.”
Flipping the discussion around to the lessons new companies can learn from established ones, Aldrich believes long-term vision should be at the top of the list.
“In the startups that I joined as founder and CEO, there’s a lot of focus on the very next milestone, like funding or some specific near-term issue,” Aldrich says. “That got in the way of looking at what’s ahead in three years or five years,” such as attracting talent or expanding partnerships. Young companies need to adjust the balance between long-term goals and reacting to fresh challenges, he says, so they’re not missing out on critical decisions about growth.
