{"id":5509,"date":"2025-11-03T14:19:42","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T14:19:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/uncategorized\/your-industry-is-your-destiny-your-ceo-is-your-culture\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T14:19:42","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T14:19:42","slug":"your-industry-is-your-destiny-your-ceo-is-your-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/uncategorized\/your-industry-is-your-destiny-your-ceo-is-your-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Your industry is your destiny. Your CEO is your culture.<\/a>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your industry is your destiny. Your CEO is your culture. <\/p>\n

These were two gems of wisdom I learned from Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google at the time, in a fireside chat when he was asked for career advice.<\/p>\n

The industry you\u2019re in sets your operating model and your opportunities. He had felt that acutely coming from being COO of Bell Canada (an operational low-margin company where every dollar had to be tracked) to CFO of Google (a high-margin tech company that had sushi chefs in the cafeterias at that point). <\/p>\n

The industry trend also matters – a rising industry will create more opportunities and easier growth, whereas if the industry is declining, you will be fighting harder to even maintain market share. As Eric Schmidt quipped at the time, “If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat. Just get on!”<\/p>\n

“Your CEO is your culture” means that the company will reflect the CEO\u2019s values. What do they prioritize? What tradeoffs will they make? <\/p>\n

One of the most inspiring leadership moments I ever personally witnessed was early in my time at Google, when the company’s revenue was not growing as fast as desired, and the ads team presented a plan to boost revenue by sacrificing a couple points of user experience. It would make the quarterly earnings results look good and make the conversations with investors easier. But Eric Schmidt immediately shut it down, saying “We will never sacrifice user experience for revenue. Find something else.” That is leadership from values. <\/p>\n

If you have a choice (which in this hiring environment is difficult), find a company where the industry is growing (so you get tailwinds as the company grows and there will be other companies growing which might offer you your next career opportunity) and where the CEO\/company\u2019s values align with yours (so you aren\u2019t fighting your natural instincts in every meeting). It\u2019s hard to find that alignment, but pays off exponentially when you do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Your industry is your destiny. Your CEO is your culture. These were two gems of wisdom I learned from Patrick Pichette, CFO of Google at the time, in a fireside chat when he was asked for career advice. The industry you\u2019re in sets your operating model and your opportunities. He had felt that acutely coming…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nehrlich.com\/linkedin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}