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Second in Command: The Chief Behind the Chief with Cameron Herold
Ep. 490 - Lauren Antonoff - Cultivating a Thriving Culture for Sustainable Business Growth
00:49:55
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- [00:00]
Lauren Antonoff
I wrote down sort of the arguments for why we might take this course, but I also wrote down the arguments why we shouldn't, like, what are the objections, what are the counter arguments? And really sought for everybody to get all their ideas, you know, brought people into that process to get all the ideas and all the arguments on paper so that we could really process it. And it sort of came down to the strategy which had powered the deal in the first place, which was this notion of protecting, you know, keeping people pets and things safe. And so it came back to like, our goal is to grow the core brand and the strategy and help me understand why, how that's going to work, like, how is that going to accrue to this, you know, this suite that we're building and, you know, as people sort of try to explain how that was going to work.
- [00:47]
Cameron Herald
Welcome to the Second in Command podcast produced by the COO alliance and brought to you by its founder, Cameron Herald. In the second in command podcast, we talk to top COOs who share the insights, strategies and tactics that made them the chief behind the chief. And now here's your co host, former COO of a multi eight figure remote company and alumni member of the COO Alliance, Savannah Brewer.
- [01:17]
Savannah Brewer
Today's guest is Lauren Antonoff, Chief operating officer at Life360, a company helping families stay connected and protected. Lauren's career spans nearly three decades across tech giants like Microsoft and GoDaddy, where she held senior leadership roles focused on product innovation, customer value and scalable growth. In this conversation today, we dive into how Lauren builds trust when stepping into a new organization, how she keeps her team aligned through focused product decisions, and why a board should be a strategic partner, not a hurdle. And many more amazing topics if you are a CEO navigating change, driving product strategy or leading cross functional teams. This episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss. We are here live with Lauren Antonoff. Welcome to the show.
- [02:07]
Lauren Antonoff
Glad to be here. I'm excited to talk.
- [02:09]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, me too. I was just telling you before reading your bio on LinkedIn, I was super excited for this conversation because you have had quite the career. So it is such an honor to be having this conversation today and I would love to just kick it off. For anyone who has not read your bio yet, give us a little bit of your background and how you landed at Life360.
- [02:30]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, it's interesting because I certainly if you had asked me 20 years ago, you know, where will I end up? I may not have been able to predict it. I got started in technology sort of as an accident. And I landed at Microsoft through an acquisition. I said, they diagnosed me as a product manager, what Microsoft used to call a program manager. But I'm just somebody who likes to make things happen. And I see something in the world and I'm like, ah, could be better. And that's kind of propelled me through my career at Microsoft, which was largely focused on product. When I left, I moved to GoDaddy, and that's the first time I started to take more of a general management, sort of an operational role that was. It was product oriented, but it was product plus a broader set of responsibilities. And I was there during the pandemic, which was a super intense time as it was at many companies. We were in sort of growth mode during the pandemic. We got a boost from the pandemic. Um, and afterwards, I. I needed a break and I wanted to do something totally different. And I thought, you know, maybe healthcare or something like that. But I was on a vacation with my family and my family vacations with a dog. And so we had my. My pup and we were in Vegas and he escaped doggy daycare. It was like a crazy thing. And we ended up. We got all this advice about how to get your dog back and all this stuff, but part of it was to stay in the same place, which for us meant sleeping physically on the street outside of a doggy daycare in Vegas, you know, hoping he would come back. It's a happy ending. We did get him back after. After those two days. But then I went and, like, I reached. I researched pet tracking devices because he didn't have any kind of tracker on him or anything like that. And I made like an offhand comment to my husband. I was like, well, you know, this. These things seem okay, but I would never. They're just not practical for me. And I had a list of reasons. I'm like, I should go fix that. There's like, offhand. And then a month later, as I was like, starting to look for work, I got a call from a recruiter, and it was Life360. And Life360 owned Tile, and they owned a GPS tracking device. And I was like, wait, I could actually go fix this. You know, so that was like a little bit of serendipity. And, you know, one thing led to another, and here I am.
- [04:37]
Savannah Brewer
Wow, that's amazing. Yeah. When I looked at the website, I saw the tile pieces, and so I was familiar with the tile company, but not like 360. So do you know what is the story on how all of those companies kind of merged into one?
- [04:51]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, I mean, Chris started this company years ago. Actually. I. I just found out, actually, the company goes back longer than I thought. It goes back to when he was, like, in business school. It was like a case study or a pitch he had to do. And the idea originally sort of came around the time of Hurricane Katrina and, you know, getting families back together after a disaster. But it really evolved from there as he pivoted and sort of found product market pitted. Just the notion on keeping families safe and connected. That's at the core of what we do. We say our mission is to keep people close to the ones they love. And then the strategy has evolved around that being connecting and protecting people to the people, pets and things they love. And for him, it was very easy to look at Tile and this other acquisition he did around the same time, which is geobit, which is the thing that will become our pet tracker, and say he needed to go beyond the phone to reach into the real world and have the kind of products that would allow him to extend beyond that into more of your everyday life.
