The life of a Fortune 500 CEO is one full of meetings, engagements, obligations, and public scrutiny. Running a business is very much a full-time job, one that keeps many of the world’s most successful entrepreneurial minds constantly occupied with various tasks. Ultimately, this means that they may not have the time to do everything they wish to do within their company on a day-to-day basis. For Jensen Huang, CEO and co-founder of Nvidia, this rings very true, as he confesses he doesn’t get the chance to schedule as many one-on-one meetings with his employees as he’d like but will “drop everything” to meet with them if they ask.
As the billionaire Nvidia CEO and co-founder, Huang has played an integral role in the development of AI and new technology, leading the software company to immense success and innovative results. As a byproduct of this, when recently speaking at Stanford University, Huang confessed to the sheer fullness of his schedule while revealing the compassionate aspect of his managerial mantras. Huang referred to Nvidia’s managerial setup, which sees a management team of 55 people all reporting directly to him, as a setup “designed for agility” and a way in which to allow “information to flow as quickly as possible,” all while preserving the company’s authoritative vision and brand.
However, whereas some hands-on CEOs remain meticulous and rigorous in managing their companies to a fault, Huang’s approach to his management team is one of trust and comradery. As he explains it, it is not that he doesn’t have time for his team, but instead that he trusts them fully to make crucial decisions. He’s picked them for a reason and thus trusts them to make the right choices without cluttering the decision-making process with unnecessary meetings. “Unless they need me. Then I’ll drop everything for them.” Huang says.
As Nvidia’s success reaches unparalleled levels, with the company having just recently eclipsed Apple in market cap, Huang and his management team’s approach is clearly working. Rather than looking to heavily regulate communication through scheduled meetings or reviews, Huang prefers to maintain an open stream-of-consciousness style of communication within the offices, helping facilitate a more open and team-driven style of leadership. As he states, “I write no reviews for any of them. I give them constant reviews, and they provide the same for me.”
In many ways, Huang’s managerial approach echoes Jeff Bezos’ own when it comes to running Amazon, as the CEO revealed he prefers a “messy” meeting style, in which he remains largely silent to encourage his team to speak more freely. Speaking to the Lex Fridman Podcast, Bezos said, “The reality is, we may have to wander for a long time … I think there’s certainly nothing more fun than sitting at a whiteboard with a group of smart people and spit-balling and coming up with new ideas and objections to those ideas, and then solutions to the objections and going back and forth.”
For Huang, the game of large-scale business management and groundbreaking success is very much a team sport.
