In this episode, Frank Slootman, CEO of Snowflake, does a deep dive into his new book "Amp it Up! Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity". He shares business insights that every leader needs to hear as they navigate employee experience, scaling, and data management.
In this episode, Frank Slootman, CEO of Snowflake, does a deep dive into his new book Amp it Up! Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity. He shares business insights that every leader needs to hear as they navigate employee experience, scaling, and data management.
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Leading for unprecedented growth means declaring war on mediocrity. Learn about the leadership approach of one of the tech world’s most accomplished executives in enterprise growth, Snowflake CEO, Frank Slootman, in his latest book, Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity. Buy your copy now at https://ampitupbook.com.
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How you approach data will define what’s possible for your organization. Data engineers, data scientists, application developers, and a host of other data professionals who depend on the Snowflake Data Cloud continue to thrive thanks to a decade of technology breakthroughs. But that journey is only the beginning.
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Learn more and register at www.snowflake.com/summit
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Steve Hamm: It's good talking to you, Frank. You know, it's, uh, I read the book a couple of weeks ago and it was, it was really refreshing because, uh, you have a certain style. That's very kind of like powerful and straightforward and common sense that I, I really appreciate so well done.
Frank Slootman: Thank you.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Now you have written several books now, various types, including two, since you became the CEO of.
So if like what's your goal in publishing books and this one in particular?
Frank Slootman: You know, I, uh, I don't consider myself, uh, to be an author a little technically, I guess I, uh, you know, I am, uh, obviously not my day job eater, but I wrote a book, uh, 10 years ago. Now that, uh, actually became, you know, more sought out as our, our, our, our public profile grew. Uh, and I was just surprised by how the content, uh, affected its intended audience.
The book was about our experience at data domain, which is a [00:01:00] company ran 2003, uh, till, uh, 2009. And then talk about, you know, the observations and experiences and what we did right. And what we did wrong. And, um, you know, people react, uh, you know, fellow travelers, you know, people, basically CEOs and entrepreneurs and founders, they relate differently to the content than somebody who is strictly, uh, you know, reading something and parsing it with an intellectual analytical lens.
But people that are living.
Steve Hamm: Um,
Frank Slootman: You know, they relate differently to the content. And I was almost taken aback by the reactions that people were sort of clutching in like a combat manual for entrepreneurs. And it just gave me a sense of responsibility that, you know, we need to share. You know, observations and ways of thinking, these are not lessons.
These are just, uh, you know, observations. And I sat in on ways of thinking about situations, um, and then people can do what, uh, what, what they wanted, but speaks to them. Um, you know, then, then great. And if it doesn't [00:02:00] find, um, but it's, uh, it definitely comes out of a, a sense of responsibility, uh, to share.
We get a ton of inbound requestsAnd we can't really accommodate that. Uh, uh, obviously having a day job, uh, CEO of snowflake. So the book is really a scalable way to, uh, to do that.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah. You know, I thought one of the interesting things about it was endless management books, you know, strategy, leadership, entrepreneurship, all this kind of stuff, but very few books about how to execute. And that's where I think this book really breaks new ground. You know, it's, it's float so clearly focused on that and add, so clearly, you know, based on experience, this is not some professors book.
This is a practitioner's book. So I thought that was good too. Um, now one thought I had about it is, you know, your title is amp it up and you know, I've been an observer of businesses [00:03:00] as a, as a, as a writer, reporter and author for. 30 or actually, maybe it's already, already 40 years. Something like that.
And the tech industry in particular seems to be pretty well amped and others, you know, during COVID, you know, there's a lot of laser focused on dealing with, uh, digital disruptions or COVID related problems. I don't see a lot of complacency. So do you think that capitalism really needs to be amped up?
Frank Slootman: You know, it's not just about energizing, uh, which is shorter. If, if you had a little explanation of amping up, it's just energizing, but it's taken that energy and directing it in certain ways that really, uh, you know, yields the result. That's, that's what the book is about. We, we get questions about a w w what's the magic here.
What's the secret sauce? Where are the silver bullets? And, you know, I'm just trying to describe here. What we do, how we do it. Do I think it's highly contrasted to other companies I [00:04:00] do. And, uh, that's, that's just based on my own anecdotal exposure, you know, through advisory relationships, Mort season, uh, and so on.