- [05:55]
Savannah Brewer
Okay, so cool. I remember those pitch competitions back in college.
- [06:01]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah.
- [06:01]
Savannah Brewer
And I remember wondering, do any of these actually go anywhere?
- [06:04]
Lauren Antonoff
So now, you know.
- [06:05]
Savannah Brewer
Now, you know, one of the first that I've heard that's actually gone. Yeah.
- [06:08]
Lauren Antonoff
I don't know if it was a pitch or a business case or whatever, but he's still in touch with the professor. We actually just did a little. He did a little chat, and he invited. I get to listen into him talking to his professor students. You know, 20 years later. It's pretty fun.
- [06:21]
Savannah Brewer
That's so cool. Oh, my gosh, I love that. Were you brought on as COO two years ago, or was it a different role?
- [06:28]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, I was brought on as CEO. But the funny thing about coo, and it must be interesting for you doing a podcast, I think COO means something different at every company. You know, it's one of those jobs that's. It's really whatever the CEO needs to complete them and help them operate the company. And. And so there had been a couple other CEOs at the company that had had different jobs previously, but what he wanted and what they had done was pretty different. I think it actually came out of the tile acquisition, where, you know, before the tile acquisition, it was a smaller company. He was sort of the. He was sort of all the things. He was the executive staff, and he certainly had people there helping him, but it was sort of A manageable size. People had grown up with him, he was doing great. And then he did an acquisition and acquisitions are just hard. They're just really hard. And now he had, you know, twice as many people and, you know, they came from really different backgrounds, they worked in different ways and it just became unwieldy. It was much harder to get alignment and momentum than it had been before. And I think that's when they started to think like, oh, I, I think I need somebody who's sort of operated at bigger scale before and has a common vision, but he sort of knows how to do it. With all these people coming from all these backgrounds, it sounds like he knew.
- [07:46]
Savannah Brewer
That he needed something different. And earlier when you were sharing about kind of how you got there, you were also wanting something different at that point. I've been in this interesting place where recently I've been thinking, man, I've been in my industry for like, geez, 15 year, 14, 15 years now. And I'm getting the bug to go just do something different in the different lane industry. I would love if you would share a little bit of details on, like, was there any doubt that came up going into something new and what was that journey, going into something different, like for you?
- [08:20]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, well, it's interesting because I tend to have something that I'm super clear on. Like when I started in the industry way back when, I was very clear that I was going to be a civil rights lawyer. Like, I was not imagining that I was going to go into tech, but I was working, you know, sort of on that path. I was at UC Berkeley, I got a computer for just writing papers and stuff. And then I just got sucked into that world. I just found I had one question after another and sort of curiosity got the best of me and you know, I was on a different path and I think this was similar where I was pretty clear that I wanted to do something different. But in my mind the different was healthcare. You know, like, I didn't think like, oh, I want to do a consumer mobile app. It just, it didn't occur to me. And I actually found healthcare was really hard to break into. And I have a great network, I'm really connected, I have a great experience in a lot of things, but I hadn't worked in healthcare. And the healthcare industry was surprisingly, or it surprised me. Maybe it's not surprising, but it was surprising to me that they're like, oh, well, we want people who have 15 years in healthcare. And I'm like, that seems silly. So I think it Wasn't that it was scary to me to make a change or do something different. I think technology people were always inventing the future. We should always be doing things that are really different. But it was surprising that it wasn't going to work the way I thought it was going to work. Or at least it wasn't surprising. It was surprising that specifically healthcare was so difficult to break into. But I think the key, as you consider your path, it's being open to the possibilities as they unfold, having a hypothesis, but knowing there's a decent chance it's wrong and that you're going to have to go a different direction. And I think that ability to be open to opportunities as they unfold is important in a lot of dimensions at work and outside of work. And I love that.
- [10:08]
Savannah Brewer
And it definitely sounds like you were in a place where you were open. Like you said, it was very serendipitous that lost your dog and you were like, man, we, there should be something for this. And then it just kind of fell into your lap, which is so perfect. What was the initial 90 days when you came in? What were your objectives? What did you do in that first 90 days? What was that like?
- [10:29]
Lauren Antonoff
I can't remember what we wrote down. I definitely. We wrote down a set of stuff, but a lot of it was like learning the organization, getting to know people. It was a huge. It was a new space, new people, new team, lots of new stuff. The interesting thing, regardless of what we wrote down, is that it didn't take more than a couple of weeks for me to sort of put my teeth into some stuff and start driving change. And it wasn't that I had planned to do it that way. The business operates at the pace that it operates. And one of the things that was happening as I joined the team was just about ready to do a launch on the tracking device, like the very thing that had drawn me in. And it was like a refresh using the same standalone brand, you know, which you know, and they had. It was a small business, and this is like, you know, the next upgrade on the small standalone business. I'm like, we bought this like two years ago. What do you mean we're doing standalone again? Like, that's not going to work.
- [11:22]
Savannah Brewer
When you say standalone, what, what does that mean?
