YouSaid · the spoken record

Aneel Bhusri

lines on the record: 41
first: 2021-05-04
most recent: 2021-05-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Is there anything in particular about the founders or the entrepreneurs that give you that right prediction within the enterprise context for who is going to have the right customer focus? How do you look at the entrepreneurs?”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What would be some of those things that you would be looking for in new startup projects today from enterprise entrepreneurs?”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Executive producers are June Cohen and Darren Triff. Our producers are Chris MacLeod, Adam Skeuse, Jenny Cataldo, Dan Kedmy, and Ben Manila, our supervising producer is Jay Punjabi. Original music and sound design is by the Holiday Brothers. Mixing and mastering by Brian Pug. Special thanks to Chrichier, Bob Safian, Elisa Schreiber, David Sanford, Saeeda Sepieva, Christina Gonzalez, and Sarah Sandman. Visit Masterso.com to find the transcript for this episode and be sure to subscribe to our email newsletter. You're in the very rare set of people who are both spectacular operators and spectacular investors. These next questions are in this intersection. So many folks are familiar with consumer rocket ships like Google, Facebook, and others. What's different with enterprise rocket ships?”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The original DNA of the company will give way to successive generations of employees. Will continue to build your company on that solid genetic foundation, and they will help it adapt and evolve. That's the end of our investigation into this theory, but stick around after the credits. Aneil will share a few thoughts on the trends he sees as an investor in enterprise startups. I'm Reid Hoff Thank you for listening. Masters of Scale is a weightwater original. The show is recorded on site in California and produced at the studio Inside SY Partners in New York.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, how do you maintain a culture of innovation as you grow? Because it's one of the things that's, I think, hardest to do as you begin to get into thousands of employees.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Workday isn't just rewarding its employees here. Workday is rewarding its company's culture. It's saying, hey, you amazing people who uphold everything we stand for, keep doing what you're doing. This kind of acknowledgement is the nurture to the nature of the original group of workday employees. You have to continually reinforce that original ecosystem while also allowing it to evolve. Since Anil is one of the few scale leaders who can tell us exactly how to evolve culture as you grow from five employees to five hundred and five thousand and beyond, I ask them to paint as a picture of how that happens. How does workday maintain the culture he invested in so deeply early on?”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Culture is reinforced through more than just hiring. Aneels for all leadership style enables workday employees to do great work and to pass that ethos on to others in subsequent generations.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this is a page straight out of a Neil's playbook. Aneil had personally selected his first five hundred cultural co-founders with the intent of sending a message to future employees. He was confident that this first group would keep the original DNA of the culture alive themselves. How? Well, for starters, he told them to.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So once Danny finds that special group of people who are both great performers and great for his culture, he recognizes them as cultural co founders, and he sends that message.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Danny's team heads into every interview with those six cultural ideals in mind, alongside the technical skills of cooking or serving. It's not easy to find a perfect match”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As Danny, how exactly he hired for the cultural fit he wanted. How did you do that? Was it a personal touch or was it systems that you put in place or how did you go? These are our cultural characteristics of the people we should be promoting.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I love Ariana's idea about compassionate directness, but what I really want you to notice here is your formula like Anil, she has a specific method of mapping back from the culture she wants to the employee traits that support it to the questions she asks an interviews. Another company with a winning formula is Sheikh Shak. The breakout food chain grew out of a high end New York restaurant business known for paying extreme attention to hospitality. Before Shakeshak, the owner Danny Meyer found a Grammarcy Tavern and Union Square Cafe. He told me there's one question that customers ask him more than any other.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The unmistakable voice of Ariana Huffington, the CEO and founder of Thrive Global. Ariana now draws a direct line between the culture she wants and the cultural values she looks for when hiring.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you have to know the questions that will help you find them. And let me be clear, I didn't understand any of this at the beginning of my career. At my very first startup social net, I didn't pan enough attention to building a unified culture. This was because Socialet was the first organization I built from scratch, and I basically made every error you can make in building an organization from scratch. And I'm not the first entrepreneur to learn hiring lessons the hard way.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it's important to note that Anil's specific criteria won't be for everyone. In fact, he and I differ on some key points. He places a premium on consistency and loyalty, as measured through the years in a company, and that's valid. But when I hire, I think about it differently. I tend to think if you want an adaptive and creative culture as the top priority, you have to hire adaptive and creative people, and adaptive creative people aren't necessarily going to stay in one job for ten years. So longevity is great and important, but I prioritize explicit learning. To what extent has this person actively learned along the way? I always ask people what they would go back and tell their younger selves to do differently, more of x or less of y. This usually shows how consciously they were learning. So you have to know what you're looking for.