Matt MacInnis (00:00:00): It is really important to me that we feel that we've deliberately understaffed every project at the company. If you overstaff, you get politics, you get people working on things that are further down the priority list than necessary. That is poison. It's wasteful. It slows you down. It creates cruft. Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:15): You've been a long time COO at Rippling. Recently, you moved into CPO, Chief Product Officer at Rippling. Something you talk a lot about is that extraordinary results require extraordinary efforts. Matt MacInnis (00:00:26): If you want to be in the 99th percentile in terms of outcomes, it's going to be really difficult. You got to sort of remind people that if they ever find themselves in the comfort zone at work, they are definitely making a mistake. It's supposed to be really fricking exhausting. Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:40): You're a big fan of escalating issues. Matt MacInnis (00:00:41): Fundamentally, the most selfish thing you can do is withhold feedback from someone. When you think a thought that would help someone improve and you avoid giving it to them because it would make you uncomfortable. Well, you're optimizing for your own comfort, and it's fundamentally selfish. So many people have teams that are not functioning incredibly well. Teams will always optimize for local comfort over company outcomes. The purest form of ambition and most intense source of energy in the business is the founder CEO. Every next concentric circle of management beyond the founder CEO has the potential to be an order of magnitude drop off in intensity. That is fucking dangerous. (00:01:17): As an executive, as a leader, your job is to preserve that intensity at its highest possible level. You've had a couple really interesting experiences with your own startup. We talk in Silicon Valley about never quit, but that is complete absolute venture capital. Lenny Rachitsky (00:01:33): Today, my guest is Matt MacInnis, Chief Product ...