- [11:25]
Lauren Antonoff
Not integrated on its own brand. So in my mind, it was releasing a good product, but a good product that any other company could release. It's not taking advantage of our size and scale. It's not taking advantage of our brand. And so it really would have to fight on its own. And none of those synergies that we imagined were there. Like, the only synergy is like, we're under the same umbrella. And I've been through a lot of acquisitions. Well, I've been through. I've been through a lot of. A lot of stuff. But I could sort of know that it would be hard for that, even with, you know, a newer version of the product in market, it'd be very hard for it to become materially relevant to our business. And then that would mean that if we stayed on that path, eventually we'd look at it and go, that's not a big enough business that we would kill it. But I came for that. So I don't want it to go down the path where eventually we have to kill it. So I took kind of a dramatic action, which was to say, like, we're not going to do a launch of it. We're going to actually pull all the marketing dollars off it. We're going to pull all the people off it, and we're going to put them on the original purpose, which is making that thing get reborn within the context of Life360 as a Life360 integrated experience as a Life360 offering. And that's just coming to fruition later this year. So. But, you know, it was definitely taking the resources off something that was working, but working in a way that was likely going to lead to me not having a pet tracker that was going to be in every home.
- [12:55]
Savannah Brewer
Right. Wow. And the initial kind of finding when you were like, oh, this is the direction that I think we should go. And that was early when you came in, like, right away?
- [13:05]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, it was a couple weeks in. It was. It was probably my. In my first month.
- [13:09]
Savannah Brewer
How did you get buy in from everybody else when you're new and no one knows you yet, like, yeah, how did you build the trust?
- [13:19]
Lauren Antonoff
Well, I sort of borrowed a little bit from Amazon style, a little bit where I wrote a doc and I wrote down sort of the arguments for why we might take this course, but I also wrote down the arguments why we shouldn't, like, what are the objections, what are the counter arguments? And really sought for everybody to get all their ideas, brought people into that process to get all the ideas and all the arguments on paper so that we could really process it. And it sort of came down to the strategy which had powered the deal in the first place, which was this notion of protecting, you know, keeping people pets and things safe. And so it came back to like, our goal is to grow the core brand and the strategy and help me understand why, how that's going to work. Like, how is that going to accrue to this, you know, this suite that we're building? And, you know, as people sort of try to explain how that was going to work, then they're like, well, maybe this other thing would be better.
- [14:10]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah.
- [14:11]
Lauren Antonoff
And so it took a couple weeks from there, I think, to get everyone on the same page. And I think it was a little bit of a scary for the people who worked on it because they're, you know, that's, you know, they. They thought of their value as being very much attached to the standalone thing. And now we're saying, well, we might not do it. And so we had to really build belief that we were actually going to do it in an integrated way. And it was actually going to be, you know, orders of magnitude bigger reach and more opportunity. But the team's cooking now.
- [14:39]
Savannah Brewer
That's amazing. Very cool. It sounds like, because you said that you almost went to school to be a lawyer.
- [14:45]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, that. Well, that's what I thought I was going to do. I studied rhetoric and poli science.
- [14:49]
Savannah Brewer
Okay, got it. Was that, like, you know, you're kind of able to bring in a little bit of that into your role, where you're like, yeah, you've got a case and you've got this side and this side. One of the things that I learned when I was in sales was about you can persuade people by using doubt. So instead of trying to, like, convince them of something, sometimes you just convince them in the opposite direction of asking questions that have them step back and go, oh, shoot, I actually don't know why we're doing this. And then you can fill in the gaps with your expertise and the route that you think that you should go.
- [15:25]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, this might be a little bit of a different way to say it, but for me to really bring someone along, it means that I have to be open to being wrong. Like, I have to be open to really hearing, well, maybe they are right. Like, let's let them. Let's invite them to explain that. Let's invite them to educate me. And in the process, if I'm right, then we'll uncover together, you know, the things that I'm trying to get across. But I might also uncover, like, no, there might be a better way.
- [15:54]
Savannah Brewer
And it does take some dropping of ego, especially when you're being brought in. And I'm sure kind of put on a Pedestal. In some ways, of all the experience that you have and you come in and people are like, okay, this person's coming. At least I've experienced. Sometimes there's this feeling of like, this person's coming in to save something that might be falling apart or people are frustrated with. So some people are really excited to have someone come in and then to be willing to, like you said, be wrong or shift direction is brave, but also what's best for the business.
- [16:26]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, it's funny that you talk about the pedestal, because I think some of that is true. Like, people are like, oh, you're supposed to come in and bring a lot of value, but there's also a lot of. At the same time, there's like, well, prove it. You know, like, there's. There's an equal amount of like, well, you don't know how it works here. You don't know how it works in this industry. So there's like this. You're kind of in both positions at the same time where you're. You're being held out a little and, you know, pushed down a little. I think that's. That's true in a lot of positions. You know, when somebody's appointed to a new job and you're like, you know, you get that, that tailwind, but you also have people going, I wonder if they can make it, you know, Right.
- [17:07]
Unknown
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- [18:04]
Savannah Brewer
Is there any strategy? I don't know if that's the right word, but strategies or methods or principles that you took with you into the transition that really allowed you to build deeper relationships with people to build that trust faster?
