Adam Bryant, New York Times; Corner Office, Interview with Jen-Hsun Huang, the president and chief executive of Nvidia, a maker of graphics chips, "I’m Prepared for Adversity. I Waited Tables":
"Q. What’s it like to work at Nvidia?
A. Let me tell you about the two elements that are our core values and that I most treasure and that I spent a lot of time nurturing. One is the tolerance to take risks and the ability to learn from failure. This ability to celebrate failure, if you will, needs to be an important part of any company that’s in a rapidly changing world. And the second core value is intellectual honesty — the ability to call a spade a spade, to as quickly as possible recognize that we’ve made a mistake, that we’ve gone the wrong way, and that we learn from it and quickly adjust.
These came about because, when Nvidia was founded, we were the first company of our kind, but we rapidly almost went out of business. It turned out the technology didn’t work at all. We raised all this money. We hired 100 people. We built the technology and it just didn’t work. I learned a lot about leadership during that time.
Q. What did you learn?
A. I learned that it was O.K. for C.E.O.’s to say that the strategy didn’t work, that the technology didn’t work, that the product didn’t work, but we’re still going to be great and let me tell you why. I think that’s what’s thrilling about leadership — when you’re holding onto literally the worst possible hand on the planet and you know you’re still going to win. How are you still going to win? Because that’s when the character of the company really comes out.
It was during the time that we really cultivated and developed what I consider to be our core values today. I don’t think you can create culture and develop core values during great times. I think it’s when the company faces adversity of extraordinary proportions, when there’s no reason for the company to survive, when you’re looking at incredible odds — that’s when culture is developed, character is developed.
I think culture is a big word for corporate character. It’s the personality of the company, and now the personality of our company simply says this: If we think something is really worthwhile and we have a great idea, and it’s never been done before but we believe in it, it’s O.K. to take a chance. It’s O.K. to try, and if it doesn’t work, learn from it, adjust and keep failing forward. And if you just fail forward all the time — learn, fail, learn, fail, learn, fail — but every single time you’re making it better and better, before you know it you’re a great company.
Mistakes and failures are kind of the negative space around success, right? And if we could take enough shots at it, we’re going to figure out what success is going to look like.
Q. Talk more about the intellectual honesty part of it.
A. Without intellectual honesty, you can’t have a culture that’s willing to tolerate failure because people cling too much to an idea that likely will be bad or isn’t working and they feel like their reputation is tied up in it. They can’t admit failure. You end up putting too much into a bad idea and then you risk the entire enterprise.
Q. What were the most important leadership lessons over the course of your life?
A. Let me start with what I believe to be good leadership traits that resonate for me. I appreciate people who are authentic. They are just who they are. They don’t dress like a C.E.O. because they think that’s what C.E.O.’s dress like. They don’t talk like C.E.O.’s because that’s the way they think C.E.O.’s talk. They don’t conduct their meetings and expect people to treat them like C.E.O.’s because that’s the way they think C.E.O.’s are supposed to be treated. They are just who they are.
And I like people who are able to call a spade a spade. If something is right, something’s right. If something’s wrong, something’s wrong. And if something could be better, it could be better. I don’t want to be sold to all the time. And I also believe that you manage with your skills but you have to lead with your heart.
You can’t cause other people to fall in love with the work that you’re doing if you don’t love it yourself. And so I think you can manage for better performance but you can’t manage for greatness. You can’t manage your way into greatness. You’ve got to lead your way into greatness, and so you have to lead with your heart.
Q. What about when you were growing up?
A. When I was in high school, nothing gave me greater joy than computer games. It was part of how I grew up. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the video game era, but I’ve never beaten myself up about mistakes. When I try something and it doesn’t turn out, I go back and try it again.
Most of the time when you’re playing a game, you’re losing. You lose and lose and lose until you beat it. That’s kind of how the game works, right? It’s feedback. And then eventually you beat it.
