According to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, effective leadership requires one to become immersed in each organization’s details. Before co-founding Nvidia, now worth over $3.1 trillion in market capitalization, Huang’s journey began humbly as a teen busboy at Denny’s. Years later, he and his other co-founders planted the seeds of Nvidia in that very restaurant, where he once cleared tables, washed dishes, and cleaned toilets.
For Huang, whose net worth Forbes currently estimates at nearly $108 billion, it is the humble experiences of his youth that keep his feet firmly on the ground. “No task is beneath me,” he said, in jest, in a March interview at Stanford Graduate School of Business, telling a room of students about his years of cleaning toilets.
But where Huang’s early years in the hospitality industry and today—he oversees a multitrillion-dollar company—are concerned, the contrast is total; what Huang brings to his tasks is an unflinching willingness, always ready to meet whatever comes his way: If you send me something and you want my input on it and I can be of service to you — and, in my review of it, share with you how I reasoned through it — I’ve contributed to you.
Known for his hands-on management style, Huang’s coworkers testify that he is demanding and meticulous. He has practiced actively promoting organization-wide updates on critical projects each week and heightened engagement with employees to share their insights and feedback, captured in profiles ranging from the New Yorker.
Huang’s leadership style involves providing solutions and explaining the reasoning behind them. He believes this transparency is crucial for personal development and the company’s long-term success. “I show people how to reason through things all the time: strategy things, how to forecast something, how to break a problem down,” he stressed in a speech at Stanford, underlining his commitment to enabling his colleagues.
Regarding time management, Huang schedules the most complicated tasks early, so he is available for his team all day. Unlike the conventional wisdom that few direct reports are better for a CEO, Huang likes to have about 50 direct reports. He believes that this enables direct communication and increases Nvidia’s operational agility.
Huang believes that a CEO’s role is to create an enabling environment that brings out the best in people. He sees it as a duty to other “people to achieve greatness, inspire, empower and support,” he summed up in Stanford, highlighting the servant-leadership approach of the Nvidia management team.
Huang believes a CEO’s role is to support and empower CEOs and employees to achieve greatness. “It’s about leading others to succeed. It’s inspiring, empowering, and supporting them,” he concluded at Stanford. “The management team serves all the other people in the company.”