- [18:20]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, I don't know about specific strategies. I mean, I think One of it is just knowing that you gotta build it. Like, there's no magical thing, or at least, I don't know the magical thing. If you know it, somebody else knows it. I'd love to learn about it, but some of it is you just have to get wins together and there's no. There's kind of no shortcut. And so just knowing that it's not going to be easy at first and that you have to sort of persist through it being hard, you know, I think that's a lot of being successful in business, right? It's just staying in it. When you hit that first, you know that first, like, oh, the market's not going to accept that. What do we need to do differently? And instead of going like, oh, it failed, you say like, oh, here's a change, right? Here's what we learned, and you go at it again. And I think it's. Humans are kind of like that too. Just, you know, when you enter an org, it's not like everybody's going to love you and it's going to be easy. It's just being prepared. Like, they'll like me more when we start winning together.
- [19:16]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, I could totally see that. It sounds like you oversee quite a few functions. Like you said, every single role is different. I think. I read you're in charge of product marketing and ops. How do you balance execution and accountability across all of those very different areas?
- [19:39]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, it's funny, they're all different, but they're also all the same. Like. Like everybody's working towards the same. The same goals. And so I tend not to think about what's so different. I tend to think about where are we all going together and then what needs to happen to get people rowing in the same direction. And some of that is with just the. The clarity of why we're doing what we're doing, what are we doing and what's our plan? And then, you know, I really, what I want to be able to do is count on the leaders of those different functions to be a team that's all pulling in the same direction, and then they can hold their teams accountable. And my job is to make them, you know, have common purpose and common direction across those things when I say I want to. When I first came in, the leadership team was sort of at an earlier stage. And so a lot of what I had to do in my first, you know, not 90 days, but first year was fill out that leadership team and got to hire a CMO and a cto and, you know, we've built out from there, and that's really helped a lot.
- [20:40]
Savannah Brewer
I would be curious to hear, even though you're all rowing in the same direction, when you're hiring for these leadership positions in roles that maybe you don't have as much personal knowledge in, how do you make sure that someone is bringing, like, if. If you're like, hey, you're not hitting this metric or this goal that we set, and they've got their reasons why, how are you able to determine if that reason why is a good reason? If you don't personally know from personal experience, does that make sense?
- [21:12]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, it does. And I think in some ways, for instance, deciding to hire a cmo, I felt like I didn't have the expertise to keep the current team accountable and that I wanted someone to manage across the marketing functions who really could call BS on something that might be going on. And so a lot of it is being able to ask the right questions. Questions. Having people that I know. You know, I'm close with a CMO that I work with at GoDaddy, so I, you know, call that person for counsel sometimes. But a lot of it is really just that relationship with that leader about how do I come to understand what the outcomes are and what to expect? And, you know, the business is the business. It doesn't sort of matter what the reasons are that things aren't working. Either I believe that we're doing as well as we can, or I believe that that person is not doing what I need from them. And I can't necessarily know the whys behind it. I can know the outcomes. Did we hit the things that we're hitting? And do I still have the belief that this is the right person to lead the function? And you can't. You kind of can't know for sure. You just have to trust your own judgment, be clear on the outcomes that you're expecting, and use your judgment.
- [22:28]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah. Is there anything in the last couple years or maybe you had an intuition on something or a judgment call that you went with that was not the right move. And any. Any failures or learning lessons that you would like to share from that place?
- [22:45]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, well, I, I'm. I'm sure there are others because, you know, intuition is a really important part of the job. But intuition, it fails. Like, it doesn't. It doesn't work all the time. I know one of the hardest things that my CEO and I have gone through sort of while I've been in this role, and it wasn't a particular business failing because it didn't get that far. But since he was hired, one of the. Since I was hired, one of the main things that he, like, he had a goal for me, that he could go on sabbatical, right? That he would feel comfortable enough that he could take some time off. And so, you know, we finally got to that point, he took some time off. We kept in touch while he was gone, and it actually went really well. We were both, like, really, really happy with it. And then he came back and he was looking at some experiments that we were doing. And I sort of set it up so that the team's really transparent about their hypotheses and what they're doing. And so he was able to sort of see all the stuff in flight. And he looked at one of them and he noticed some stuff I didn't notice in what they were doing. And he was. And he, he was really concerned that the team was sort of doing something that wasn't in the best interest of our free members, that it was like taking away something that we had effectively promised them, sort of an implied promise and pulling back on customer value. And I didn't necessarily see it the same way, but when they had showed me, like, I looked at the. What the team had sort of proposed at face value and, you know, it sort of made sense to me. And it was. Had a lot of upside on the business. And I had kind of gone ahead and said to the team, yeah, go for it. And he saw it and he was like, you've lost your mind, basically. Like what? Like, you know, aren't we so aligned on what sort of believing in free members and the value we. We deliver to them. And yet here I was approving this thing. And it actually, it hurt the trust between us for a while. And it took us a bunch of time and work to say, like, why we think we're on the same page. Like, how could we have such a different response to that? It led to some good outcomes, including sort of writing an internal members bill of rights and a way to codify this and make it clear. But that was sort of like a moment where, you know, I was using reasonably good judgment, I thought, but didn't see something that he. That his experience with the product and business that he just spotted really quickly, I think in the end we would have caught it. But, you know, having got that far and having him get surprised by it, especially when he was coming back from having his hand off the wheel for a couple of months, was. That was a hard. It was a hard. It was Hard for both of us for a little while.