But yeah, just to energizing, obviously it doesn't get you anywhere. It's the same as peeing into the ocean. You never gonna raise a level. Uh, but if you know how to direct that energy, that becomes a whole different ball game, you know?
Steve Hamm: Now I wanted to go through each of the five steps that you described in amp it up and kind of take a look at each one individually. Uh, the first one, raise your standards and you know, for Steve jobs, the standard was that everything must be insanely. Great. So in your view, what does it mean to be mission-driven and what's your mission at snowflake?
Frank Slootman: Well, our mission at snowflake is to bring about the data cloud. even though we have big infrastructure clouds now, and we have huge application plots data is as fragmented and proliferate and siloed, uh, as a separate vendor.
And we're sort of recycling it now in the cloud as well. Uh, so we, we have a very, very clear mission. And what mission driven means is that you have a mission posture as an organization, uh, that your whole organization is, it has a very, very clear. Find and state that this pursuing literally on a, not just a day-to-day basis, but it sort of permeates your thinking and your attitude and your reactions to, to literally, you know, every situation, uh, that, that presents itself.
So mission posture is a huge thing because that's how you create focus. And that's how you channel that. Um, and that's sort of how you also fight off distraction with sort of the biggest problems in the world of, uh, of startups and ventures, you know,
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah. So number two is align your people. Now [00:06:00] you gave an example in the book about how, when you first came in, uh, you're dealing with, um, The Salesforce, but I think also other people, how you aligned snowflakes people around increasing consumption of it services rather than mere bookings. Talk about that and why, why it's so important to align people in ways.
Frank Slootman: Yeah, that was a very specific, uh, situation, uh, to snowflake, but the, the more generic case. So what happened there is that, you know, different departments and different leaders. Sure to make things up as they go along on their own, you know, without any consideration of what's going on in the rest of the company and, uh, you know, human nature, what it is, uh, you know, they don't, they don't naturally align.
It's like watching, five-year-olds playing soccer, you know, all for the field, nobody points position. Um, so it takes real effort. To align people and, uh, both inside organizations or across organizations to get the whole company, you know, [00:07:00] not just pulling on the same orbit, you know, pulling on the same war and in the same direction, the situation, uh, that you referenced at snowflake is we're a consumption company.
So in other words, we should be aligned on consumption, but we weren't. Y all we can get into all the reasons why, but the point was it wasn't and we needed to, uh, you know, restore that. And we did, uh, that's just one example. There were numerous others as well, you know?
Steve Hamm: Right. You mentioned distractions before and, and, and you know, the, uh, the third main rule you talk about for amp amp up is sharpen your focus. So how should people decide what to focus on and what are those main distractions that leaders and employees and companies get caught up?
Frank Slootman: Oh, there's distractions or things that, that just have a, you know, barely a relationship. You know what the mission, they may be things that sound good and look really deserved. Um, but the mission should dictate, you know, whether that's worth the [00:08:00] consideration or not. You know, I find that in the world of business, people have a terrible time, you know, prioritizing what they should be working up.
And as a result, you know, they have many priorities. And when you have many priorities, you actually have none. Uh, I often have conversations about my own people and it goes like, Hey, uh, if you could only do one thing for the rest of this year, One thing. What, what would that be and why? And by the way, how do you know
Steve Hamm: Yeah.
Frank Slootman: those are really hard conversations, right?
Because people can always give you three, three is easy. One is incredibly hard, then you're at incredible risk of being wrong. Right. Um, but that's, that's, that's the essence of focus by the way, you know what human beings do at this. We have a tendency to spread ourselves thin and a mile wide and an inch deep.
Pretty soon the energy goes out of the organization. We're just trying to get things over our desk. Good enough. Good enough. So it has an effect on everything. So prioritization is really something that you do over and over and over. Right. And I [00:09:00] take things off people's plate instead of putting things on their plates, you know?
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah. You know, as a journalist, I covered Microsoft in the nineties when, in their real heyday and bill and Steve actually kind of categorize, you know, they said, here are my three focuses for this year and, and they actually allotted the amount of time they would spend on each. And then they made sure that in fact, it wasn't like a creep that in fact they categorized, I mean the hours and minutes that they were spending on things.
I mean, obviously it was their admins who were doing this, but, uh, that's how focused they were. And I think, I actually believe that that was part of the reason that they were so successful for that decade. I mean, it was incredible.
