Founder Mode Needs Methods: Jobs’s Skip-Level Meetings

Founder mode needs methods. First, one person’s management capacity is limited. Founders cannot do everything themselves or make every decision. With a few dozen employees, they can know everyone by name. With hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands, they cannot know every person—or even every manager at every level. There are nevertheless ways to avoid hearing only from the dozen or so people reporting directly to you as the organization grows. In a five-layer organization, if each manager communicates only with a few dozen people in the layer below, information passed through those layers soon disconnects the founder at the top from the market, the organization, and customers. The legendary Steve Jobs used an annual ‘skip-level meeting’ while leading Apple. He invited the company’s one hundred most important people—not the one hundred highest in the hierarchy, but key people from every level. This cross-level communication let him understand the company’s direction accurately. Regular contact with people at different levels to understand frontline conditions is essential. Running a company is not only about the big picture; sometimes it requires firsthand involvement and a measured degree of micromanagement. Founders also need others in the organization to understand their thinking, which requires direct conversation.