- [25:15]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, I could see that. But thank you for sharing in your vulnerability in that. I'm sure many people can relate in different ways. Was there any outcomes that came out of that in terms of your guys's communication or finding ways to make sure that you're on the same page aligned that you've implemented since then that have helped?
- [25:34]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, I mean, first we've sort of been clear on like, what are those tricky bits that we want to pre align on? And so. And the Bill of Rights, I think is an example of one of those things where we sort of set out, you know, these are principles that we should always use. And here are ones, here are cases that we would just want to talk about. They just need that extra level of scrutiny. So even talking about that, it's good. We've always spent a lot of time together. Even before I started, we were spending, you know, 20 hours a week when I wasn't working here in the. Presumably in the interview process, but really sort of getting to know each other, how each other thinks. And now we spend pretty much the better part of a day together every week. It's a lot of time, but it definitely helps avoid those surprises. So I would say more communication and then finding those, those problem points and deciding, you know, like, okay, that would need to be an explicit conversation.
- [26:27]
Savannah Brewer
Those are a little bit of touching on maybe the failures or the things that didn't go as planned. But what is a big success that you guys have had in the last year and why does it matter?
- [26:39]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, we've had a lot of successes. I just came back from our. We had a very good earnings this quarter and so the business as a whole is going really well. I think the exciting things for me, I'm like fundamentally a product person and our CEO is too. Like, we. We sort of share in. In loving the value we create for customers. So the things that I'm excited about in terms of what we're. We're sort of on the cusp of delivering. We're starting to create a vision of the product as it should be a couple years from now. But we're delivering things out the door that are in the direction of that. So we just released a massive update to our map experience. So like the core of the product, like the main thing that people see when they check their check on their families five times a day. So really good leaps in the product coming out. But then we also are just getting ready to fully integrate tile into life. 360 so late last year, we delivered the first feature in tile that requires life 360, and that's the ability to send an SOS to your circle, to the people in your family, and so you can press the Tile device and have that send a notice. And that's something that. It's not integration for integration's sake. It's like a very purposeful connection between the two. But now you can take a Tile and actually activate it in the Life 360 app. And soon that will become the main way that people use Tile instead of a standalone app. So that notion of having that fully integrated experience is becoming real. It's like the opposite of what I discovered when I came in and we were doing this sort of standalone tracker launch. Now those integrated experiences are going out the door, and it's been a tremendous amount of work. Then the team has had to do so much work. Everything from the technical platform work to the experiences to the marketing. And so watching that come together is. Is a proud moment.
- [28:33]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, that's really cool. I would love to know how you choose which customer problems are worth solving and putting energy into, because I'm sure there's a million different ways, million companies that I've been at where I am. I'm an ideas person. And one of the best things that the CEO I was working with said is, this is a great idea. And it's also a diversion of focus from the thing that's already working. So when there's so much opportunity, how have you guys been able to pick those areas that you're going to put the tremendous amount of work into that are really worth going that far, far with?
- [29:13]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, good question. And one of the most important questions, I think if you talk about what makes a successful COO or a successful company, I think that that focus is a clear part of that. We started with really getting focused on our strategy. Like, you have to know the why to know the what. You know, to make good choices, you have to know where you're going, what your objectives are, and what are those major drivers of the objective. So we started by doing a bunch of strategy work and laying the groundwork for just getting everyone on the same page about what we're trying to accomplish. And then we did a strategy planning exercise where it was like the opposite of being focused. It was like, let a thousand flowers bloom. Like, let's get all the ideas out on the table. Because if you don't get them all out on the table at some point in time, they. They sort of pop up. Oh, we forgot about this. This might be better. You know, if once a year you're like, let's get it all out. We're going to look at the whole field and then we're going to make choices and we're going to look to the strategy and we're going to say, you know, what do we think are the things that are going to really move the needle to get to the strategy? And you know, you make a small number of choices. We, in this last year we picked four things to invest in and we said those are the four things. That doesn't mean we won't do anything else, but it means that nothing else can compromise these four. Like these four have to get done and can push other things out of the way and nothing can push, push them out of the way. And so I think that that process of getting focused on the long term, where you're going, being open to a lot of ideas, infrequently, you know, for us it's once a year and then being disciplined about saying, you know, beyond that, you know, this is, these are the things that are the focus and next year we'll talk about it again.
- [30:47]
Savannah Brewer
Yes. Oh, that's so good. And it makes you think of, I don't know if you knew. Cameron has written a book called Viv Vision, but he's got YouTube videos. He speaks on stage about crafting vision and the importance of creating a three year vision because it's long enough that you can really dream big and have expansive thoughts, but it's small enough that it still feels doable. And then when you're really clear on that and you can communicate it to your team, people start almost weeding out their own, you know, when they have ideas, if they're clear on where you're going, the idea doesn't match. You're not going to have your team bringing you a bunch of stuff that's like, no, that's not where we're going. It's not where we're going. So I really appreciate the share on knowing where you're going and then making your decisions based off of that. One other thing that I would love to talk about is in terms of your team management, it sounds like you've led some pretty large teams through multiple transformations at the different companies that you've been at. What do you believe is the key to maintaining, outside of just knowing where you're going, maintaining alignment across different departments that are all working on different things but still needing to be cohesive?