Frank Slootman: Yeah. It's not just having focused, but having the right focus. And, uh, you, you, you cannot have the right focus and still eat until you start applying, uh, really a lens on things in terms of, okay. You know, what is it really that we have. What matters more than, uh, uh, done other things. So the [00:10:00] process of prioritization and really thinking hard about that is, is, is a key crunchy in, in teams and organizations.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah, no, your next rule is pick up the pace now, you know, in Silicon valley companies and people are famous for working these incredible long hours, but long hours actually may go contrary to pace. You know, I mean, if you're just kind of slogging it out, so, you know, how do you define the pace of things and how do you get your people to pick up the pace.
Frank Slootman: Although the lack of focus actually results in these long hours, because we've got a million things on our plate, number, swimming, and glue and, and all of that. So the pickup, the base focus really helps people pick up the pace, but picking up the pace is really the mental perception. Well, the timeframes, uh, you know, oftentimes we're in meetings and then we have follow up and people say, let's meet in two weeks.
And I'm like, well, what's wrong with tomorrow morning, right? W why are you saying two weeks? Do you need two weeks for this? Um, because [00:11:00] the trying to pick a timeframe that's comfortable, I'm not interested in, in comfort. I'm interested in purpose, right?So human beings are not naturally fast mover that requires leadership to drive tempo in the organization. Once you did that, I mean, at that point, the cadence starts to maintain itself. It was people start to expect it from each other. Um, and you compressing timeframes. It's something that I constantly do.
We're always challenging. Why can be done faster and especially with engineering? Well, you know, it's going to be in the middle of next year, middle of next year, man. We're going to, I'm getting old here on the job guys. Come on. Nope. So.
Steve Hamm: No. I, I recognize that. I mean, you know, I, working as a, as a reporter, we always had, we were always deadline focused. I mean, how quickly do we have to get things done? And then I worked for IBM. And even though people kind of think of it as big and slow, you know, end of day was typically when things were supposed to get done.
So that's what I'm really used to. I'm I'm now actually in, uh, on a [00:12:00] board in my town. The sluggish pace practice kills me. I just like what we're going to do that next month. So it's, it's, I think you're really, really spot on with this, you know, the, another of the major elements that you talk about in the.
Was actually, uh, not so much of an amping element, it was kind of related. You talk about transform your strategy, you know, leadership, isn't all about amping. You know, it's the role of the CEO to set strategy and to carefully consider all the angles. So tell us how you kind of. Have amping and thoughtful consideration of long-term, you know, uh, strategies and actions.
How do you kind of balance those and, and, and work that out.
Frank Slootman: Yeah, it is definitely true that the most of our waking hours are spent on, on execution oriented task. And you, you can't be, you know, tweaking the most. Um, all day long at the same time. You know, while everybody is having their, their head down, you know, you need [00:13:00] to have your head up. And, uh, it's not just a CEO.
It's really leadership teams, uh, leaders in the organization that are involved in strategy conversation. This role strategy is a force multiplier of execution. Uh, of course, and the better you are at execution. Uh, the more clear do your strategic challenges become because it's now apparent, you know, what's related to execution and what's really related to the strategic choices that you made.
But to just give you an example, um, you know, it's snowflake when I arrived there, um, you know, snowflake was a data warehouse built for the cloud and that data warehousing positioning was very beneficial to the company in the early days, because it was an understood segment of the market. There was a buying center data that budget there.
And the product profile itself really, really well in terms of benchmarking and using a proof of concepts to compare and contrast workloads running on snowflake versus running, you know, an on-premise environments or, or other cloud platforms. So it worked right, but it also [00:14:00] was a very confining strategy.
We kind of put ourselves in the box, very successful with. And I realized very, very quickly after I started that, you know, strategy wise, that was not good execution wise. It was right. Um, I guess, uh, competition would like nothing better to either boxes out or boxes in not the worst. I'm going to keep you in that box so he can grow bigger.
Um, so we, we started out to basically bust up our box if you will, and expand our, uh, our strategic footprint. In other words, how we thought about ourselves, how we presented ourselves to companies, you know, what, what is the scope of the workload spectrum that we're go on to be addressing here? So that customers could really think of a different way.
You know, I'm strictly, uh, you know, executing these traditional data warehousing workloads. So that led to the strategy of the data cloud, which we think is a super, super important strategy. So that's an example of that.
