So, Facebook (FB) knows how to grow. On Tuesday, the company that
everyone loved to discount reported better-than-expected profits and a
32% increase in third-quarter revenue to nearly $1.3 billion. The stock
is popping.
Substantial credit goes to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief
operating officer and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's No. 2, who has learned a
thing or two about scaling businesses. When Sandberg joined her previous
employer Google (GOOG) in 2001, that company had about 275 employees.
By the time she left for Facebook in 2008, she recalls, Google had about
20,000 employees. During the past four years, she has seen Facebook
grow from 550 to more than 4,000 employees. In the past year alone,
active Facebook users increased 26% to more than 1 billion.
When Sandberg regretfully bowed out of this year's Fortune
Most Powerful Women Summit, I asked her if she would do something else:
share her expertise on scaling an organization. She agreed and sums up
the challenge for any company this way: "If you can't envision where
you're going to go, you're not to get there."
Having both advised and learned from the two guys who top
Fortune's 40 Under 40 list--Zuckerberg (No. 2) and Google CEO Larry Page
(No. 1)--she came up with three guidelines:
1.Think Big.
While management is "the science of administering a business,"
Sandberg says, "leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the
science of management says is possible." Thinking really big--such as
making the world more open and connected, which is Zuckerberg's
vision--gets people excited. They follow the leader not only because
they are paid to follow. They believe. "Repeat the mission," Sandberg
advises. "Only by stating what's most important and by framing the
conversation can you keep everyone focused."
2.Hire big.
Sandberg's organization at Google grew from four to 4,000 people
in five years. Which meant that the original four employees had to do 10
or 15 years worth of growing in a very short period of time. Sandberg
learned a lesson from this: "Hire for what you think you're going to
need," she says. "Hire people who are more qualified, have more
experience, or are right out of school but can overachieve." Make sure
that the person you're hiring to manage a 100-person office can manage
the office if it reaches 1,000 people.
3.Plan big.
Early on, Sandberg and her fellow Googlers celebrated everyone's
birthday on their actual birthdays. "The problem was, six months later,
we had so many people that we couldn't possibly celebrate everyone's
birthday on that day," she recalls. So, Google shifted to weekly, then
monthly, then quarterly celebrations. "We had these ginormous
sheet-cakes with everybody's name on them," Sandberg recalls. "If I had
been better at thinking ahead, I would have realized that celebrating
everyone's birthday on the real day would not scale." Plan events and
celebrations that will scale, she advises. For instance: Zuckerberg's
hackathons--when Facebook engineers and tech talent gather to share
products and features they developed outside their main jobs. "You can
do these with three, 3000, or 30,000 people if we ever get there,"
Sandberg says, dreaming of Facebook's future growth.