Being a boss is hard—and most people are thrown into it with zero training and a vague job description. Kim and Jason are joined by Andrew Palmer—yes, that Andrew Palmer from The Economist’s “Bartleby” column and host of the Boss Class podcast—for a wide-ranging, no-BS conversation about what leadership looks like when it’s done well…and when it’s not.
Listen to the episode:
Episode at a Glance: Andrew Palmer
Andrew brings the receipts (read: research), and together they swap tips on blocking your calendar like a boss, making your expectations explicit, and the underrated power of writing things down (including what not to do).
This isn’t about chasing the latest leadership trend—it’s about holding on to the stuff that actually helps people thrive at work. Whether you’re a seasoned manager, a team player, or simply trying not to lose your mind in a sea of emails, this one’s for you.
Radical Candor Podcast Resources: Andrew Palmer
- Transcript
- Andrew Palmer
- Managing Is Hard—Here’s What Actually Helps | Radical Respect LinkedIn
- Boss Class podcast
- Bartleby | The Economist
The TLDR Radical Candor Podcast Transcript: Andrew Palmer
[00:00:00] Kim Scott: Hello everybody. Welcome to the Radical Candor podcast. Live with us is, with Jason and me. I’m Kim Scott. Is Jason, you wanna say hi?
[00:00:16] Jason Rosoff: Sure. I’m Jason.
[00:00:18] Kim Scott: And with us is Andrew Palmer, who is the host of Boss Class Podcast and a columnist at The Economist. He writes one of my favorite columns called Bartleby, so I would love to welcome you, Andrew. Thanks for joining us.
[00:00:35] Andrew Palmer: Thank you, Kim. Hi Jason. Very nice to be here.
[00:00:39] Kim Scott: Great to have you. So tell our listeners about Boss Class. I love this idea. I love the name. I love what you’re doing. So tell everybody about it.
[00:00:49] Andrew Palmer: Well, that’s really kind. So the podcast has a simple goal, I think at least it’s easy to say, slightly harder to deliver on, which is how to make people better manager. So the genesis of it is lots of people find themselves in positions where they’re managing other people. They don’t necessarily know what they’re doing. So here in the UK where I’m talking from, it’s like 80% of managers get no training at all. They’re just dumped in the position. And secondly, they are often promoted without any desire or aptitude for management, it’s just a byproduct of them being good at something else. And so research suggests that you know, you can be good at one thing that’s probably bad for your future subordinates. So take this, take this world of confusion, frustration and ignorance. And there are a lot of people out there who need help. And so the idea, you know, the aim at least, is to try and deliver some practical advice to people on how to be a better boss.
[00:01:43] Kim Scott: I love this. This is exactly why I wrote the book, Radical Candor. When I first became a leader, I was at a startup that I had co-founded, and all of a sudden I was not only just a manager for the first time, but the CEO and a friend of mine put it to me this way. She said, Kim, you hate the man, and now you are the man, and you’re not a man. This is very complicated. So I wish I could have listened to your podcast back then, or read my book back then. It, there were a lot of struggles.
[00:02:17] Andrew Palmer: Yeah, totally. Right. So I, as, as, you know, British people would probably express that slightly differently, but I think the sentiment is exactly the same as like, I’m in this position, how do I make it work?
[00:02:28] Kim Scott: Yes. And go ahead Jason, you were gonna say something?
[00:02:31] Jason Rosoff: I, I was just curious. One of the things that I think we’ve, find challenging or, or inconsistent is even the definition of like, what is a boss? What does a boss do? And I think if you combine a lack of training and a lack of a definition of what a boss is supposed to do, it makes it really difficult for people who are thrust into that position to be successful.
[00:02:51] Andrew Palmer: Completely right. And of course there are different levels of bosses. So you know, you might be a junior level boss, middle manager, and then you’re suddenly making a leap to leadership, which is an entirely different set of challenges. Although I think our kind of bias is to think of the difference between leader and manager as being potentially over egged. To be a good leader,
[00:03:10] Kim Scott: I hundred percent agree. It’s forehand and backhand.
[00:03:13] Andrew Palmer: Yeah, exactly. So both things, you’ve gotta be good at both.