Steve Hamm: no, I think that was great. I really enjoyed one of your little comments in the book was in terms of strategy. You said, do it yourself. I thought that was really a nice.
Frank Slootman:, the point is of course, I mean, we should be the experts in our field. Right.
In other words, if. You know, how can somebody coming into, you know, the spreadsheets, you know, tell us what to do. Right. We have to be the expert. I expect our people really expert. I need to be the expert. So we hold ourselves to that standard. And, um, you know, that that's really, to the point that is, is there a role for I'm sure.
In larger companies, you know, and that's usually where they live anyways. Uh, you know, there is, um, because that's a whole different dynamic, but for companies like ours, come on, you know, we, we are the stewards of our destiny here, you know,
Steve Hamm: [00:16:00] Right, right. I got it. Hey, let's talk about culture for a minute. In the book you write about the gaps that can exist between an organization stated values and the actual culture of the place. So how can leaders spot gaps like that and how can they do.
Frank Slootman: Well, you know, if you, if you, if you're paying attention and by the way, that's, that's a bit. Because a lot of people are, don't have 10 out for four for the variances that, uh, you can observe between, you know, what we profess ourselves to be. And what we actually are, uh, you know, snowflake has beautifully articulated value statements.
You know, we talk about putting customers first integrity, always think big, be excellent. Get it done. And, uh, you know, that's like, that's like the modern version of virtue signaling, you know, w we'll we'll tell you how great we are. Uh, but the real culture was to do whatever you want, as long as you make your numbers.
And that's how people behave, because that was the real culture, as opposed to the, the professor or declared once. [00:17:00] You can't live like that, right? Because you know, you're, you're lying to yourself. And the only way to bring your, your real culture in compliance with what you aspire to be is you need to start prosecuting the gaps.
Uh, when I say prosecuting, you know, both to the negative, as well as to the positive, the negative have to be called out. They have to be dealt with for everybody to see. But the positive is also not to bring you see things that really exemplify your values. Let's recognize it. Let's reward. Right. And let everybody see it.
Uh, this is, this is what we, what we aspire to. Um, you know, organizations are no different than kits and pats. You know, we, they learn from consequences, they learn and they also learn from zero consequences.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's interesting. Transparency is so important. I mean, because I think in a lot of corporate culture for decades, you know, if there was somebody who was. Really behaving quite properly or, or really screwing up, [00:18:00] you know, that would kind of be handled quietly on the side, but now you actually have to make examples.
You have to fire people for these things and, and, and you have to make, you have to make sure that people know it was this. That was the problem. Uh, but that must be a little tricky. I mean, obviously you have. You know, you have privacy issues and personnel issues, but how do you kind of expose the behavior without just kind of making it too personal?
Frank Slootman: Well, I, uh, I talk about situations without mentioning names or so, in other words, I just anonymize it. You know, obviously people know, right. Because it's talking about, um, but obviously, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're not going to, you know, uh, basically, you know, it's not about, you know, demonizing, you know, individuals, right.
It's really about setting examples. And explain to people what behavior we want and what behavior, uh, you know, we don't want. And these are just examples that we use, you know, to, to [00:19:00] communicate that, that, to teach that right. It's not about the incident. It's about what does this mean?
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah. You have a mantra that's key to snowflakes culture. I don't think it's in the, kind of the, the official values list, but it, but it's it, maybe it should be, it's go direct. Explain what that is and how it works.
Frank Slootman: Yeah. Aside from a list of values, uh, you know, we also have a list of things that we can do every day. That's actually more, uh, more useful than values. Values are subject to interpretation that we talk about things we can do every day, going direct, uh, is all about look, you know, um, people come to me and they, they haven't been.
You know, and, uh, or they want something changed or they want to criticize something or somebody. And I'm like, why you telling me why don't you just go directly to the place, you know, uh, or that personal live or that function lives. Right. And people are [00:20:00] very comfortable, uh, operating vertically in that organization.
They go to their manager and have a conversation. Well, how about cross your organizational boundaries and go directly to the place? You know why that situation is his own thing can be influenced people don't do that naturally. Uh, they, they, they love to delegate up and down, but they don't want to go across and confront directly.
The situation with the people that are, that are in charge of that are responsible for that. So we emphasize that over and over again, because organizations need to operate laterally and not according to org charts, org charts, you know, it's just a way of, of, of organizing a chain of command, but the organized organizations really need to operate on influence.
