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20VC: The 4 Phases of Effective Decision-Making, The No 1 Quality of Good Decisions, How To Approach Effective OKR Setting, & How To Optimise and Improve Your Operating Cadence with Shishir Mehrotra, Founder & CEO @ Coda

Sep 25, 2020

Shishir Mehrotra, the Founder and CEO of Coda, shares his transformative journey from Google and Microsoft to launching his startup. He delves into the core quality of effective decision-making, emphasizing the need for a structured approach. Shishir discusses fostering a culture of open debate, allowing teams to build trust and share ideas freely. He also highlights the importance of establishing an operational cadence and adapting decision-making strategies based on context, demonstrating how this fuels innovation in startups.

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ANECDOTE

Shishir's Career Journey

Shishir Mehrotra's career began at MIT, where he co-founded Centrada after graduating.
He later worked at Microsoft, Google (YouTube), and now leads Coda.

INSIGHT

Key Learnings from Microsoft and Google

At Microsoft, Shishir learned fundamentals of team and product building.
At Google, he learned the power of a clear thesis, like YouTube's "online video will do to cable what cable did to broadcast."

ADVICE

Filtering Advice

Disregard most advice, especially on hard decisions.
Develop a trusted network and your own convictions; follow your gut.

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Shishir Mehrotra is the Founder & CEO @ Coda, the startup that brings all of your words and data into a flexible all-in-one doc. To date, Shishir has raised over $140M from some great names including Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst, NEA and Homebrew to name a few. Prior to founding Coda, Shishir spent an incredible 6 years at Google in a couple of different roles; first as Director of Product for Youtube Monetisation and then moving to Youtube VP of Engineering, Product and UX. Before Google, Shishir was with Microsoft for 6 years as a Director of Program Management. Shishir also serves on the board of Spotify.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Shishir made his way into the world of tech, came to be VP of Engineering, Product and UX @ Youtube and how it led to founding Coda?

2.) What is the No 1 quality of a good decision? How does Shishir think through reversible vs irreversible decisions? What are the 4 phases of decision-making? When should decisions be based on speed vs not? How can teams adjust questions to come to more productive outcomes?

3.) How does Shishir encourage debate and dissent within team discussions? How can leaders build deep trust with their teams? How can leaders create true democracy for idea sharing and meritocracy? Should ideas always be acted on immediately? What are the pros and cons?

4.) How does Shishir think about and evaluate his own operating cadence? How has this changed over time? How does Shishir approach time allocation? What have been his core learnings? How does Shishir divide his time between proactive and reactive tasks?

5.) How does Shishir approach OKR setting? What can leaders do to create aspirational and inspirational goals? How should goals be correctly communicated across orgs? How many OKRs should one team/person have? How should attribution across OKRs be given?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Shishir’s Fave Book: Switch: How to change things when change is hard

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