Think Like Zuck: The Five Business Secrets of Facebook's Improbably Brilliant CEO Mark Zuckerberg by Ekaterina Walter

Author:Ekaterina Walter
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Web, Computers, Social Networking
ISBN: 9780071809498
Publisher: McGraw-Hill
Published: 2012-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

Breed a culture of fearlessness, not fear. Fear destroys cultures and cripples leadership.

Having clear purpose, a strong list of values, and a culture map is a great start. But without truly institutionalizing a culture map, it will become nothing more than a poster everyone starts ignoring after a while. Institutionalizing your culture takes time. It requires weaving your core values into the fabric of your enterprise, into your decision-making, and into your key processes.

Facebook does so marvelously. This code-led organization holds boot camps and hackathons, shifts people around to work on projects based on their interests, and sometimes mandates all-nighters.

Andrew Bosworth is Facebook’s old-timer. He helped build some of Facebook’s star features, like the News Feed. He is also the guardian of the hacker way. He was the one who created Bootcamp, a six-week initiation program for new engineering hires to teach them how to “think like Zuck,” to teach them the Facebook way. After a short orientation, newbies are given a computer and a chair. They get an e-mail that welcomes them to the company. They also get small tasks of fixing bugs on the Facebook site. And yes, once the fix is determined to work, they are empowered to push the change live—an idea that is rather terrifying for a lot of them. But that is daily life at Facebook, and independence, initiative, and creativity are expected from each one of company’s employees. There isn’t just one way to solve a problem, and everyone is expected to speak up about his or her own approach to solving it. “It’s free form [here],” says Boz. “If you’re not coming up with new ideas, then you’re just along for the ride.”25 Encouraging new ideas is critical to Facebook leadership, and the best new ideas are presented to Zuck himself.

Every 18 months or so, engineers are required to rotate and work on something different for a while. This requirement constantly brings new perspectives and experience to the teams and ignites new ideas. Zuckerberg himself prefers to be tightly involved in the creation process. He walks around to see what different groups are working on and holds office hours. He has a strict open-door policy—anyone can pop in and run an idea or a mock-up by him at any time he is around. And healthy dissent is encouraged—if you can defend your point of view (preferably with a mock-up). At Facebook, code wins arguments. The company values those who don’t give up even if they are told no. Boz say that Zuck is only “happy to be proven wrong.”26

Facebook also holds hackathons, monthly all-nighters where any idea or project can be brought forth for others to work on. It is considered an intellectual and creative exercise. Even company lawyers come to hack-athons to watch the ideas fly and the creative process unfold. The company provides food and beer; engineers, their ingenuity. These events are usually not prescheduled. Most of the time, someone says, “Hey, are you guys up for a hackathon?” Word spreads.

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