Right. And, uh, I definitely, you go direct. I mean, if you have some. Say it, you know, and basically have to strengthen your convict convictions, have the logic of your argument. Um, you know, in, at snowflake, people are not impressed by your title and they aren't, they're impressed [00:21:00] by, you know, w w what case are you bringing to the conversation?
What data and rationale do you. That we should consider. Right. And that's how organizations should function. Then, by the way, I have a weekly meeting with my extended leadership team where w we connect the dots across all our functions. It has to happen at the top level that we all go direct. We'll come on each other out because we don't want.
What do you think is going to happen? You know, when you go down the line, right. Nobody is doing it. So we lead by example all day long. It's not about titles. People rarely come to me directly to adjudicate because they know go direct. Why are you coming to me?
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah. Now is help me understand this is go direct mainly at lateral side kind of thing. You know, you have an issue or you want to resolve something with somebody on your level, or do you actually have people, you know, you can go to somebody in another organization that you're dealing with. Who's two levels above you and talk to [00:22:00] them directly.
I mean, is that supposed to happen too? Or is it mainly just same level?
Frank Slootman: Don't take laterally. Literally
Steve Hamm: Yeah, right, right,
Frank Slootman: it needs, you can talk to anybody outside of your chain of command, whether there are 10 levels up or 10 levels down. I mean, these levels mean very little, but what matters is, you know, who is, who should we have that conversation with? Who can impact that situation? Right.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. You know, when I was at IBM, Uh, uh, Jim and the headquarters and it was in the headquarters. So if somebody is on the treadmill, even if they're like a vice president, senior vice president, you can actually approach them and they're trapped. So I, I tried that not a lot, but a couple of times, and it seemed to work pretty well.
I didn't get fired
Frank Slootman: We we always, because when we hire so many new people and literally a hundred people come in new and, uh, so we have to repeat ourselves because it's not a natural reflex that people have, but once they get it, they're like, I'm totally cool with it.
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Yeah. [00:23:00] Now you speak often about the importance of companies being data-driven and mobilizing their data. So here we are here, we're talking about amping it up. How do you use data to help amp up snowflake?
Frank Slootman: Well, data's really changing in terms of, uh, the role of place in, uh, in enterprises and institutions. And a lot of it is under the influence of, uh, organizations becoming, you know, what we call direct to consumer, you know, they're, they, don't no longer have intermediaries. They're completely, uh, digital. And, uh, no one that even in retail and banking and people have traditionally operated through stores and branches, uh, other interaction methods, other than.
Um, they become incredibly dependent on data because that's how you deliver, uh, the service is how you sell the service. It's how you manage to experience everything or your, your enterprise or your institution is at that point. It is a digital, uh, experience. So [00:24:00] data becomes sorta the beating heart, if you will, of your enterprise.
And it has many manifestations, it has its understanding. Data relationships, what causes, what, once you can describe data relationships, you can also predict him when you can predict them. You can take action, you know, and need to increase the price of something or the policy on something or the approach to something.
But data really becomes the way you start parsing reality, as opposed to just anecdotal observation, which is what humans historically, uh, you know, have done. And the other thing that's super important is, I mean, we've historically used data to inform people, right? We would run a very complicated, highly scaled batch analytics processes.
You know, we have people come in in the morning and we populate our dashboards and negative view of what happened the previous day. But it's just eyeballs, you know, what can we adapt boards? And then, you know, you hope like hell that somebody is going to derive something useful for all of them. Maybe even do something with the changes where we're going to work.
Data-driven operation is there is there's we no longer have [00:25:00] human, uh, you know, intermediation anymore. Right? It's all lights out, Lightspeed, it's programmatic. Um, and it's, it's, it's near real time. And, uh, God, that is, that is that, that is really what digital transformation means.
Steve Hamm: I
Frank Slootman: And it's such a huge change.
Steve Hamm: yeah. I see how that does amp it up because. In some cases, in many cases, humans can clog up the machine, essentially if it, if it's a routine matter. So if you, if you, if you do it very directly, another way, another kind of directness, you can just be much more efficient and
Frank Slootman: Yeah, we had a conversation, uh, you know, a couple of years ago, uh, with the CEO of Geico and, you know, we were getting in there and he didn't want to talk about architecture and the infrastructure. He is completely bored by, um, by that, because he's the CEO he's interested in the business and he's like, walk, you know, um, What if I had a disproportionately high bodily injury claims in one state and not the surrounding states, how would I then explain that?