[00:03:15] Kim Scott: True confession here. When I first started giving Radical Candor talks and keynotes, just after the book came out, I initially was really focused on giving this talk to people who are new to management. Because, you know, that’s why I wrote the book. And then I was invited to give a Radical Candor talk to a bunch of CEOs of companies that were about to go public. So pretty senior leadership group. And I was really busy and I just, I didn’t have time to change my talk for them. I felt a little, I was a little scared ’cause I was giving this talk that I had designed for new managers to these and I, I was afraid they were gonna attack me for it. And the very first question in the Q and A was, well, we know you wrote this talk for us, these senior leaders, but how do you explain this to our junior people? And so I feel like the core effects of management actually are are very much the same, whether you’re a brand new manager or the CEO. It’s about creating a culture of feedback, about building great teams and about delivering results. How do you feel about that? Like how do you define what managers do?
[00:04:27] Andrew Palmer: Yeah, I, I, I would agree with that. I would just add into your definitions there, obviously the differences between very large and very small companies are huge. So there are some places where you’ve got, you know, training, you’ve got colleges, you have the ability to learn from people who are doing it alongside you. There’s much less support, certainly in the UK, but I suspect in the US too, for managers in smaller companies and they’re looking for help. I mean, the definition of management is a difficult one, but I like one which Reid Hoffman gave to us in the first season of Boss Class, which is that it was a combination of poetry and prose.
[00:05:02] So it was the ability to inspire people to set out a vision, to motivate and at a very high level, kind of get people coordinated behind where you want the organization to go. And then the prose is what are the processes, the organizational rhythms that enable you to get there? I thought that conjured up something nice about the complexity of it, but also this is not just boring in the weeds, mundane stuff. This is very human as well. And someone who can do that well at the same time is rare and you can get better at it, but it’s difficult.
[00:05:37] Kim Scott: Yes, and this also speaks to what you were talking about before where management and leadership are forehand and backhand. You have to be able to do both from the very beginning. It’s not like, this is the struggle I had anyway, with figuring out what word to use to talk about it, is that very often a manager is viewed as someone who is petty and not innovative and kind of a paper pusher. And that’s unfair to managers. And leaders are often viewed as bloviating bullshitters who don’t really do anything. And that also is unfair to leaders. I like the poetry, and the combination of poetry and prose. You gotta do,
[00:06:15] Andrew Palmer: We try to have a little bit of empathy for the manager, more than a little bit actually, but the,
[00:06:20] Kim Scott: A lot, you’re, you’re dedicated to them.
[00:06:21] Andrew Palmer: These are people who are in a difficult position, especially if they’re not being supported, but they’re a really important aspect of an organization too. So, you know, at least, you know, middle management is a curse word in some, um, organizations, but they hold things together. They’re the people who translate strategy downwards, who get customer feedback and put it up the organization. So if they do it well, the whole place sings.
[00:06:45] Kim Scott: And if they do it badly, it does the opposite.
[00:06:49] Andrew Palmer: Yeah. Whatever the opposite of singing is, but yeah, that’s something,
[00:06:52] Kim Scott: I was, I some, a couple of words came to mind, but I decided not to use them.
[00:06:56] Andrew Palmer: Very good.
[00:06:58] Jason Rosoff: I’m curious, what are the questions you find yourself answering most often for, for these middle managers who might not have support?
[00:07:06] Andrew Palmer: So it’s a broad range, I mean, I should say that my kind of, a lot of what I come up with in the columns is sort of born of my own frustration. So it’s a little window and on life generally, but the kind of questions that come up tend to be a little more in the weeds. So things like, how do I manage the flood of email? How do I bring together people in a meeting in a way that’s effective? So those are common to almost everyone. It doesn’t matter where you are in the organization. We are all grappling with those kind of day to day irritations. So that comes up an awful lot. It varies from, I’ve got so much coming my way. How do I prioritize things? What’s the best way for me to balance my workload? Well, how do I motivate people? There is a real gamut of topics and in the podcast we cover things from negotiating to innovating to how to present to managing a crisis. And Kim, you are in an episode that’s coming up shortly on how to build a good culture. So, you know, it really is a broad canvas.
[00:08:05] Kim Scott: I wanna come back to the, to get your, your answer to the question of how to manage email. ‘Cause I have the same question, but I can tell you what I do, which I just have realized recently is not, is not working very well. One of, the question that probably comes to us the most often, and I wonder if it comes to you also, Andrew, is how do I give feedback? And the answer that we offer to that is you gotta start by soliciting it, which is not the answer that people wanna hear, really. They don’t wanna, I mean, none of us really want to hear criticism and, and when we say soliciting feedback, we really mean soliciting criticism. What, what are, what are your listeners saying about feedback? Jason, do you agree with my characterization?
[00:08:51] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, I, I think I would add one, one, maybe a bit of color to it. Which is that I think that as managers, one of the things that people seem to struggle with the most is how to communicate expectations, and usually feedback is this is an opportunity to clarify, to clarify expectations. And the time when people feel the need to give feedback is when a problem has become urgent to resolve. And so I think that’s why it’s dissatisfying to say you need to start by soliciting feedback.
[00:09:25] Kim Scott: You’re in the middle of a crisis.
[00:09:26] Jason Rosoff: And people think if I just say the right words in the right way, it’s gonna work like magic. It’s an incantation that I can speak. And the other person is going to understand me. But what we really mean when we say start by soliciting feedback is what you need to do is normalize this conversation. And the best way to normalize the conversation is to go first. And that’s why soliciting feedback matters far more than people think it does.
[00:09:50] Andrew Palmer: That makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, the, the idea of how to give feedback, I mean, specifically difficult feedback comes an awful lot. People are very comfortable with giving generous praise that no one seems to have a problem with that. But yeah, how do you have a conflictual conversation, particularly with someone that you like, and I know Kim, this is exactly your, your territory. And Jason, yours, yours too issue, it comes up a lot.
[00:10:12] Kim Scott: And I think also another issue that a lot of managers, both senior leaders and new leaders have, is that they think giving praise is actually really easy. In fact, you can go badly wrong. Like one of our small tips is if it’s something you would say to your dog, it’s not good praise. So making sure that you figure out how to express gratitude and appreciation to your team in a way that is meaningful and helps them do more of the good stuff and less of the bad stuff is not as easy as we think it is.
[00:10:47] Andrew Palmer: And I remember when we talked before, Kim, you also warned against the sandwich.
[00:10:51] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:10:52] Andrew Palmer: Technique, which is probably the only thing that people know. So that was useful advice.
[00:10:56] Kim Scott: So you talk a lot on your podcast about the quirks and crises of modern office life. Certainly one of them is email. Email is a dangerous medium because it’s a broadcast medium. That means we have dozens of people broadcasting at us, each of us are only one person, we can’t possibly keep up. And then people try to deal with that by also having Slack channel. Now it just compounds the problem. So what is the answer? Me too.
[00:11:24] Andrew Palmer: This is a person who has 220,000 emails in their email inbox. I looked at it recently, so I am not a person who’s cracked this, but it looks like there are two broad ways to think about this problem of email overload. One is time boxing, and this is the Cal Newport sort of way of thinking about it. So you are very disciplined in ordering your day so that you only look at email in certain chunks of the day. And there’s another book on this called Ping that came out recently. Same kind of advice. So, you know, look at it for an hour in the morning, hour at lunchtime, hour at the end of the day if you can.
[00:11:58] Kim Scott: But that’s too much time, that’s three hours a day on email. That’s ridiculous.
[00:12:01] Andrew Palmer: Like I think, I think the argument, well, I don’t, it depends how much you get. It, it’s, it’s in combination with the second tactic. So I’ll come back to that, but I do think that is better than constantly context switch.
[00:12:13] Kim Scott: Yes, a hundred percent.
[00:12:14] Andrew Palmer: So, you know, if you give a, if you’ve got a choice, sticking to rigid, um, time, time zones or time batching is, is useful. The second bit is to be very disciplined in how you respond to particular types of messages. So, you know, we’ve got a little bit of back and forth with readers on this, and if there is a consistent theme to kind of the practices of our subscribers, it’s be really, really brutal in terms of only respond to things that require action. So, you know, if you’re CC’d, don’t do anything. If someone doesn’t come back to you, then it’s not that important. Those kinds of ways of thinking it through. So I guess if you limit yourself to a particular time, limit yourself to the things that you absolutely have to respond to. It’s a path through. But it doesn’t stop things coming in.
[00:12:59] Kim Scott: Yes, and it doesn’t stop. So you’ve actually given me my answer. So I time box, but I only give it 20 minutes in the morning and 20 minutes at night, and therefore I miss a lot of emails. What I have been saying, actually for the last two decades of my life, is I’ve been asking the people around me to extend a little bit of grace to each other. We’re all gonna miss some emails. I’m not gonna yell at you if you miss my email. You don’t yell at me if I miss your email. We’re not gonna hold each other to this turnaround time, SLA on email, like nobody agreed to that.
[00:13:34] And I would say overall that has been good. But in the last couple of weeks there was, I realized that I had missed an email from a person who I really care about, and I had missed not just one, not just two, but three emails. And he thought I hated him. And I feel, now I’m like, oh gosh, like I’m, I’m missing, I’m missing something, I’m doing real damage here with my approach. So maybe the answer is I just need to give it a little more time.
