Today I attended the Walmart Saturday
Morning Meeting for executives. Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, was
the featured guest. The parking lot was jammed. The visitors poured out the
doors. The auditorium and cafeteria were packed.
Facebook has around one billion users and
one thousand engineers. The CEO of Walmart featured two saying of Facebook
culture that he really liked.
1. Done is better than
perfect. Facebook encourages quick changes and taking risks. The
problem with perfection is falling behind and being defensive. They have summer
interns who make all of Facebook stop working. Although that is a catastrophe,
they use those shut-downs to learn why it happened that a newbie could break the
whole business with a little code.
2. What would you do if you were not
afraid? This is a good saying for everyone dealing with technology. We
do not like feeling dumb. We do not want to break things or get into trouble. We
naturally want to play it safe. The people who are pioneers do just the opposite
and make enormous mistakes. Walmart laughs about horrible purchase decisions
because they learn from them.
Clay Matthews of the Green Bay Packers also spoke today. An interesting insight is that he was not so good in his early years, when his own father was the defensive coach, so he did not play. He worked on his deficits and became a leading college and pro player.
He was funny and articulate.
