Name: How Arianna Huffington Helped Uber Through its Crisis
Uploaded: 2017-09-25
Duration: 4 min 19 s
Description: Uber now has “zero tolerance for brilliant jerks.”

You found your self at ground zero of a crisis of inclusion. And so judging from what we read ad heard you played a very hands on role through whatever we went through this summer. So I'm curious about both in a room full of people that include corporate directors and deal with corporate directors, About how you work out how you were going to act to help the company through that period and what you learned. So it started in February actually. I know you say it's the Summer but it's longer than the Summer. It started in February, the crisis with a blog post by Susan Fowler, about incidents of sexual harassment, mismanagement, unprofessional behavior in the company. I was the only woman on the board, and a lot of the accusations were of a sexist culture. So I got involved right away. I spoke at the first All Hands that we had after the crisis. And I promised that the board would hold management's feet to the fire, would conduct a full investigation. We brought in Eric Holder. I chaired the board subcommittee that oversaw the Hogger Investigation. And I made a few kind of pronouncements during that first all hands. To reassure the 14, 000 employees, some of whom were in the San Fransisco Headquarters, others were watching around the world. That change would be coming. And then one of the things that most resonated with people is to address the culture of hypergrowth. And that, of course, brought over to this amazing place, it is now to be a $ 70 billion unicorn. But also, had costs. Costs for the culture and ultimately costs for the business. And the main cost that went along with a hyper- growth culture was a worshipping of top performers. You know, a cult of top performers. If you were a top performer delivering growth, a lot was forgiven you. I named top performers who misbehaved brilliant jerks. And [ LAUGH ] I announced that all hands that Uber would become a place of zero tolerance for brilliant jerks. And we actually proved when the Holder investigation results were announced, when the Board unanimously Adopted all their recommendations and let go of a total of about 26 people and many of them in senior positions. The message was very clear to the company and that we meant business, that we were willing from the board, to the executives, across the company To bring about fundamental changes. So the brilliant jerks notion, I'm curious about because well probably everyone would love for their executive team to be brilliant mentors and- [ LAUGH ] Brilliant women. There, is an important role that brilliant jerks that have probably played in the success of many Companies. Did you feel a pushback from any quarter about the risk of losing those performers? And not having a certain flexibility in what you would tolerate in. No because, and this is really the theme of this conference. The world has changed, and what happens now in the culture of a company affects business metrics. It's no longer as if the culture is the nice to have, and then the executives and the CEO can focus on Hardcore metrics like quarterly earnings, and [ UNKNOWN ] profitability, the two are very aligned. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

How Arianna Huffington Helped Uber Through its Crisis

Uber now has “zero tolerance for brilliant jerks.”
