The importance of leadership focus

I get asked a lot about what it was like working at WeWork.

Because I spent the prior 4ish years at LinkedIn, I feel like I got a front-row seat to a relatively clean AB test: 2 fast-growing, well-funded, similarly-sized businesses, with significant overlap in personnel (there was a LinkedIn alumni mafia at WeWork, IYKYK). The talent density at both companies was insane.

A lot of people point to WeWork's business model as failed, but I think that misses the point. Industrious figured out a way to make coworking profitable, albeit with significant tweaks vs. WeWork's approach.

The big difference in my mind was leadership. At LinkedIn, every quarter leadership communicated what we were working on and what we weren't working on: the strategic bets we were saying no to, so that we could focus on priority #1. Every individual contributor knew how their piece of the puzzle fit into the broader pie. It was impossible not to row in the right direction.

WeWork was the opposite: C-suite direction seemed to be "everything now" and there was no sidequest we wouldn't entertain. When Softbank took over in fall 2019, we had 95% occupied trophy assets operating at a loss because the base rent was too high. That lack of focus meant we didn't iterate on the core model until it was sustainable, the way Industrious did.

As an owner or team leader, these lessons hold true: if your priorities aren't clear, it doesn't matter how strong your team is. They'll always be limited by your lack of focus.