Leadership Silicon Valley Style – Aaron Sarnoff @ Next Door.

Our first episode for 2023, its great to be back recording!

In todays episode we kick off the The Good, The Bad and The What The!

The Good – The Cycling Podcast – “The Team of the Year” Podcast episode. You can listen to this episode here. In this podcast episode the director of Jumbo Visma (Richard Plugge) talks about Authentic conversations

– Disruptive v Destructive
– Creating change and innovation
– “The Dennis Rodman” of the team
– Honest but not personal discussions
– the road to team success at times travels through discomfort

The Bad – The Three Leadership Qualities that Elon Musk replacement at Tesla should have. Simon discusses how there could be some other aspects that have been forgotten about in this article.

The ‘What The’ – Elon Musk breaks world record for largest loss of personal fortune in history
Worth the Time: Live to Lead on Netflix – Jacinda Ardern

Kirralea provided us with some Words of Authenticity: “The golden bookends of high performance are clear expectations and feedback” – which is actually a line Simon uses a lot when we are working with clients. 

Worth the Time resource, Simon spoke about a recent series he is watching on Netflix called Live to Lead which is 7 interviews with leaders, and this particular episode was Jacinda Ardern. 

Todays Guest:

27:30
Aaron Sarnoff left Facebook to join Next Door as the had of Engineering and Growth. Nextdoor is where you connect to the neighborhoods that matter to you so you can belong. By bringing neighbors and organizations together, we can cultivate a kinder world where everyone has a neighborhood they can rely on.

Their goal is to bring Next Door to every single neighbourhood, in every single country.

Aaron leads a team of around 70 engineering managers. He has been at Next Door for the past 3 years, and prior to that worked on the Facebook messenger team for 8 years. He was the 2nd Android engineer on the messenger team and saw their team grow to around 800 people.

In this episode Aaron talks about the different between cultures at Facebook compared to Next Door, but also what makes him so passionate about his leadership role at Next Door. Specifically he talks about culture and expectations, the way people behave within the organisation and reinforcing the behaviours that support the culture they are building at Next Door.

Want to check out how Authentic your organisation is? Take our free online Authentimeter Assessment tool here