[00:14:05] Andrew Palmer: But I think that that process of setting expectations is clearly critical, right? I mean, if you are allowing people to understand, right, I may not get back to you quickly, or you know there are other people in the queue. If you can somehow communicate that, then that, you know, problems can get solved as well. But then by the time you get to it, it might’ve gone away.
[00:14:24] Kim Scott: The question, and this maybe, Jason, you can help me with that. I mean, I think the problem that a lot of people have, and certainly the problem I have is anytime I try to put a little footer on my email, I can’t keep up. People interpret that as arrogant from me. You know, like you have to answer your emails, but I’m so important I don’t have to answer my emails, which is not what I’m trying to say, but that’s how it often gets interpreted.
[00:14:45] Jason Rosoff: I think part of the issue is in addition to email being a broadcast medium, it’s also a public medium. Meaning you can have the arranged set of expectations with a group of people that you’re close with, but it’s very hard to have those expectations with people who you don’t work with on a regular basis. So like you and I can understand each other, but this, a person emailing you who’s not working with you on a regular basis doesn’t know. It’s sort of interesting because if you think about what email replaced, which is sort of some combination of the memo and letter writing, there, both of those things had really long latency.
[00:15:21] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:15:22] Jason Rosoff: Like there was no expect, there’s no expectation and, and so it’s so fascinating to me how the, the technology, like the medium becomes the message, like the, the immediacy of email becomes the urgency of response. And I actually think like we’re trying to work against the medium, right? We’re trying to say like there’s a problem with this medium, which is that it’s too easy to generate. I always think of this as like, every email in my inbox is sort of like an egg that’s waiting to hatch, and then that, the whatever hatches from the egg can also make like babies. And so the, like, if you think about it that way, it’s like the, it’s like a multiple, there’s a multiplicative effect. Like every email that gets sent, there’s a multiplicative effect of like the number of things, steps that have to happen after, after that.
[00:16:10] I do believe that the missing piece is that common understanding, the framework for saying, you know, here, here’s how quickly I can reasonably respond, or here’s how thoroughly I can respond to your note. And Andrew, I think your guidance is really good if you can get through your email on a regular basis. Like I have found myself often writing back to someone and saying, hey, I’m not gonna have time to like think about this or look at this until next week. You know, if that’s a problem, please let me know. But otherwise, like I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. And that I think is received reasonably well. I think the footer thing is a little tough because it, it can feel impersonal as opposed to me addressing you in the email that you sent.
[00:16:48] Kim Scott: Yeah, but I’m not gonna reply. There’s one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons is this guy saying, how about Thursday? No. Thursday’s out. How about never. And, and unfortunately, which that, I mean, that, that is my attitude and that’s why it seems arrogant. But one of the things I have come to realize is that I can either answer all my emails or spend time with my kids and, you know, I’m, I’m gonna choose my kids.
[00:17:16] Andrew Palmer: I’m glad to hear that, Kim. You chose right. Can I just like, on Jason’s point about the medium, there’s something kind of interesting as well that it’s immediate, there’s an expectation of fast response, but it’s still got that quality of letter writing. So a lot of the time that we waste is actually our own time composing things, which are a bit, what’s the word I’m trying to say?
[00:17:38] Kim Scott: Collaborate.
[00:17:39] Andrew Palmer: Yeah, exactly. So it’s fine on Slack or on WhatsApp to be discursive in, in email it’s slightly different. It comes across differently if you’re not spending time. So all of it, all of it’s problematic.
[00:17:52] Kim Scott: And we’re spending time, but maybe not quite enough time. We’re writing long letters, not short letters, which take an even longer time to write.
[00:17:59] Andrew Palmer: Exactly. That’s right.
[00:18:00] Jason Rosoff: I’m kind of curious the, what kind of mistakes that you feel like, uh, as managers are making today? One of the things that we’ve talked about sort of a bit serially on the Radical Candor Podcast is how overwhelmed managers feel. Like the, the, the you talk to, it doesn’t really,
[00:18:23] Kim Scott: They don’t feel overwhelmed. They actually are overwhelmed, I would say.
[00:18:27] Jason Rosoff: Yes. I have to believe that in part that’s like a, a failure to sort of conceive correctly of what you’re supposed to be doing or failure to prioritize. But I’m kind of curious, like do, from your perspective, do you feel like we’re digging ourselves, you know, our own graves a little bit? I, I, part of me worries that I’m not doing or choosing the right things. And so when I feel overwhelmed, uh, it’s often because like I’ve made my own bed and now I’m being forced to sleep in it. So what are the mistakes or the common errors that you see managers make that lead to overwhelm?
