“The workplace has changed. People nowadays are looking for meaning in work. It’s a statement that rings very true to me, as well as talent entering the workforce. Millennials don’t separate personal and professional life as much. To them, work-life balance is all-encompassing.”

– Andy Yang, CEO of 500px

Being on an awesome team is the best thing ever. Everyone is the best at their job. We’re all rowing in the same direction and feel this incredible sense of ownership over what we do. That’s what I love about teams. It creates accountability. No one on a team wants to let down someone else on the team. Team mentality creates a positive, virtuous cycle.”

–Brandon Weber, Founder & CEO of Hightower Leasing Management Software

“Mediocre people decentivize all the great people you have and you’re trying to hire. It takes incredible patience and discipline not to overhire. You must resist the temptation of ‘I could get to this opportunity if only we had a person to do x’. Instead, view each hire as bringing in a unique asset into the organization that will add value over a long period of time.”

–David Barrett, Founder and CEO of Expensify

“Ensure you understand what it takes to do well at your organization and don’t be afraid to let qualified, talented people pass by if they’re not the right fit.”

– Carol Leaman, President and CEO of Axonify

“As a leader, hiring is one thing you shouldn’t entirely delegate. We’ve discussed working with recruiters as we’ve grown and had to deal with hiring spurts (this month we hired five people and are about to hire a sixth). But we haven’t gone there yet. Partly because of cost and our desire to stay lean, but also because I believe you lose something in delegating this super important task to a third-party.”

–Cliff Peskin, Co-founder and Co-president of BuzzBuzzHome

“The single most important qualifier I look for in talent is cultural fit. Everyone at Wattpad fully buys in and believes in the company vision and lives its values.”

-Allen Lau, CEO and Co-founder of Wattpad

“I recently delivered a state of the union to the company. The subject matter of the address wasn’t great: I talked about how the markets are crashing and how half of the value of the SaaS market was wiped out in three days. However, instead of being demotivating, it had the opposite effect. It was motivating to them. I received many comments about how that level of transparency made the team feel like they were part of the inner circle. Now the finance team and everyone else became involved in solving the problem. You want everyone in the room, regardless if they make $50K or $150K, to feel a sense of ownership. You want them to shoulder the responsibility, to push each other to do better.”

-Brandon Weber

“Not enough early-stage CEOs are transparent. They have fear about disclosing too much to their employees. Where risk is involved, they tend to keep that information close to the chest. That’s a mistake. Keeping that information private ends up damaging your company’s culture, which is the backbone of startups and early-stage companies. The reason why I’m not afraid to disclose the company’s most private information with my employees is because I trust them. I genuinely believe that they come into the office every morning intending to work hard, give it their all, do good things, and want to be recognized for it. They want to be successful. They want to win, too. So I treat them like partners, not like paid guns doing task work. They know what I know.”

–Carol Leaman

“I think it’s important to over-communicate the company’s objectives, goals and the mission and strategy. It sounds like an obvious thing but it actually takes a lot of time from me and from the rest of the leadership team to make sure that everyone within our organization is aligned. Nowadays, people don’t just follow orders. Employees aren’t robots. They have to understand “why”. Transparency is very important as it reinforces the “why”, so this is something I focus on everyday.”

-Allen Lau

One benefit is that by taking risks you attract talent. Talent wants to work for organizations that are going to allow them to take some risks because it’s through pushing new boundaries that top performers get personal growth and development. That’s why people gravitate towards startups. They take risks. Talent sees them as an opportunity to grow and receive increased responsibilities. You need to provide that environment at big companies too.”

-Ted Graham, Innovation Lead at PwC and author of “The Uber of Everything”

“We do this by taking calculated risks on people. In the same way we take a risk on a recent grad to give them experience towards their career, we take risks when promoting within. It means that sometimes we’ll put people that don’t quite have all the right experience in new roles as long as they have demonstrated an ability to learn and a desire to grow.”

-David Barrett

“In order to become truly autonomous, leaders must abandon traditional organizational structures and processes. Easier said than done. Let go of structure and process.”

-David Barrett

“No one likes to be managed, but everyone likes to be led. That’s why real leaders become elected by their peers vs. given a title and org structure. Avoid hiring managers from the outside. Hiring from the outside instead of promoting within disrupts the internal leadership structure and positions the new hire as an enemy to the rest of the company. Without any relationships inside the organization, you’re just setting them up for failure.”

-David Barrett