You know, [00:26:00] uh, w we were like, put on our heels because
Steve Hamm: Right.
Frank Slootman: You know, uh, but the point was luck, you know, once I can't explain it, I can't predict it. And I can change my, in my policy premiums or my policy. So now, now I'm running my business with data, right. And it's driving it, uh, uh, directly. And, you know, obviously insurance is of course a data business, you know, in, in, in, in, in pure form and always has been right.
So they, they relate really well to that, that way of thinking, you know,
Steve Hamm: I think that's right. Now. We're coming to the end here. I wanted to mention something. I, you know, a few months ago you guys pulled up stakes, put your headquarters, you know, you pulled out of Silicon Valley but the headquarters in Bozeman, Montana, and, you know, kind of a head-scratcher for some people, but you had, you had your reasons.
Is, are there any leadership lessons in that move either that you, that made, you know, it took you to make the [00:27:00] move or that you've learned from making.
Frank Slootman: No, I, um, we really have no intention of so-called moving the headquarters, uh, to Bozeman where we wanted to do is really eliminated institution of headquarters. Altogether. Uh, yeah. And then, and there, and the reason is, I mean, during the pandemic, we didn't have a headquarters. We never got into our, our, our offices for.
For well to this day, almost two years in. Right. Um, so in other words, you know, the headquarters is between your ears. It's when we, when we connect that's headquarters for the duration of, of, of that connection, right? The idea that there's one physical place where all the smart people are to make all the decisions we found absurd.
I mean, you know, 40% of our engineering operations are not in California. They're actually up in Bellevue, Washington during their, in Germany, in Berlin. They're in Poland. Um, I really didn't want to have this, this, this, this, this situation in the company where, you know, uh, all the important things happened in, in San Mateo, California, and the rest of you [00:28:00] while you're just hopefully to the beneficiary of that.
Right. And even in the military, they don't use these, these concepts anymore because they have, you know, command post, they have logistical headquartered. In other words, they're, they're, they're, they're, purpose-based right where, you know, where you concentrate resources. And that's really what I meant. Of course, uh, you know, I didn't feel that, uh, you know, the state of California should have overriding influence, you know, on us as a global company.
I mean, state of California is just one state and it's not even, uh, you all the state where we do most of our business obviously is not, that's also not where most of our employees are. So that was the region. Now, the reason that that Bozeman Montana came along is because the sec said, yeah, not so fast.
You know, you do need a snail mail address because if we want to, if we want to send you mail, we need to have a place to send it. And so, and then they said, well, it has to also be a place where. Uh, your CEO and your CFO are, are maintaining residency. Well, by happenstance, [00:29:00] that happened to be in the state of Montana, pure coincidence.
Okay. Um, so did the people really think, you know, I'm going to run the company from Bozeman, Montana. I'm going to be all over the place. I'm going to be where I need to be. Right. This is a global operation I'm in Europe, you know, every six to seven weeks I'm I'm on the east coast. Um, I'm, I'm not, uh, you know, fixed location.
Uh, that is such an way of thinking, you know?
Steve Hamm: Yeah. I love the way how this process has really been so symbolically important for, to shape the psychology of the employee. To really value them, signal the value to them, but also give them kind of license to be important, you know, and you know, important decisions and ideas can come from anywhere.
So I think that's really, it's really a cool thing.
Frank Slootman: That's exactly right. And you know, really we're, we're all equal. It's not like, oh, your headquarters, you know, you, you must be really important. Um, that that's [00:30:00] not the culture that we're trying to create here, you know?
Steve Hamm: Yeah. Well good. It, you know, it's been great talking to you and, uh, you know, we, we used to spend a lot of time together a couple of years ago now, less so, but it's always good to check in. And, you know, as I said, right at the top, you know, I thought the book was really. Powerful, you know, it's fun. It's full of useful information, all that kind of stuff.
You know, some of the, some of your, the way you're writing this kind of bold style is at first, some of the ideas say, well, that seems kind of simplistic, but then you give these beautiful concrete examples of the principles in practice. And I think it really comes through very quickly. So, you know, it really is a premiere.
On execution and one that I think even seasoned leaders, not just beginners can benefit from. So congratulations on the book.
Frank Slootman: Ah, thanks, Steve. I really appreciate the comments. Thank you.