Leadership lessons from Nvidia's CEO

For starters, he was wearing the leather jacket.

When Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang took to the stage at the Stripe Sessions, a global internet economy conference in San Francisco last Wednesday, it came as a surprise to absolutely no one that he was donning his trademark leather jacket—a cool and collected look that puts Steve Jobs’s iconic uniform to sartorial shame.

In recent years, Huang has been inching closer to Jobs-level icon status as a CEO for more than just his consistent wardrobe choices.

Maybe you’ve been following along with Nvidia’s blockbuster earnings reports as of late, as tech companies’ AI investments increasingly end up in the pocketbook of the chipmaker. Huang has served as Nvidia’s CEO since co-founding the company in 1993, making him one of the longest-serving CEOs in the S&P 500. Oh, and he’s now the 20th richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $73.1 billion, per Forbes as of this writing.

Clearly, he’s doing something right. So, when he shares advice that other executives (ahem, CFOs) could take to heart, you listen—and that’s what attendees (including yours truly) did last week.

Most notable, and revelatory, were his insights into what he’s doing differently than many CEOs. One quirk: He has 60 direct reports, which Stripe CEO Patrick Collison, the moderator of the chat, was quick to jokingly point out “is not conventionally considered a best practice.”

Huang defended his unorthodox move, saying it was largely a matter of effective information sharing and inclusion.

“I believe that your contribution to the work should not be based on the privileged access to information,” he explained. “I don’t do one-on-ones. My staff is quite large, and almost everything I say, I say to everybody all at the same time.”

That ultimately leads to more effective problem-solving, in Huang’s eyes. His meetings with his leadership team take place “once every other week,” he noted. “It’s all based on issues. Whatever issues we have, everybody’s there working on it at the same time. Everybody can work the reasoning of the problem. Everybody heard the reasoning of the solution. That empowers people. I believe that when you give them equal access to information, that empowers people.”

See, these quirks have benefits. Another offbeat Huang policy: “I give you feedback right there in front of everybody.” Why, oh why, would one choose to subject their staff to this subtle torture?

“Feedback is learning,” Huang explained. “For what reason are you the only person who should learn this?...For me to reason through it, in front of everybody, helps everybody learn how to be sensible. The problem I have with one-on-ones and taking feedback aside is you deprive a whole bunch of people of that same learning. Learning from mistakes—other people’s mistakes—is the best way to learn. Why learn from your own mistakes?”

A game-changing policy, sure, but one that might feel hard to appreciate when it’s your mistake everyone’s learning from. But Huang also shared one other unconventional move that’s significantly less scary: He’s firing-averse, and avoids letting people go at all costs.

“I’d rather improve you than give up on you,” he said. “I used to clean bathrooms, and now I’m the CEO of a company. You can learn it…There are a lot of things in life that you have the opportunity to learn, and you just have to be given the opportunity to learn it.”

He continued: “I had the benefit of watching a lot of smart people do a lot of things. I’m surrounded by 60 people that are doing smart things all the time. They probably don’t realize it, but I’m learning constantly from every single one of them. And so, I don’t like giving up on people because I think that they could improve. It’s kind of tongue-in-cheek, but people know I’d rather torture them into greatness.”

In all, Huang was an advice-trove for fellow executives and business leaders. Just don’t ask him about his work-life balance—because it doesn’t exist.

“I think my work-life balance is really great,” Huang said with a grin. “I work as much as I can…I work from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to bed. I work seven days a week. When I’m not working, I’m thinking about working. And when I’m working, I’m working

But don’t worry, it’s fun for him. Also, he’s a multibillionaire. “It’s not working as in, there’s this problem and you’re trying to solve this problem,” he added. “You’re thinking about what the company can be, and are there things that we can do even better? Or sometimes it’s just fun to solve a problem. But sometimes, you’re imagining the future…It’s working. You’re fantasizing. You’re dreaming.”