[00:18:58] Andrew Palmer: Well, I would say in the first instance, I think Kim’s right that it’s not necessarily the manager’s fault. I mean, the middle manager is like being hit from both directions. That’s the definition of it. So it’s already a really problematic place to be, and it’s the first place where people come. We see that going on right now. So I think there’s just something organizationally problematic about that. Given that, the answer is to be as disciplined and explicit as possible about what your priorities are, and to have that kind of cadence of meetings to set your expectations amongst your team about how available you are going to be, and you are gonna be available. But that it’s gonna be on this cadence, it’s about prioritizing. So if an initiative, it comes up and it’s extraneous, nice to have, but extraneous, then being clear that there’s not bandwidth for that.
[00:19:50] So that, those kinds of things, you know, just, just being clear that you cannot do everything upfront and defining what it is that will guide your decision making is, in generic terms, the way to, to handle it. But I, I do think, you know, also communicating up, right? I mean, at the point where you are overwhelmed, having the ability to talk to people higher up in the chain about that and hopefully them understanding it is really important. And there is research which shows why middle managers work and the value that a manager, a good manager, adds to a team which is considerably more than extra members of a team. So there are things that you adduce to make that, make that argument, but unfortunately, I think it does require the organization to listen. It’s not just in your own hand.
[00:20:33] Kim Scott: Yes. I had a boss once who noticed that I was struggling with middle manager overwhelm, and she said, I want you to give me a list of all the things you’re not gonna do every week. Stop telling me about what you are doing and let’s celebrate what you’re not doing. And we called it the proactive forbearance list. Because that sounded cooler than a do not do list, but that’s what it was. A do not do list and a Bartleby list, right? Here are the things. And I think this is part of the answer to a question that came in from our own Radical Candor team.
[00:21:09] What if all the emails require tasks? In an ideal world, but this world is not ideal, your manager would tell you what you can stop doing. But your manager probably doesn’t know all the things you’re doing. So it becomes your responsibility to tell your manager what you’re not gonna do, and that can feel really hard. It’s the job of your manager to make that a safe thing to do. In the end, everyone has to manage their own time. Your manager can’t manage your time. You’ve gotta manage your own time, I think.
[00:21:39] Andrew Palmer: Yeah, and I think probably the time management point is also an answer to your question is, is you know, what are the things that you really want to achieve? One of the people we spoke to for the podcast would systematically look at their diary, see how much time in a week was being devoted to firefighting. How much time was being set aside for actually thinking about the things that were gonna define success for that person in that job. And then working very, very closely with their assistant to try and make sure that that time was protected. Now, some people won’t have assistance. They won’t have that luxury of being able to set aside time. But trying is definitely the first step.
[00:22:21] Kim Scott: The thing that has helped me is to block time, like in some senses, you know, like retailers say, if I’m on this corner, my competitor can’t be on that corner, and so I use my calendar in the same way. If I block this time to think then I’m not gonna have a meeting in that time. I can move it, but I can’t delete that meeting, you know? So I need to make sure I have this much time, and again, it’s easier for me at where I am. It was very hard for me when I was first starting out in my career to do that.
[00:22:57] Jason Rosoff: What this is making me think of is, is like it, what is the checklist, the pre-flight checklist for a manager who’s feeling uncertain or maybe overwhelmed? Like what are the 2, 3, 5 things that, that, so I think we have, one of them is making sure that you are disciplined about your time. So it’s like, look at your calendar and make sure that you are blocking time for the things that are most important for you to do. Kim, you have the make a list of the things that you are not going to do equally important to the things that you are going to do. Are there any other sort of tips on that sort of checklist that managers might take advantage of?
[00:23:31] Andrew Palmer: I mean, I would make almost everything explicit so you know, what are the things that you want to get achieved in the job? And set yourself targets. So like, you know, a month, six months, a year out, so that you have something that is guiding your behavior over the longer term, as well as the short term. Be explicit about how you like to work with your teams. One of the interviews we did was with Claire Hughes Johnson, who writes this Manual of Claire. Basically, this is how I like to work. All of her direct reports get it. Everyone is aligned around the kind of, okay, this is how we get stuff done, and if I need to accelerate a process, this is how I go about it. So there’s not that kind of opacity and confusion about like how a decision’s made or how do I approach this person. So I would almost writing everything down that you think is important to the, to, to the job, and getting it done. Velocity of, of meetings. What is the pattern that you’re gonna set at one-to-ones, group meetings? What are you gonna do in those meetings? And making that explicit. That, that is the best way to know yourself and what matters to you, and then the best way to get your team to align around it.