- [31:57]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, I mean, I do think it comes to this clarity of purpose, you know, knowing why we're doing what we're doing and knowing what that long term vision is. You know, you can have very different teams working on very different things, but there's something that brings them all together. You know, when I was working on Office, you know, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, all those apps are very different apps. They obviously have very different features. But in any given release, there was always something that we shared. There was one version of Office where our biggest business problem was that everybody already had Office and liked it. And we had to figure out why would they buy another version. And so we painted a picture of what it would look like to have a version of Office where you could look at the old thing and go like, that's old and outdated. What did it mean to obsolete something that everybody had and what were going to be those features and the way of looking and all those ways that would help make that happen. And so, you know, even though there might be a particular, you know, Word feature or particular PowerPoint feature that was completely independent of that, we all had obligations to make that. Those sort of shared tenants, you know, those were things that gave birth to like the Office ribbon, you know, the way that the toolbar is, and they used to be skinny toolbars and now there's these big fat things, you know, that was sort of an example of one of those things that we all had to lean into to make the whole fit together. And just this notion that the whole is more important than any one part, I think that's maybe one of the sort of the key tenants is that, you know, it's not about delivering on your team's. Like your job as a leader is not delivering on your team's part. It's your job is to bring your team along in service of the thing that's bigger. And I think when the leaders are excited about the thing that's bigger than their team and know that their team is working in service of that, then that everybody wants to kind of work together and row the boat to accomplish this outsized outcome.
- [33:47]
Savannah Brewer
Oh, I love that you just said that the way you did. Because I've experienced in teams where departments are siloed and there's almost this like, like even you were saying when you're coming into a company, like you don't know how this works. Yeah, like there can even be that energy inside a company because people haven't stepped into each other's shoes or done different jobs. And it's like we're the ones doing all this over here and we're doing this and this is more valu than that. And so I think they're being this bigger overarching umbrella of we're all here for the same mission and it takes all of us rowing in the same direction to make it happen.
- [34:26]
Lauren Antonoff
It's still hard. Like, I still like as much as I see it all as, like one piece. I still hear from my teams that, you know, one team will find that they're bumping up against, you know, some boundary with another team. Like cross teamwork. This was true at mic. It's true in every company I've ever known. Like, cross teamwork is difficult and teams still struggle with those boundaries sometimes. And there's all sorts of sort of consistent nurturing that those relationships need and consistent sort of adjusting to help teams get. Get through those complexities. But having that common purpose and that greater vision helps.
- [34:59]
Savannah Brewer
What about when you're building up the pipelines for your teams for hiring or you're putting new people into leadership positions? What are the qualities that you're most looking for in those leadership positions that you're bringing in?
- [35:14]
Lauren Antonoff
You know, I definitely, it's. It's sort of this balance between having sort of their own sort of clarity of vision and believing that they, you know, that they can come in and provide that insight and direction, but also sort of balance with the humility of like, being willing to be part of the team and not needing to be the smartest one who has all the answers. And it's a funny balance because you want people who are independent thinkers. You know, you want somebody who's not just, especially at the most senior leadership. You can't have people who are waiting to be told what to do, but you also can't have people who are like, okay, I'm going to go do this. I don't care what the rest of you are doing. And so that I think it's that the balance and maybe the EQ to navigate the balance between providing leadership and direction, but also recognizing that they're part of a team and that they value being part of a team and that they're going to put energy into being part of a team.
- [36:07]
Unknown
If you want more leadership tips and systems from me, they're free at YouTube, forward slash, Cameron Herald. And that's H E R O L D.
- [36:19]
Savannah Brewer
What is the way? What are the ways that you support leadership under you? Do you have a weekly meeting? Cadence reporting systems? What is that relationship, person to person with on your. The people under your Leadership.
- [36:35]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah. Well, we do a bunch of things. My direct leadership team, we meet as a. And when I say my direct leadership team, like that's the CEO and I like all of the company leaders, it's not the people who report to me. So the company leaders, we get together once a week to stay in touch, to talk about whatever those sort of most important bubble up issues are. We also get together in person so that one is on zoom. But we get together in person about every six weeks. That's a practice that happened long before I got there. The company, we're a remote first company and Chris and our head of HR have done, Chris is our CEO and our head of HR have done a really great job sort of figuring out how to make a remote company a remote first company work. And part of that is spending a lot of time together. And so we get together every six weeks and we spend a couple of days going through whatever the things are that are hard and really developing sort of a shared view and tackling problems together in person. And then there's some other mechanisms that are broader that bring in more of the team. Like once a week we have an operations meeting that brings in sort of the next layer down and we're talking about how the business is performing, what are those things, how do we create awareness across teams? So each team is sort of sharing out what got done and what's coming up, those kind of things. And we can problem solve in the room. We always have that time together so we can problem solve together. I think one of the things I don't do or what I think I'm not interested in, like I, I sort of hate status, like status reports where people say, this is the long list. These are the ways that I'm busy. Like I, I don't, what I care about is what you did, what got done and how, what did we learn from it and how is it progressing or how did it, how did, how's it progressing the business? And then what do you, what do you focus on next? But what I'm not interested in is like how did you spend your time? Hour by hour? Like, I feel like that's, it doesn't matter, you know, what am I going to say? You're spending your time in the wrong way but you're getting the right outcomes or vice versa, you know. Oh, I think you're spending your time so well, too bad that the business is not working.
- [38:37]
Savannah Brewer
Key outcomes. I remember someone, actually I learned this through someone who learned it through Cameron's program, which I ended up later doing which he has a program called CO alliance where COs come and it's a year long program and there's calls and trainings. It was amazing for me. But before I was in it, I learned from this guy named Rohit who is the CEO of Grow Rev and I was telling him about some issues I was experiencing with my team and he's like, well, what are your numbers to know that they're on track? I'm like, well I've got this KPI and this KPI. He's like, you need one number. What's the one number for any. Even if it's like operational, where you don't think that there could be a number, like there's always something you can find that establishes the key outcome and then everything else you, you build under that. And so if you've got your sales team, their key number is cash collected. It may be cash collected over number of sales. Like that's what a lot of sales teams will do is they'll pick, well, we want 20 sales, but if you've got all those 20 sales only with deposits, that's not really the number one number that we want to look for. It's cash collected upfront. So finding that one number and then you build, you know, the meetings and the end of days or whatever. It sounds like kind of what you're saying is what are the key outcomes and getting the information in alignment with that.
- [39:56]
Lauren Antonoff
I can't imagine one number for an entire business. There are businesses, you know, Facebook had sort of some magic numbers like that. We have, I would say more than one number, but a small number of numbers, small number of KPIs and then we ladder down from those to clarify.
- [40:10]
Savannah Brewer
Not one number for the whole business, but per role. So like, yeah, if you're a salesperson, what's the one thing that you can kind of track for them? And I'm sure there are other roles that you need multiple numbers for. What are some other ways that you guys. It sounds like there's the investing into your team from a two days in person and you've got some of these meetings. Are there other ways that you invest in your team? Like you know, for the CEO alliance, we may have a CEO pay for their COO to be in the program. So they're learning and it's not something that the CEO is pouring into them day on day on something that they are not actually best at. What are the ways that you guys invest into the people on your team?
- [40:48]
Lauren Antonoff
I'd say we're early in that journey. We haven't done as much on internal development and those kind of programs. We're starting to do more training and more thinking about that. I think as we develop our leadership team, for example, AI is a big hot topic. And so we're working with our teams to figure out what does that mean for your function and what support do your teams need, both in terms of AI tools and things like that, but also just to be able to engage in a conversation about AI. So we're early in the training journey, but starting to think about what that.
- [41:20]
Savannah Brewer
Means from a culture standpoint, because I know this is. I was thinking about AI and just the different energy that can come up with people in team about what that means and resistance to change and, yeah, just being able to culturally have people be open and receptive. I'd be curious to hear a little bit about your guys's culture. Do you guys have core values? Sounds like the Bill of Rights. I'd be curious to hear more about that and how that maybe combines into that. What is your culture like?
- [41:53]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah. So the CEO especially, and working really closely with our head of hr, did a great job, I think, helping to define the culture, coming up with those values. And we only have four values. Sometimes teams have like seven values and you can't even name them off. But they've done a really good job sort of culling the list and really getting them focused on the things that matter. And they come up a lot in conversations. You know, they're not, you know, just things we talk about once a year at a company meeting or something like that. They live and play a very active role, I would say, as we go week to week. Right. So they've done a good job of coming up with those core values. And there was a part of the question, though, that you asked that fed into this, about. Oh, about rights.
- [42:32]
Savannah Brewer
Oh, yeah.
- [42:33]
Lauren Antonoff
And the Bill of Rights. Okay. So there's a lot of parts of this anyway. The core values and the culture, I think, has been well defined, although culture is how those things are practiced, rather than what you say necessarily. And so we do things like in our all hands meeting, sort of celebrating different core values. But we also think about it in terms. Let's use AI, for example, as we're thinking about how to put AI into play. How can we find ways to amplify those and find examples as people practice them where they're exhibiting our core values. So one of our core values is members before metrics. You know, the idea that we care about customer value ahead of just the moving the needles and some, you know, some report somewhere. And so thinking about, okay, so with that in mind, what does AI mean for our members? And how do we make sure that AI is actually helping us deliver more value and not just saving money, for example? And so I think there's ways that. That the values can come out and be expressed in any problems that you tackle. When something new like AI comes on the. On the field and it's. And it can be scary to people. And we've definitely seen certain functions get really excited and other functions get really nervous. I think we're trying to do the same thing we do all the time, which is getting people to look out and say, like, what does this mean for us? Like, where are we going? We're a small company. You know, we have, you know, 500ish people, but we have work that could be thousands of people. So for us, AI isn't a way to save money and make our workforce smaller. For us, it's a way to act like a company with 5,000 people and encouraging people to say, how can this be a force multiplier for you? And invoke their creativity at solving this. And we're on the journey there. I think some parts of the team are super excited and comfortable and jump in. Other parts are like, well, what are we allowed to do? What are we not allowed to do? And we're still in that process of making sure that people feel empowered. And we talk about agency a lot. The notion of people making things happen not because they were told to, but because they're in a job and this will help them deliver the outcomes, and they can sort of take that step to make things happen. And so we're nurturing that as we go.
