White-collar workers fall into the mundane rhythms of office life: checking an endless stream of emails, sitting through a barrage of meetings, and pushing through mental exhaustion at the end of the week.
But some CEOs are rewriting the norms of the corporate world, leading billion- and trillion-dollar companies on their own terms.
Huang, the cofounder and CEO of $4.8 trillion technology giant Nvidia, is trimming the fat from his work routine by prioritizing efficiency over regular check-ins.
The leader doesn’t believe that frequent catch-ups with his 55 direct reports is the best use of his time, as the constant stream of meetings only clogs up his work schedule and slows him down.
“I wouldn’t go one-on-one with any of them,” Huang said at the 2024 Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research conference.
His broader goal is to maintain transparency within one of the world’s largest companies.
“They don’t listen to me tell them anything that only they know,” the billionaire continued. “There isn’t one piece of information that I somehow tell the employees as confidential; I don’t tell the rest of the company.”
Huang still has regular contacts with his executive team, and if an employee really needs to reach out to him, he will “drop everything for them,” the CEO added. However, limiting time-consuming meetings helps Huang and company move faster in the AI race.
“In this way, our company was designed for agility,” Huang said. “To get information flowing as quickly as possible. To empower people with what they can do, what they don’t know.”
Chesky said any leader should apologize for how they choose to run their business, and he is unapologetically following his own advice.
For one, the chief executive of an $86 billion short-term rental platform no longer worries about the survival habit of many workers: email. Instead, he texts and calls to get his work done.
“[Emailing] The thing about my job I hated the most was before the pandemic,” Chesky said The Wall Street Journal last year
And it’s not just the corporate standard Chesky has dismissed: Even the Airbnb CEO who hits peak creativity late at night doesn’t hold meetings before 10 a.m. The rise-and-grind standard of Silicon Valley CEOs doesn’t apply to self-made billionaires.
“When you’re the CEO,” Chesky said, “you can decide when the first meeting of the day is.”
Kirby said an impromptu office nap was his trick to stay sharp in his decade-long career in the business. He slept on the floor until United staff learned of his habit, and rushed to get him a couch to get some quality shut-eye.