As it turns out, the most fun parts of a game are when you’re losing. When you finally beat it there’s a moment of euphoria but then it’s over. Maybe it’s because I grew up in that generation, I have the ability to take chances, which leads to the ability to innovate and try new things.
Those are important life lessons that came along.
Q. Any experiences in your teens or early 20s that prepared you for leadership?
A. I was a very good student and I was always focused and driven. But I was very introverted. I was incredibly shy. The one experience that pulled me out of my shell was waiting tables at Denny’s. I was horrified by the prospect of having to talk to people. You want customers to always be right, but customers can’t always be right. You have to find compromises for circumstances that are happening all the time and you have difficult situations. You have mistakes that you make; you have the mistakes that the kitchen makes.
You can’t control the environment most of the time. And so you’re making the best of a state of chaos, which was a wonderful learning experience for me.
Q. Talk about how your leadership style has evolved.
A. I probably give fewer answers and I ask a lot more questions. It’s not possible for the C.E.O. to know everything, but it is possible for us to add value to just about everything. And the reason for that is, if you’re the C.E.O., you’re probably better at looking around corners than most. You probably have better intuition than most. You’re probably able to see the forest better than most. You’re probably able to deal with complexity better than most. And so you bring a perspective that is unique.
By asking the right questions, you can get to the heart of the issue right away. It’s almost possible now for me to go through a day and do nothing but ask questions and have my sensibility, my perspective and what’s important to me be perfectly clear to everybody without making a statement at all.
Q. The perception that many people have of C.E.O.’s is that they have all the answers.
A. There’s no way that I can be as deep in all of the areas as the people on my management team, nor is it important. It’s more important that, through probing, I help them realize that they could achieve even more than they thought they could achieve. It is probably more important that, through questions, you cause them to explore ideas that they didn’t realize needed to be explored. As the C.E.O., you’re trying to make a great idea better.
Q. What about hiring?
A. There are three characteristics that I think are directly related to success. The first is to be able to fall in love with something. Maybe it’s related to what you’re passionate about. The capacity to fall in love is so important to successful people. The second one is the capacity to take chances and make mistakes. And the third is just to see the world through a child’s eye. You know to ask: “What if? What if we could do this?” All of the great ideas are kind of, “Hey, what if we could do this?”
Q. Let’s say you’re interviewing me for a job. How are you going to find out if I have those three qualities?
A. Well, first of all, if you use words like love — “I love doing this” — you can just tell when somebody’s passionate about something. The second thing is, I’ll ask you about one of your greatest failures. Tell me about something where you just shanked into the woods. What happened? How’d you deal with it? How’d you get back into the game?
And the third one is, I’ll ask somebody to just teach me something. They’ll get on the whiteboard. I’ll start saying things like, “What if you did that?” People who are really receptive to brainstorming and creativity will say: “Huh, that’s interesting. Well, what if we did that?”
Somebody who doesn’t like criticism will say: “That’s been tried. It doesn’t work.” So those people just tend not to be good collaborators.
Q. And so, with those three screens, what’s your batting average in hiring?
A. I think hiring great people remains extremely, extremely hard. The reason for that is this: You can never really tell how somebody deals with adversity — whether it’s adversity that’s created by the environment, or adversity that you’re creating for them. When you have a difficult situation and you need somebody to take it and run with it, some people just take it and make it work. They feed on adversity. Some people see adversity and they just cower, as talented as they are.
Q. When you’re interviewing somebody, is there any way you get at that?
A. It’s really tough. You could ask them about the adversity they had in the past, but you never really know the intensity of that adversity. There are some people who, in the face of adversity, become more calm. When the world is just falling apart, I actually think my heart rate goes down. I find that I think best when I’m under adversity.
Maybe it’s Denny’s. As a waiter, you’ve got to deal with rush hour. Anyone who’s dealt with rush hour in a restaurant knows what I’m talking about."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/business/06corner.html
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