- [44:46]
Savannah Brewer
Yeah, that's beautiful. Just the freedom to kind of take the reins and go explore and see how it works. And I love what you said about how can it not be about shrinking our team, but making just our team more effective. Because I know a team that I was recently working with talking about AI, especially with outsourced workers. I don't know how big your guys's outsourced team is, but I've worked with a couple recruiting companies specifically recruiting from the Philippines. Like, our whole team was the Philippines. And there's a lot of fear around, you know, getting replaced. And so I think, yeah, that switch. For anyone that's listening, if you're introducing AI, being able to bring it to your team as, hey, this is just to make you your role, even More indispensable because you're able to do the work of 50 people instead of one.
- [45:36]
Lauren Antonoff
Yeah, yeah, I think, you know, I mean, this would be my advice to people who are worried about getting replaced. Try to think about how you're going to help replace yourself. I mean, that's what. What software has to do, right? Like, if you're office and you're worried about office getting replaced, you have to think about, like, how do we replace that old version and come up with something that's indispensable? And I, you know, I think that's true with individuals and the jobs that you're in. If you're like, I wonder if technology could do my job. Be the one who figures out how that happens and that it. It opens the next set of doors. And the next set of doors generally are an order of magnitude more opportunity and they'll need more people, but they'll lead them doing something different.
- [46:14]
Savannah Brewer
Lean into it. On that note, I love to always ask kind of to. To wrap up what is something that you are leaning into or you're most excited about, both in business and personally, in the next, say, six months.
- [46:30]
Lauren Antonoff
Certainly in our business. I mean, I feel like a broken record just talking about AI, But AI is pretty transformative for everything in tech. So in the business, I think thinking about how AI can accelerate every part of our business, I would say that's. That's the company. 1. Personally, a thing that I've been leaning into is getting a lot closer with my board. You know, when I came to the company and it was one of the first priorities Chris, our CEO, had for me is, you know, get to know the board, spend more time with them. And in the beginning I felt like, oh, I'm too busy running the business to get to know the board. Like, the board is something for quarterly board meetings. You know, I really thought of it as, you know, I present to the board, you know, periodically. And I don't know why it's so important for me to get to know these people. It took me a while and a lot of insistence from Chris to sort of like, understand that the board is actually there to help us and they have a lot to offer and to be more open and really leveraging them. So now I'm meeting with them a lot more often. I'm getting a whole lot of value out of it that I didn't really know was possible. And so I guess I would say that's part of my personal development as a leader who's used to managing sort of down and sort of within the context of the management team to sort of open up to leverage the board more.
- [47:42]
Savannah Brewer
Cool. Is this your first time experiencing working with a board?
- [47:46]
Lauren Antonoff
The first time working with them in this way, you know, let's say at GoDaddy, you know, our board was, when I joined, it was a private equity board and you know, we would sort of show up on a quarterly basis and I felt like, and I don't know if this was true or not, but my sort of perception was like the board was a hurdle that I had to get things passed. Like it wasn't, you know, I didn't think of the board and maybe I may have missed out on opportunities. We had some amazing board members, but I didn't think of them as a resource to leverage and helping me do my job better. And so I think maybe that's a personal growth thing of just coming to understand that like. No, actually these are like amazing people and they're there to, to help and make things happen. So now that I'm, I'm using them in a much more constructive way, I'm getting a ton of value from it.
- [48:30]
Savannah Brewer
Amazing. Yeah. I'm sure for anyone who's listening that might be going into a new role with the board or is currently in a team where there's a board, maybe you sparked some inspiration. You'll have some deeper conversations and lean on.
- [48:43]
Lauren Antonoff
It's good, it's good. You just open yourself up. I think it was hard for me, you know, in part because I was used to that relationship where it was a hurdle and not an opportunity.
- [48:54]
Savannah Brewer
Oh, amazing opportunity now. Thank you so much for your time. This was incredible. If anyone wants to reach out or they have a question, is there anywhere that they could follow you or send you a message?
- [49:06]
Lauren Antonoff
Well, I'm probably most active on LinkedIn, but not that active, but LinkedIn is probably the best place.
- [49:11]
Savannah Brewer
Okay, awesome. Thank you so much for your time. This was amazing. Really appreciate it.
- [49:19]
Cameron Herald
You've been listening to Second in Command, brought to you by COO alliance founder, Cameron Herald. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to, like, share and subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and our other podcast streaming platforms. For more best practices from industry leading COOs, visit COOAlliance.com com.