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Molly Graham

Episode #215

Founder, Glue Club

Glue Club (Formerly Facebook, Google, Quip, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative)

🚀Career & Leadership👥Team & Culture📈Growth & Metrics

📝Full Transcript

18,069 words
Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:00): You've worked with many very high performing founder CEOs. Zuck, Cheryl Sandberg. Larry and Sergei at Google. Brett Taylor. Molly Graham (00:00:07): Google, when I was there, felt like two PhD students paradise. Facebook felt like 19-year-old hacker's dorm room. 80% of the culture of a company is literally defined by the personality of the founder. Our job as operators or as leaders is to help articulate the culture that they're creating. Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:25): When a lot of people think Molly Graham, a lot of people think of giving away your Legos. Molly Graham (00:00:28): You have to grow as fast as your company is growing if you really want to take advantage, both learning to give away what you've gotten good at and move on to the next shiny pile of Legos. Lenny Rachitsky (00:00:39): Sarah Caldwell. She told me that the framework that helped her most in her career is something that you call the J-curve versus stairs. Molly Graham (00:00:46): So Chamath, when he pitched me on this job, actually drew me a picture on a whiteboard. He said, the way a lot of people do careers is a set of stairs. Just walk up the stairs and you'll get promoted every two years. But that is boring. The much more fun careers are like jumping off cliffs and you do fall, but then you climb out way beyond where the stairs could ever get you. Lenny Rachitsky (00:01:08): Today, my guest is Molly Graham. Molly was an early employee at Google, also at Facebook, where she worked closely with Zuck on building the Chan Zuckerberg initiative. She also worked with Brett Taylor on scaling Quip, which he sold to Salesforce. She's also worked with hundreds of companies and founders helping them grow into the leaders that they want to become. Today, she leads Glue Club, which is a community for leaders operating in changing, growing environments who want to develop themselves as quickly as their companies. Molly is maybe most known for her advice to give away your L...

💡 Key Takeaways

  • 1To scale with a company, you must constantly hire yourself out of your current job ('Give away your Legos').
  • 280% of team problems are structural (goals/roles), not personality-driven; fix structure before blaming people.
  • 3No company needs more than 3 goals; one goal must always be the tie-breaker in prioritization.
  • 4Strategy should hurt; if you aren't making painful trade-offs, you aren't prioritizing.
  • 5Don't grow headcount by more than 100% in a year; it creates chaos and inefficiency.
  • 6Treat escalation as a decision-making tool to unblock teams, not as 'tattling'.
  • 7Career growth is often a J-Curve (jumping off a cliff/struggling) rather than a linear set of stairs.

📚Methodologies (4)

Give Away Your Legos

by Molly Graham

🚀 Career & Leadership

In scaling companies, jobs are like piles of Legos. Once you build a tower (master a role), you must give it to someone else and move on to a bigger, messier pile. Holding onto your old role buries you; giving it away allows you to tackle bigger challenges (building cities instead of houses).

Core Principles

  • 1.Scale yourself: You must grow as fast as the company or you become obsolete.
  • 2.Embrace the new mess: Moving to a new, undefined problem is a promotion, not a demotion.
  • 3.Manage 'Bob': Externalize your ego/fear (named 'Bob') and wait 2 weeks before acting on negative emotions regarding change.

"If you really want to take advantage, both learning to give away what you've gotten good at and move on to the next shiny pile of Legos."

#legos#career#leadership
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The Waterline Model

by Molly Graham

👥 Team & Culture

Imagine a team as a boat. Problems below the waterline sink the boat. Leaders often dive deep (scuba) to fix 'people problems' first, but they should snorkel first. Start at the surface with structural issues (goals/roles) before addressing interpersonal dynamics.

Core Principles

  • 1.Snorkel before you scuba: Check structural alignment before analyzing personality conflicts.
  • 2.Clarify Goals: Does the team know what the destination is?
  • 3.Clarify Roles: Does everyone know who owns what part of the elephant?

"Your only goal as a manager, if you do nothing else, is clear roles and clear expectations."

#waterline#team#culture
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📈 Growth & Metrics

Goals are communication tools, not just lists. Effective goals must be simple, painful to select, and rigorously owned to actually drive business outcomes.

Core Principles

  • 1.Max 3 Company Goals: Focus is essential (e.g., Growth, Engagement, Revenue).
  • 2.One goal wins in a fight: Define the tie-breaker beforehand (e.g., Engagement > Growth).
  • 3.One goal, one owner: Shared ownership means no ownership.
  • +1 more...

"Strategy should hurt. If your goal setting process is not painful, then you're not prioritizing heavily enough."

#rules#high-impact#goals
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🚀 Career & Leadership

Most people view careers as stairs (linear promotions). However, high-growth careers are J-Curves: you jump off a cliff (take a risk), fall/struggle for 6-9 months (the bottom of the J), and then shoot up exponentially higher than the stairs would have taken you.

Core Principles

  • 1.Embrace the fall: Feeling stupid or unqualified for 6 months is part of the process.
  • 2.Optimize for learning: Choose roles that scare you and force you to learn new skills.
  • 3.Financial safety: Calculate your 'burn rate' runway to know if you can afford the risk of the jump.

"The much more fun careers are like jumping off cliffs and you do fall, but then you climb out way beyond where the stairs could ever get you."

#j-curve#stairs#career
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