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20 Sales: Notion's CRO Olivia Nottebohm on How To Build Great Operations at Your Company, How To Use The Trust Equation in Hiring, How To Do Referencing Most Effectively and Whether To Fill Seats or Wait for the Perfect Hire?

Mar 30, 2022

In a fascinating conversation, Olivia Nottebohm, Chief Revenue Officer at Notion and former executive at Dropbox and Google, shares her insights on operational excellence. She discusses the balance between data analysis and quick decision-making in startups. Olivia emphasizes the importance of great operations and reveals the key mistakes founders often make. The hiring process is also a hot topic; she explores the trade-offs between hiring speed and finding top talent. Trust dynamics between leaders play a crucial role in successful operations, as does empathy in management.

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ANECDOTE

Olivia's Path to Tech

Olivia Nottebohm's career path involved McKinsey, Google, Dropbox, and now Notion.
Her interest in tech stems from its fast-paced innovation and constant need for adaptation.

INSIGHT

Learnings from Google

Google's operational rigor and customer-centric approach are key takeaways for Olivia.
Diane Green's customer-focused leadership at Google Cloud significantly impacted Olivia.

INSIGHT

Defining Great Ops

Great operations involve connecting different functions to work together seamlessly.
This minimizes friction and allows teams to move forward efficiently.

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Olivia Nottebohm is the Chief Revenue Officer @ Notion where she leads the Sales, Marketing, Customer Success and Customer Experience teams. Prior to Notion, Olivia was the COO @ Dropbox where she achieved the first 4 quarters of profitable growth. Before Dropbox Olivia spent over 5 years at Google including as VP Cloud GTM Operations and Global SMB Sales. Finally, before Google, Olivia spent a whopping 15 years at McKinsey & Company.

In Today’s Episode with Olivia Nottebohm You Will Learn:

1.) Origins:

How Olivia made her way into the world of startups and tech?
What are 1-2 big takeaways Olivia has from her 5+ years at Google? How have they shaped her operating mindset today?
How does Olivia balance her love for analysis and data with speed and agility of decisions?

2.) Good vs Great Operations (Ops):

What does great ops really mean to Olivia? What are the 1-2 things founders can implement today to improve their ops immediately?
What are the core mistakes founders make when instilling ops for the first time?
How does Olivia coordinate the global Notion team to be as effective as possible?
What has worked? What has not worked?

3.) The Hiring Process:

Why does Olivia believe all leaders will have to accept they will not have all the talent they need over the coming years?
With that in mind, is it best to hire B players or always keep the bar high? If and when can the bar be lowered?
How does Olivia construct the hiring process? What are the core questions she will always ask?
What is the secret to great referencing? How does Olivia enable the other side to feel safe telling her everything they know about the candidate?

4.) Cross-Functional Communication:

How does Olivia advise founders on the best way to get different functions working together?
What works? What does not? What are some big mistakes Olivia sees over and over?
At what point in company scaling does this comms begin to breakdown?

Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Olivia Nottebohm

Grow Fast or Die Slow: The role of profitability in sustainable growth