[00:24:36] Kim Scott: And, of course, I think it’s important to ask everyone on your team for their operating instructions. You know, I may be a morning person, but Jason, well, I’m not, I’m an evening person, but Jason may be a morning person. And my evening is really late for Jason ’cause we’re on different coasts and so, so I’ve gotta figure out, you know, how to meet Jason so that I’m not meeting at a time with him that he’s at his worst and I’m at my best. ‘Cause that’s not gonna be
[00:25:06] Andrew Palmer: Jason at his worst is a, is a thought.
[00:25:09] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. This idea of making things explicit, I think one of the fears that, uh, uh, managers that I’ve helped develop as when I was a manager of managers is that to your, to the point of departure for this conversation is that managers are being thrust into these roles without a lot of guidance about what to do, without a lot of training about what to do, and mostly because they’re good at something else. And most people who are really good at something other than management, one of the things they hate is being overmanaged. Like too much structure.
[00:25:41] ‘Cause you’re at the, I think both could be true, but it is often the case that the people who are thrust into management are the people who are operating really well on their own, delivering amazing results for whatever it was that they were doing. Probably didn’t need a lot of management. And I know for like, this is true for, for, for me, it’s true for a lot of the, the leaders and managers that I’ve coached, they’re afraid of putting structure into place. They’re afraid of being really explicit because they feel like no one wants this, like why would I? You know what I’m saying? Who wants to read the Manual of Claire?
[00:26:10] It is, I think, what goes through a lot of people who are put into a management role’s head, and I think that it’s really counterintuitive, similar to like solicit feedback before you give it. It’s like be very explicit. Be very intentional and explicit. Talk with your team. Write down for your team, like how you intend to manage your time, how you intend to do these things. That structure is actually quite liberating, it’s the opposite, by making it explicit, you’re actually creating freedom around it. Uh, I think, I think that that’s a potentially helpful to a lot of people who feel right now, like I want to do things differently, but I don’t quite know where to start. I think start by writing it down is a really good and simple piece of advice.
[00:26:50] Kim Scott: Yeah, I love that. And asking your team to write theirs down and figuring out how to meet in the middle. Then that way you don’t feel arrogant like, here’s my operating instructions. Get in line people.
[00:27:00] Andrew Palmer: Totally right. There should be a conversation around it as well. I mean, some things are less flexible than others, so strategic goals, probably less flexible, but you know, if you wanna accelerate a decision, there should be a way to do that. But it’s almost that mental process of writing stuff down will clarify for everyone.
[00:27:16] Kim Scott: And interestingly, I think the same applies actually for strategic goals, as you were saying. One of the really enlightening things that happened to me in my career, I was, I was managing a pretty big team at Google. And one of my direct reports, Scott Scheffer, who’s now leading that team, came to me and he said, Kim, you are no longer in charge of writing our goals and neither am I. I’m pushing it down into the people who are actually doing the work are gonna write the goals, who are gonna have bottoms up goals. And this was very scary for me. I was resistant to this idea, but he had earned my trust, so I said, all right, let’s try it. And they came up with goals that were much more aggressive than I would’ve dared imposed upon them. They were more motivated by the goals because they had come up with them. And so we wound up getting a lot more done that way than if I had written down, here is what, you know, telling people what to do doesn’t work is a core theme of, I think, your podcast and ours.
[00:28:17] Andrew Palmer: That reminds me of a conversation we had with Supercell, which is a mobile games company in Finland. It makes games like Clash of Clans and Hay Day. It’s a very radically decentralized place. So the games teams basically control their own destiny in ways which are quite counterintuitive. So one of them, for example, has moved outta the main building, has its own office, and the CEO doesn’t even have a key. He can’t get in. So it’s very autonomous. And one thing that they can do is they can kill a game before it’s released. So you could have a team that’s worked on a game three years.
[00:28:48] Kim Scott: It’s like a Kanban system on an assembly line.
[00:28:52] Andrew Palmer: You’re right. They can work for years and then decide, actually this is not good enough. And choose not to release it. And you kind of think, well, that’s not gonna work, right? There are levels of transparency that show kind of like if you are spending a lot of company money relative to other games teams. So there are some sort of disciplining mechanisms there, but trusting the team to make the right decision has paid off for that company.
