NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang: “I really discourage 1-on-1s”

Jensen famously has 60 direct reports. When Stripe founder Patrick Collison points out that this isn’t conventionally considered best practice, Jensen shares his reasoning:

“I don’t do 1-on-1s, and almost everything I say, I say to everybody all the time. I don’t really believe there’s any information that I operate on that only one or two people should hear about… I believe that when you give everybody equal access to information, that empowers people. And so that’s number one… Number two, if the CEO’s direct staff is 60 people, the number of layers you’ve removed in a company is probably something like seven.”

Patrick offers to steal man the other side of the argument:

“1-on-1s are where you provide coaching, where you maybe talk through personal goals and career advancement, where maybe you give feedback on something that you see somebody systematically not doing so well… Do you not do those things or do you do them in a different way?”

Jensen responds:

“I give you feedback right there in front of everybody. In fact, this is a really big deal. First of all, feedback is learning. For what reason are you the only person who should learn this?… We should all learn from that opportunity… Half the time I’m not right, but for me to reason through it in front of everybody helps everybody learn how to reason through it. The problem I have with 1-on-1s and taking feedback aside is you deprive a whole bunch of people that same learning. Learning from other people’s mistakes is the best way to learn.”

Full video: Stripe “A conversation with NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang“ (May 2024)

P.S. We’ve put together a YouTube playlist with every Jensen Huang insight we’ve ever shared. You can watch it here: "Best startup advice from Jensen Huang"