Siemens

Siemens CEO's management system: every email gets 'okay' or 'no'

Borrowing Marc Andreessen's 'one-bit communication' idea (his thesis for investing in the Yo app), Shaan describes the Siemens CEO's system: employees email him and he replies only 'okay' or 'no'; anything needing more is discussed in person immediately, with no recurring meetings. As the CEO put it, 'I don't entertain people and they don't need to entertain me.'

“Well, I've learned that there's a couple CEOs who use one-bit communication. So here's the first one, Siemens. The Siemens CEO came out and he said, yeah, I have a very specific management system. My management system is this. You email me anything you wanna talk to me about and I will respond with okay or no. That's it. Huh. I'm just gonna say okay or no to your email. And if it requires more than that, then, um, you're gonna come talk to me.”

Steal thisAnswer approval requests with a single 'okay' or 'no' and replace recurring status meetings with immediate face-to-face talks when more detail is needed.