ESSENTIALS MANAGEMENT In a way, Lawson sees a lot of parallels between the supposed values of Enron and the values of Twilio. “I’m able to map their values directly to ours, but let me explain why I think ours are better. At Enron, you had ‘respect.’ Sounds good, right? But respect can be such a vague word, and it’s hard to know if someone is being truly respectful,” says Lawson. “At Twilio we have: be humble. It’s a more speciifc version of respect and it’s actionable. We all know what humble is, we all know what humble is not. We have a pretty good sense for that.” Now take the value of “integrity.” “How many of you really know what integrity means? I don’t know what it means. I get it in a conceptual way, but I don’t really know if what I’m doing has integrity at this very moment,” says Lawson. “However, at Twilio we have a concept called ‘no shenanigans.’ People know if they’re doing something that’s shenanigans. We have a gut feel — and license to call someone out — when there are shenanigans.” Relfect on Enron’s value of “communication.” “At Twilio, we ‘start with why’ as a more speciifc actionable tenet of communication. Starting with why demonstrates that understanding exactly why we’re doing something is critically important,” says Lawson. “It is always a valid question to ask why at Twilio. On the other hand, ‘communication’ is so vague that it’s meaningless.” When you’ve chosen your guiding principles, resist the urge to call them “core values.” “The phrase has been ruined. Nobody understands what it means because they describe esoteric nonsense most of the time,” says Lawson. “So, at Twilio, we call them our ‘9 things,’ because we want to detach our values from what most people think of as vacuous values. A ‘thing’ is something anyone understands.” Lawson admits that even if they are speciifc, nine ‘things’ is still a lot. “Researchers say that human beings can remember seven plus or minus two things. If you ask the average Twilio employee if they can name the nine things, the answer is likely no. I’d probably leave one out. But the way to think about it is that people will pick the ones that resonate most with them — which they can live most fully,” says Lawson. “Three to ifve just won’t work for us. When you try to narrow it down to such a small number of things, what you end up doing is making that small number of things more abstract and all-encompassing. Don’t trade ‘draw the owl’ for ‘integrity.’” LIVING YOUR VALUES There are no hacks to living your values — it inevitably starts with the leader. “That’s my ifrst fundamental belief. The CEO and founder must exemplify the values. Full stop. Everyone looks at everything you do. If you aren’t living them, nobody else will,” says Lawson. 102