Remember to Thank Your Star Players

This interview with Dan Rosensweig, president and chief executive of Chegg, was conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant. Chegg rents textbooks online and by mail.

Q. Tell me about some important leadership lessons.

A. One of the blessings I’ve had, really for my entire career, is working with founders of companies, whether it was Bill Ziff at Ziff Davis or with Jerry Yang and David Filo at Yahoo. What I love about that culture is the energy, enthusiasm and the unbridled passion for what’s possible, as opposed to spending a whole lot of time trying to figure out the obstacles.

In Silicon Valley, if you spend a lot of time thinking about the obstacles, you’ll talk yourself out of everything, because the more you look at it, the less logical something sounds, since no one has done it yet. Founders simply ask what needs to be done and what’s the best way to do it. And that’s fun. It’s had a significant impact on the way I think, the way I lead, the way I manage, and the opportunities I seek out.

I like being surrounded by people who have very little fear and very little respect for the past — not in a negative way, but in a positive way. They appreciate everything that’s been done, but they constantly look for how to do it better. When you lead with what’s possible, and how you create value for people, it’s energizing. Being around that kind of energy and inspiration has allowed me to think bigger than I probably ever would have thought.

Q. You just started at Chegg this year. What was your first-day speech to the staff?

A. I articulated why I came. What’s the opportunity we see? How do we want to define success? What’s the bigger dream? Many people work really hard every day, but they’re incrementalists. When you are in a growth company, you have to really open people’s eyes to the bigger possibilities, so they think differently. Once they understand how to define success and what their role is in success, they make better decisions and you can push decision-making down.

Stylistically, I try very hard to be descriptive about how we want to define success and not necessarily prescriptive on telling them exactly how we want to do it — because, frankly, many of them are a lot smarter than me at what they do.

Q. So how did you define success with the group?

A. One of the things you just have to appreciate is that nobody has all of the answers to anything, particularly in a growth company that’s breaking new ground. I think having a lot of humility is important in a C.E.O. role. You have to have confidence, but also humility. You have to know that you can pull off what you say you are going to do, but you really need to solicit opinions from inside the company and, frankly, from outside the company.

Inside the company, we spent the first month with the management team and we asked every one of them to come in with the 10 most important priorities that they thought that the company should have and order them in terms of importance.

It took about a month to debate these points, to articulate these points, to have people have their say. What I did was coach them to communicate them clearly, as opposed to saying we should do this, this or this.

These sessions go three or four hours once a week, and people come back and then you assign an order toward the end. Then you define success and reportable metrics, put them together and the team votes and agrees. And it’s not just having 10, it’s having them in the right order.

What you get is a much more focused company with a clear definition of success, and a real enthusiasm from people knowing what to do. One of the biggest problems employees have is when management fails to communicate to them what’s a good decision and what’s a bad decision. Where should they spend their time?

So we say, if you are not doing something that contributes to one of these 10 priorities, stop doing it. If your manager tells you to keep doing it, see me. And it’s amazing how people rally behind it. And it’s fun.

Q. How do you run meetings?

A. Probably the biggest lesson I’ve learned over the past couple of years is to be present, because it’s so easy to get distracted in the worlds of BlackBerrys, iPhones, Twitter, Facebook and 500 e-mails a day.

So with our management team, when we’re in a meeting, it starts on time, it ends on time, no technology. It’s just, let’s stay focused, and we have a much more healthy conversation. People really listen and contribute and we move on. It works well in your personal life as well — wherever you are, be all in.

Also, one of our rituals that we start every executive staff meeting with is sharing one personal and one professional thing occupying our minds. The goals are for the team to get closer, build trust and to help understand anything that might be distracting us.

I think the way to get employees all in is to listen to them. Every six weeks, I meet with small groups by their function. The rules are, it’s their meeting. They can ask anything, they can communicate anything as long as it’s about how to improve Chegg’s business or our relationship with our customers.

Q. What are some other leadership lessons for you?