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cultural fit is a slippery concept. Different companies have different ideals, and one company's perfect ten will be another's zero. Some companies look for free thinkers, others look for employees who will follow direction, some prize directness, and others want diplomacy. But whatever attributes matter to your company, it's up to you, the founder, to screen for them. As Anil describes his methods, you might have an aha moment about what you're looking for. But what I want you to pay attention to has less to do with the exact attributes and more to do with a formula. You have to map back from the kind of company you want to build to the qualities your employees should have to the questions you should ask candidates. Almost every breakout company will have a formula that matches culture to hiring. Here's how a Neil breaks it down.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anil knew it was on him as the co-founder to get each of the first hires right, and he knew clearly not just what he was selecting for, but how to screen for it. It's a rare talent that sits invisibly behind many of the most successful companies. I asked him to share his playbook.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to rapid response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the rapid response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from the Devilware's Prada. It takes about ten seconds to find just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode. I hope to see there.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a deceptively simple sentence with a lot of wisdom behind it. See, a company's culture doesn't just happen. So when a Neil casually says, we hire great employees, don't think for a minute he's casual about it. Because what he really means is we know that kinds of employees we want, the kinds of employees who will fit perfectly into our specific ethos and advance our specific mission. We know the specific attributes of those great employees and we hire them.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That value has helped make workday seventh on the list of best places to work by Fortune Magazine. But let me bring your attention back to something Anil just said.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And here's how Anil's winning approach to customer satisfaction ties into this theory. He believes happy customers begin with happy employees, and happy employees begin with the hiring process.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're one of the leaders and the employee comes first as a way of delivering magic and delight to the customers. What were the lessons from that put the employees first and how that shaped a transformative impact for the customers?”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anneel and David were laser focused on hiring employees who fit within the concept of how they wanted their business to feel friendly, open, like how Anne felt on his first day on the job back at Peoplesoft. It was a personality, a vibe, and it was also strategic. David and Anil made some important early decisions that put employees first, not as an end to itself, but as a means of serving their customers. In the enterprise space especially, Anil believes customer service is everything.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How many people should you consider your cultural co-founders? The exact number will vary based on your company and your industry. So Neil says five hundred. I say one hundred fifty is. If you have a company of twenty people, the answer is twenty. The point it's on you, the founder to get everyone right. When founders themselves sit down with prospective employees, they begin the connections with the company culture. Those exchanges of information from basic pleasantries to personal questions to value-based inquiries serve as the beginning of the dance between that employee and the company culture. These early indicators, the hunches, these dance moves, if you will, will serve as the culture that will endure and self-perpetuate.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The key isn't to put together a group of people who look alike or even act alike. The key is to put people together who believe in a shared purpose, and it's worth saying it outright. Smart founders make sure their team is diverse from the beginning. Katerina Fake, tech entrepreneur and co founder of Yes VC describes it this way.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But cultures also self perpetuate by association. When you hire a person, you also hire their network. When a new job opens, they'll refer their friends. When you need partnerships, they'll open doors, the powerful connection of that initial group of hires shouldn't be underestimated. Call it culture, call it mission. When it works, it's critical to the success of your business. I like what Michael Bush has to say about this. Michael is the CEO of Great Place to Work, and he can help break the”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Culture's self perpetuate by assimilation when each person who joins the company upholds the culture. This ensures that each person who joins in the future will absorb how people act and what they value.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What David and Neil understood with absolute clarity was the importance of getting those first hires right, because the early hires are actually cultural co founders. This early cohort will not just set the cultural norms, but also ensure that their self perpetuating and cultures self perpetuate in two ways by assimilation.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“attention to every hire all the way to five hundred. Aneil and David knew the most important hires were the first hires. In fact, you could say that Anil and David's first move was hiring each other when they famously co founded the company at a diner in Truckee, California.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fast forward to two thousand four Anil was now the vice chair at Peoplesoft when Oracle acquired the company after attempting a hostile takeover. David and Anil decided to start work day together. Their idea was to take advantage of the advances in distributed computing by managing human resources and accounting in the cloud. It was a radical new way of doing business at the time. I found myself musing about it with my producers when we put together this show. Anil was in a space where they had a head start because they knew exactly what to do, but none of the competitors were moving through the cloud. Everyone was like, no, no, no one will ever want to put their employee HR data off premises in the cloud. Part of their strategy was the build up momentum under the radar while they were moving. So Anil didn't have a competition driven clock. He could set his own timeline, and this was part of what allowed him to pay.