VC Ben Horowitz and Databricks’ Ali Ghodsi on How to Be a Good Manager

• Ben Horowitz and Ali Ghodsi ran a weekly show called Boss Talk.
• They talked about their experiences as bosses and what they’ve learned through their careers.
• Knowing what type of boss you are and having a deep understanding of your company’s internal structure will set you up for success.

In 2021, we started a weekly show called Boss Talk which aired live each week on Clubhouse and is also available as a podcast. We discuss CEO stuff, leadership stuff, management stuff, and boss stuff in general with guests and each other.

Boss Talk draws on our experiences as, well, bosses. One of us (Ali) runs Databricks, an enterprise software company revolutionizing the way companies work with data and AI. The other one (Ben) is the cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz, one of the world’s best-known venture capital firms and a New York Times best-selling author.

For all the good stuff, you’ll have to listen in. But here are three of our most important takeaways that we’ve discussed on the show:

1. Have self-knowledge

Self-knowledge, in the Boss Talk context, means both knowing what type of boss you are and what type of organization you’re a part of.

We’ve written about the difference between peacetime CEOs and wartime CEOs. In brief, wartime CEOs help companies fend off imminent existential threats while peacetime CEOs help organizations maximize and broaden periods of growth.

You want a wartime CEO at the helm when a competitor is poised to steal most of your market share, but you want a peacetime CEO when your company is thriving and you want to lay the groundwork for the next five years.

But self-knowledge is more than just knowing whether you’re leading in peacetime or wartime. It also means knowing how you operate as a CEO or as a boss (not just as a CEO!).

Once you understand both your own personal management style and how your reports and their reports understand your management style, you’ll have a strong advantage in organizational leadership. 

2. Understand organizational diversity

Having an understanding of both your company’s internal structure and eccentricities, along with the little unique things about your industry (every industry has some) gives you an advantage in utilizing your knowledge.

For instance, many Databricks executives come from an academic background rather than the startup world or from large incumbent tech companies. That’s reflected in our company culture, which can be rather wonky at times. We also work in the cloud enterprise software world, which impacts how we do our marketing and our sales—if we were selling consumer software licenses, our operating model would be completely different.

Databricks is an example of how different companies have different needs and management styles. We’re an enterprise software company whose product is typically used in combination with big cloud providers like AWS or Microsoft Azure. We recognize that our engineering and sales departments have different mentalities. For instance, we know that many of our programmers code on the weekend for fun—but, honestly, how many sales people also do sales on the weekend for fun? Moreover, our sales department operates differently than, say, their peers at a consumer-oriented software company.

Continuing with the sales example, it’s also to understand how certain departments within organizations have a tendency to compete with each other and work at counter-purposes. For instance, sales vs. marketing. You want to manage your organization in a way where marketing generates leads for sales, who are then able to run with it and close the deal.

Finally, it’s imperative to know what your GTM (go-to-market) strategy is, how it relates to your vertical, and how it relates to your companies. A company like Tableau, for instance, will have less expensive licenses than a company like Palantir which can charge into the eight figure range. The different price of licenses for each company’s product means each one has a different GTM strategy and competitive advantage in their field.

3. Keep internal politics in check

One of the easiest traps that organizations can fall into is developing a toxic work culture. It’s the job of CEOs and management to manage internal politics and prevent toxic work culture from taking root.

There are a few ways of proactively managing internal politics. First and foremost, encourage truth-telling in your organization… even when it’s bad news. Otherwise, you prevent your organization from competing effectively with competitors and create the risk of leaders making mission-critical decisions based on faulty or distorted data.

As far as we’re concerned, the job of executives is to oversee high-level management. In-turn, high-level oversees mid-level and mid-level oversees low-level. You want this hierarchy to operate as smoothly as possible. One way to do this is through standardization.

Standardization means creating procedural templates for hiring, giving raises, and rewarding employees to make sure no one is being ignored and that everyone is recognized—including (and especially) team members who aren’t self-promoters. However, be prepared to break the rules for the best employees when necessary; you don’t want to miss out on hiring an exceptional hire because you won’t meet their terms or losing an unhappy employee who would give competitors an advantage.

Being a boss can be fun and challenging in turn, but it certainly isn’t easy. A little bit of strategizing and research can go a long way, however, towards making things easier.

Disclosure: Andreessen Horowitz is an investor in both Databricks and Clubhouse. See a16z.com/disclosures for more information.

Ben Horowitz is a cofounder and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz.

Ali Ghodsi is the CEO and cofounder of Databricks.