[00:29:14] Jason Rosoff: Creating a culture where the expectation is that, you know, you are your harshest critic, right? Like you have the power to stop, like I actually think that that’s really helpful. There’s so many people who are waiting, the Dead man walking syndrome that happens where it’s like a person is working on a project that is, you know, has become a death march. Where it’s like, it’s clearly going nowhere and everybody’s sort of looking at each other being like, is someone going to stop this? The idea of liberating people to actually say, no, it’s, it’s your responsibility to say it, it’s time to stop. That, that, that, that I think can be incredibly empowering for people.
[00:29:51] Andrew Palmer: Can I ask you guys a question? Is that allowed in this?
[00:29:54] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything’s allowed. It’s Radical Candor.
[00:29:58] Andrew Palmer: I know, right? Exactly. So I guess one question is like, as you assume more power as a result of having success in prior bits of your career, your propensity to reflect on yourself, to think about the ways in which you know you might be wrong, you might wanna delegate that, that sort of goes down. Power is corrupting. So what in your experience prevents people from sort of becoming less and less good, as they become more and more successful, at reflecting on themselves, at taking advice, and all of the things that we’ve been talking about?
[00:30:32] Kim Scott: Well, as a practical matter, very few things stop power from corrupting, unfortunately. But here, the, here are the things we, we recommend, but that, you know, that should happen in an ideal world, in an ideal company. But these things, unfortunately pretty rarely do happen. You know, I think the most important thing that leaders can do to prevent power from corrupting their organizations and themselves is put in place checks and balances. Like this is not a new idea. As Americans, we were taught about the importance of checks and balances from a young age, and I think in general right now in the world, checks and balances are creaking.
[00:31:12] In fact, there’s increasingly people, particularly in tech and Silicon Valley, where I am, who are saying, oh, forget it. The answer is to give me unchecked authority so that I can do whatever the hell I want, and then everything will be great, you know? And that is something that we couldn’t disagree with more vehemently. One of the revelations for me when I joined Google was the extent to which Google had systematically stripped away all of the usual sources of power that managers have. Dick Costello, when he was CEO of Twitter put this well, he said, you know, there’s a school of thought that managers should just hire the right people and then ignore them, and that doesn’t work at all.
[00:31:57] People join companies because they wanna learn from their managers. He said, that would be kind of like me telling my wife, you know, oh, honey, I don’t wanna micromanage you, so I’m not gonna show up for dinner with you and the kids tonight. Like that’s not gonna work out very, you’ve gotta spend time with people and you’ve gotta have this. Managers are important, but the key thing is to create management systems that put people on a level playing field. In the end, management is about a relationship that you have with your direct reports, and there are a few things that are more damaging to a relationship than a power imbalance.
[00:32:34] And so what happened at Google was that Joanna Brown, who led Business Operations at Google, built these systems that made sure that nobody had unilateral decision making authority over who got hired, how much they got paid, what their rating was, what their bonus was, who got promoted and who got fired. Like the usual sources of power that managers have were stripped away from them, and that created a much better working environment where power didn’t corrupt. There was one time when Larry Page wanted to hire someone, I felt totally free to write in the feedback, over my dead cold body should we hire this person. I knew I wasn’t gonna get in trouble for saying that, he wanted me, in fact, to disagree vehemently.
[00:33:21] There was another time when we were debating the AdWords front end and AdWords generated 99% of Google. So this is an important of Google’s revenues. Sergey wanted to do it one way, the team wanted to do it another way, and Sergey said, maybe you could just put a couple of engineers doing it my way. And the team said no. And then he banged his fist on the table and he said, if this were an ordinary company, you’d all be doing it my way. And he still didn’t get his way. And you could see in the end he was partly frustrated, like as any human being, we all want to get our way. And at the same time, at a meta level, he was proud and happy. It was like, I’ve built an organization that will push back on me. I found that inspiring. I loved that about working at Google.
[00:34:11] Jason Rosoff: I think the corrupting influence of power is hard to avoid. There’s another group of people who are aware that as they have become, you know, gained responsibility or sort of organizational authority, that they sort of become a person they don’t recognize and don’t like very much. And I talk to a lot of, like, as a coach, I talk to people who are in this position quite frequently, and, and part of it is I, I think reminding people that being a, a leader is in no one’s job description to be perfect or omniscient.
[00:34:49] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:34:50] Jason Rosoff: And that there’s liberation that is available to people who realize that the entire reason, like the entire purpose of leadership is to accomplish more collaboratively than you can individually. It’s not all on you. Like the feeling that you have, that it’s all on you to figure this out, that’s not true. By accepting that you are imperfect in this way and not omniscient, as the stoics say, the way out is through. Is to really do the job of leadership and lean on your team to get them to help you execute. The things that we fear, which is like giving credit to my team is somehow going to make me look weak, the reverse is true. By giving credit to your team, you look relaxed in your authority. You look confident in your authority.
[00:35:39] These perceptions that we have, that we have to project like strength through like our individual decision making, as opposed to strength through our collective power of collaboration, it, it’s just a false dichotomy. It’s a false choice that we’re, that people feel forced to make. And when you remind people that the whole reason that you’re doing this is because your team is more capable collectively than you are individually, it often frees people up to, to approach the the work in a different way. And laying the power down is actually the best tool that they have to stop being the person they don’t recognize and don’t like very much.
[00:36:13] Kim Scott: And at the same time, the more power you get, the harder it is to lay it down. I can imagine there’s a bunch of people saying, and where is Google on power today? You know, they have a, they have too much of it, frankly, as, as to all the big tech, tech platforms. So I don’t know, Andrew, what, what is your answer? How do we prevent power from corrupting people?
[00:36:35] Andrew Palmer: That’s really problematic. I mean, I like a lot of what you’ve been saying. I guess there’s a sort of combination of organizational and individual solutions there. So organizationally, right at the top of the organization, you want the board to be exercising power and all the way, all the way down, sort of putting people in check. There are headhunters who now explicitly say that they’re after the imperfect CEO, so that that language is changing a little bit. There is a recognition that the kind of, you know, the Superman and Superwoman idea of yesterday doesn’t, doesn’t quite work. I guess there are organizational techniques like skip level meetings where you can, you can basically, you know, go down a level, avoid a manager, see what’s really going on. We talked to Novo, Novo Nordisk, which is the company that makes Wegovy the anti-obesity drug and they have a process called facilitation where they send people round, it’s like full-time employees.
[00:37:27] They send them to divisions to make sure that the culture is working. So they interview managers, interview the employees within that division, and then report back up to the CEO and the senior leadership team. So they have kind of organizational processes to check that things are not going wrong within particular fiefdoms. And then I guess, I guess then there’s, at the individual level, the self-interest of like behaving badly doesn’t pay off in the end. I mean, for some people unfortunately it does, but there is interesting research on credit, for example, giving credit. You know, if you give credit on earnings calls, the research suggests you are more likely to be promoted, for example. So there is, there is some sort of interesting empirical evidence that suggests, you know, if you collaborate, it pays off for you.
[00:38:14] Kim Scott: No, I love, I love what you’re talking about, both in terms of the skip level meetings and in terms of the research that, that, that being a reasonable person actually gets you further than being an unreasonable jerk. And in fact, uh, at Radical Candor, we call those, explicitly, speak truth to power meetings, not skip level meetings, because that is what we’re trying to encourage people to do in, in those kinds of meetings. And that is pretty simple and pretty scalable. So for folks out there who are managers of managers, we, we really recommend, there’s a whole episode on Speak Truth to Power Meetings. I think those are, those are really important and, and I love that idea.
[00:38:55] Jason Rosoff: We’re coming up on the end of our, our time together. So Andrew, I wanted to give you another opportunity just to, to plug your, your show and your, your, your column. So where can people, what’s the best way for people to find your show?
[00:39:07] Andrew Palmer: So if you search for Boss Class on any streaming platform, you’ll find it. Or in the Economist’s podcast feed. It is, there are episodes in front of the paywall and eventually you’ll be so intrigued and hooked, you won’t be able to stop yourself subscribing. And that’s also how you find my column, which is every single week in the Economist.
[00:39:26] Jason Rosoff: Fantastic.
[00:39:27] Kim Scott: Thank you so much. Really enjoyed the conversation.
[00:39:29] Andrew Palmer: Thanks so much. Great to be here.
[00:39:32] Jason Rosoff: Thanks, Andrew. Bye Kim.
[00:39:34] Kim Scott: Take care.
[00:39:35] Amy Sandler: The Radical Candor Podcast is based on the book, Radical Candor: Be a Kick Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott. Episodes are written and produced by Brandi Neal, with script editing by me, Amy Sandler. The show features Radical Candor co-founders Kim Scott and Jason Rosoff, and is hosted by me still, Amy Sandler. Nick Carissimi is our audio engineer. The Radical Candor podcasting music was composed by Cliff Goldmacher. Follow us on LinkedIn, Radical Candor the company, and visit us at RadicalCandor.com.
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Episodes are written and produced by Brandi Neal with script editing by Amy Sandler. The show features Radical Candor co-founders Kim Scott and Jason Rosoff and is hosted by Amy Sandler. Nick Carissimi is our audio engineer.
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