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Dave saw something in a neil that resonated with him. He didn't know exactly which of Anil's skills he'd put to use, but he knew he wanted him as a person. And this emphasis on cultural fit, on the person and not just their skills, would stay with Anil. After he came back from those months off, he adopted Dave's people first attitude as his own.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And if you just gasp out loud at the idea of personally interviewing five hundred people as the founder, you're not alone. I did the same thing. Here's how I responded when my producers asked me about it. My reaction was Oh my God, that's a lot of energy and time, right? It tends to be that we're trying to make sure we have good people. And then, oh God, I can't, like only so many hours in the day. For founders, the demands are like every fire that's burning in the business. But for a Neil, setting the culture and setting an employee first culture was the most burning fire. His belief in setting the right tone dates back to his very first day on his very first job. He was going to work for David, his future co founder at Peoplesoft in the early nineteen nineties.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our guest on today's show is Anil Busri. Aneil's a partner of mine at Greylock. One of the things he's known for is investing in startups that focus on enterprise services. At the end of today's show, Anil and I will go deeper on that topic. But I wanted to talk to Anil about hiring because he took this theory farther than any other founder I know. Anil is the co founder and CEO of Workday, a company that provides backhand software systems like HR and financial management to many other companies to help them work better. David Duffield, they personally interviewed not just the first one hundred fifty but the first five hundred employees. That workday is known for today, even as they've grown to thousands of employees.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exceedingly hard to fix a company culture at scale. You might be able to revise it if you have a sea culture, you can revise it to a B, but a C culture will never become an A culture. The only way you get an A company culture is by creating it at the beginning and preserving it. Think of those early hires as your cultural conders, their skills and capacities will not only determine what your company can do, they'll also determine who your company can be. The genetics of your company, its culture, is set by those first employees. You, the founder, should be personally involved in meeting and choosing every hire.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because every one of those interviews will occupy valuable time, time that might otherwise be spent on important details like how you'll meet payroll or how you beat the other gizmo startup, and you'll feel crazier still when you stop to consider how many shortcuts you've taken in every other facet of your business. Got an ugly first build of your product? Fine. Mr. Meeting? Whatever. Reschedule. Regular listeners of this podcast know that I'm a huge fan of shortcuts. It's practically a guiding spirit of masters of scale. So why would I encourage founders to exercise extreme caution only when it comes to hiring? First, bad hires don't just stick around. They tend to be fruitful and multiply. Second.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is Masters of Scale. I'm Reid Hoffman, co founder of LinkedIn, partner at Greylock, and your host, and I believe that the first one hundred fifty hires will make or break your business. They are your cultural co founders, and it's up to you, the founder, to get everyone right. Means you, the founder of your amazing new company, let's call it world's best gizmos. Sit down with every qualified candidate and decide whether they're a good match for your company. Every candidate. From Chief Gizmo designer to the Gizmo Receptionist. And remember, you're not just interviewing 150 perfect candidates, you'll also have to interview the thousand plus finalists who are vying for those positions. If that sounds crazy, I can assure you by the time you sit face to face with candidate number 990 whatever, it will feel downright.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Joyce knew that the choices she made on her initial ingredients would lead directly to the quality of her final product, and if you're a founder, then you're also a master distiller, concocting the intoxicating mix of ingredients that will take you to scale. Instead of artisanal grains, you're choosing the people you work with, the quality, the personality, and the talents of your first hires will set the tone of your culture for years to come. That's why I believe that the first one hundred fifty hires will make or break your business. It's up to you, the founder, to get everyone right.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a simple list of ingredients, but the formula is complex. The end product comes from a cascade of chemical reactions, and to make a truly great bourbon, you have to pay intense attention to the initial ingredients, their quality, their quantity, and how they interact with each other, and then you have to wait.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Aside from its extraordinary name, bloody butcher corn is the perfect anchor for Joyce's bourbon, but it isn't the only grain in the mix. Joyce carefully considers how each ingredient will react with the others and contribute to the taste of the final product.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Joyce has uniquely qualified to talk about both the art and science of bourbon. She's a chemical engineer turned master distill Two years ago, Joyce and her family found a Jeba Creed Distillery in Shelbyville, Kentucky. Their bourbon making process starts with corn grown on their own land.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's Joyce Nethery, and she's describing the science behind something that I count as my biggest vice, though I'm careful not to over indulge.”
2021-05-04 · Masters of Scale · The elusive formula for great hiring, w/Workday's Aneel Bhusri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT