YouSaid · the spoken record

Megan Smith

lines on the record: 36
first: 2019-12-13
most recent: 2019-12-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“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. Our executive producers are June Cohen and Darren Triff. Our producers are Chris MacLeod, Adam Skeuse, Jenny Cataldo, Jordan McLeod, Catherine Clark Gray, Halle Bondi, and Ben Manila. Our supervising producer is Jay Punjabi. Music and sound design by Ryan Holliday and Daniel Nissenbaum. Mixing and mastering by Brian Pugh. Special thanks to Chrisier, Alicia Schreiber, David Sanford, Saida Sapieva, Bob Safiet, Christina Gonzalez, and Sarah Sandman. Visit Masters of Scale. com to find the transcript for this episode and be sure to subscribe to our email newsletter.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When faced with the impossible, we often try too hard to solve it ourselves, siloed off from the wealth of resources around us. Instead, I believe we should find ways to embrace the philosophy of scout and scale. Whatever the challenge, when faced with the impossible, look around. Find who's already doing the work and see what you can do together. I'm Reid Hoffman. Thank you for listening.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ever since her days at Planet Out, Meghan's understood that the quality of your scouting mission is determined by the diversity of your search and the variety of answers you come back with Megan means to look for answers everywhere.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a multi city whirlwind event touching down in more than twenty five American cities. The tech jobs tour finds local job training programs to work with and scale. Only this time their aim is specifically to go deeper into parts of the country the tech sector had been passing by”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Megan left her post as chief technology officer in twenty seventeen and started scouting again. She co founded Shift seven, an organization that connects talent with opportunity. One of their flagship projects is the Tech Jobs Tour.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This speaks directly to our theory when faced with an impossible challenge, look for whose already solved it. They save the government millions by adapting and replicating programs. One of these set the stage for the next phase of her career. It started with an observation.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Saving taxpayers three hundred fifty million dollars while improving California's child welfare system is impressive, but the real achievement relates back to Megan's ethos of scout and scale. Make sure you're not reinventing the wheel.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Remembering what happened with the State Department and WordPress, they developed a faster, better and cheaper open source version of the software.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“One way they increased the government's TQ was to make sure more tech voices were included on project threads, or as President Obama had told her.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I tend to think it's less about breadth and more about selective scope. I absolutely agree that diversity of opinions is critical. We tend to make our worst mistakes when our scope of advisors is too narrow, too insular, too much like ourselves. But as anyone who's been on a long email thread with a lot of people CC knows, a thread that's too broad can turn to utter cacophony. In reality, everyone's threshold for a number of people seed is a little different. The important thing is to make sure that every single person CC'd has a good reason to be on the thread. Megan made sure that the wisdom of threads was using full effect at the federal government, a place that's not exactly known for its tech savvy, or what Megan calls it.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Megan and I actually part ways on this theory very slightly. Megan is strongly in favor of the breadth of opinions she mentioned.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, lesson learned when adopting outside innovations, you need to pay just as much attention to the implementation process as you do the search process itself. And before we move on, let's take a moment to break down how to do that.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The open source WordPress seemed a perfectly good scouted solution to modernize the State Department's web operations, but their lack of experience left them open to being taken advantage of, rather than a fast easy implementation of WordPress, the government's procurement process dragged on, and in the end they”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shifting the federal government off its beloved ponies to a more high-tech answer would be easier said than done. For example,”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Meghan knew that the administration did have the willingness to run a system upgrade on the federal government. Obama's chief of staff, Dennis McDonough, created a tech policy task force with Megan as chair. It was like the leap from the Pony Express to the Telegraph replayed.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, no problem. Just modernize the government. That's all. That may sound like a comically tall order, but Megan has some historical context.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This push to include tech voices at the table aligns with the way Meghan and her colleagues had used scout and scale at Google. When faced with a challenge, don't reinvent the wheel. Invite the people who've already done it on your team and let them lead the way. Megan became the US CTO in 2014. Her first challenge was a big one. Not impossible, perhaps, but one that would need her to scout far and wide for an answer.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But as Todd Park had started as a tech entrepreneur himself, he could speak to the challenges of this pivot. This wasn't about being another bureaucrat”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If the fact that there's a job called Chief Technology Officer hasn't been on your radar, you're not alone. It wasn't on Megan's either. The CTO position was created by the Obama administration in two thousand nine, and by the time Megan received that email in twenty fourteen, Todd Park was only the second person to have held the post.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Before the break, we heard how Megan helped turn Google into an environment for small entrepreneurial teams to flourish. What was the first call like for hey, we're considering possible CTO for the United States. Let's talk. How did that come about?”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Megan didn't know it, but at this time she was the one being scouted. After the break, we'll follow Megan to the federal government as CTO of the United States. 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 10 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.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Granting talent the autonomy to pursue their vision as relentlessly as they were flying solo. That was Google's secret to scaling out in a way that would last. Step one specify a goal Step two scout for who's already solving it Step three invite them in and help those inventors keep inventing Meghan stayed at Google for over ten years.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is a much more supportive model. This top-down growth model seems natural when you're part of the founding team. You think, I'm the first engineer, and so I'm going to be the head of engineering for the company's whole history. And all of the teams will report in under me. And that's challenging to the entrepreneurial spirit. People don't found startups with a dream of going to work for the massive machine Drew Hauston spoke of. Megan believed that for new partnerships to thrive, Google needed to do more than find great talent with groundbreaking ideas. They needed to let their new acquisitions continue to do their thing, while the company lends support. The approach worked. There's data that bears Megan's theory out.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This model of coming up under entrepreneurs and allowing them to do their own thing, it's natural for investors, but antithetical to how most large companies work. Megan has a great metaphor for the change in thinking that's required.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You may be nodding your head along with Drew, because this happens in Silicon Valley all the time. But Megan had a different approach. She wanted to help inventors keep inventing.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by the way, once you join, welcome to the machine. Well, it can happen that way. You might even remember on this very show we've seen teeny startups struggle in the claws of Tech Glaths. This is what Drew Hauston, of Dropbox said, about partnering with big companies.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The baking of the three tiered cake that became maps and earth is a perfect example of how you can scout for existing solutions and scale them. Google could have built the entire project in house from scratch. They could have spent time and money creating a product to compete with and eventually destroy keyhole and where to and zip dash. But instead, Google invited them to join the team and continue scaling their individual ideas. Now at this point of the story, you might be saying wait, did it really play out that way? Were the teams really invited in or was it more like an ultimatum? Join me or die.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I asked Megan to share her playbook around those early acquisitions. Some of those early stage deals led to massive new projects, right? Google Maps, Google Photo Sharing. What was the process by going from an early acquisition or a thought that we should lay in this area and buying a small product, a team for talent into the global scale that Google had?”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the bigger they grew, the more Megan could put to use the lesson of scouting outside your company to find who is innovating around you and then working together. As Planet Out scaled up, they acquired more and more media startups with similar missions and ultimately became the largest LGBTQ related media company in the world. Megan stayed on until two thousand one, and then in two thousand three, she joined Google. At that time, Google still mainly known as that search engine with the intriguingly blank front page, but Google had big plans to expand past search.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What Megan observed at Planet Out was a growth model built on cooperation. The internet giants of the time worked with Planet Out.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Plan it out, started as a content creator, running a host of websites aimed at the growing LGBTQ community, getting online for the first time. But as they grew, Planet Out found that they were being scouted by bigger platforms that wanted to reach this community too.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Love of science stuck with Megan, and she went on to earn two engineering degrees from MIT, but she also kept her love of the science fair, the idea of inviting not just some kids, but all kids to participate, and then celebrating both the invention and the inventor. Early in Megan's career, after working in Apple's Tokyo office, she joined a fabled startup called General Magic, a pioneer in early smartphones. Her next move would give her an early example of how growing enterprises scout and scale first at COO, then CEO of a new media company with a quintessentially nineties name, planet out.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“During the economic downturn of the late 1970s, Megan watched as potential talent fled western New York State, but she also saw how innovation at the government level could change people's lives.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Megan believes firmly that you can scout a solution to any problem, and you can see the seeds planted for this way back when Megan was in Buffalo, New York.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Spending billions to develop a product that already exists just to avoid working with an outside company. But both come down to the same thing. Ego. A little bit of ego is not a bad thing in a founder or a startup. If you didn't think you were the right person to solve a problem, you probably wouldn't have started a business. But when it comes to innovating at scale, one of the most fundamental lessons you will learn is you can't do it all yourself. There's an antidote to not invented here syndrome, one that Coders coined long ago. It's called PFE or proudly found elsewhere. I wanted to talk to Megan Smith about all of this because she spent her career helping organizations and now nations by championing innovations from all corners. She spent more than a decade at Google leading the acquisitions that define the company. Under President Obama, she served as chief technology officer of the United States. Her approach is so compelling I thought I'd scout the theory.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You might be thinking, read, I've listened every episode, and I already know what happens. As companies grow, they lose their pioneering spirit, or they get consumed with production and lose sight of customer needs. All of these are true, but we're here to talk about a different plague and a fearsome one at that. It's called Not Invented Here, Syndrome. Can be a killer You're a developer or came up in tech, you may already be well acquainted with not invented here. It means an extreme reluctance to adopt any solution that didn't come from in house. Could be a programmer stubbornly rewriting her own code. Instead of incorporating a single line of someone else's, or it could mean a multinational corporation.”
2019-12-13 · Masters of Scale · How to solve an impossible challenge, w/Megan Smith (US CTO, Google, shift7) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT