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- Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman explains why your company priorities are wrong
Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman explains why your company priorities are wrong
“I found out early on that if you can whittle things down to just one thing, you become unstoppable. Unfortunately, people resist whittling things down to one thing because it’s really hard to decide what that one thing is.”
The former Snowflake and ServiceNow CEO continues:
“People have a very easy time telling you what their top 3-5 things are because hopefully the right things are in there somewhere… I can’t tell you how many board meetings I’ve been in where the CEO puts a PowerPoint up and it’s one bullet after another listing all of the things that are their priorities. You just know that they’re going to be a mile wide and an inch deep, swimming in glue, moving like molasses. The energy is leaving my body already just watching a long list of priorities… You’ve basically devalued what you should be doing because you’re time-sharing now with all of these other things.”
Mr. Slootman urges founders to think really hard about the one thing that matters most to your business and focusing entirely on that.
If you can’t decide, just pick one:
“I like to do things in sequence. Even if you’re not sure, do it anyways. Because in the process of doing, you’re going to find out whether you’re right, wrong, or somewhere in between, and you can adjust.”
When you prioritize just one thing, things move much faster:
“Things are going to go much quicker because have a narrower plan of attack. It’s energizing. The pace picks up.”