Intuit

"we gradually changed from a house of brands (TurboTax, Quicken, QuickBooks) to the branded house of Intuit."

"Intuit used to have nine different billing systems to serve our array of products, and each of them had special challenges. When you’re putting out fires every day, it’s hard to build a next-generation billing technology."

"OBJECTIVE Enable every Intuit worker to make decisions based on “live” data. KEY RESULTS Deliver functional data marts for HR and Sales. Complete migration to new Enterprise Data Warehouse built for real-time access. Create single team operating all data visualization tools across Intuit to drive a unified strategy. Create teaching module to help people in other teams use data visualization tools."

"“Whenever Intuit makes a wrong turn,” UBS analyst Brent Thill told The New York Times, “they quickly get off the gravel and back onto the blacktop. That’s why the company has done so well for such a long time.”"

"Today, every employee in my department owns three to five business objectives per quarter, along with one or two personal ones. The system is powerful precisely because it is so simple—and so transparent. For our OKRs to be effective, I knew they’d have to be visible through all of Intuit, even if no one outside EBS used them. I wanted everyone in the company to know exactly what we were doing, and how, and why. When people understand your priorities and constraints, they’re more apt to trust you when something goes sideways."

"Early in Bill’s four-year Intuit tenure, he faced a crisis. Revenues were lagging to the point where they were going to miss the quarter. We had a blue-sky, visionary board of directors that was pushing to invest more capital and power through the shortfall. When the board met in a hotel suite in Las Vegas, the Coach wasn’t buying it. “Cut the crap,” he said. “We’re going to cut back and lay some people off. We’re going to get leaner because we’ve got to make the numbers. It’s part of the discipline and the culture I want.” Bill felt strongly about delivering results—for the shareholders, but also for the team and the customers."

"Alan Gleicher, who worked with Bill as the head of sales and operations at Intuit, had a simple way of summing up how to be successful with him. “Don’t dance. If Bill asks a question and you don’t know the answer, don’t dance around it. Tell him you don’t know!” For Bill, honesty and integrity weren’t just about keeping your word and telling the truth; they were also about being forthright. This is critical for effective coaching; a good coach doesn’t hide the stuff that’s hard to talk about—in fact, a good coach will draw this out. He or she gets at the hard stuff. Scholars would describe Bill’s approach—listening, providing honest feedback, demanding candor—as “relational transparency,” which is a core characteristic of “authentic leadership.”13 Wharton professor Adam Grant has another term for it: “disagreeable givers.” He notes in an email to us that “we often feel torn between supporting and challenging others. Social scientists reach the same conclusion for leadership as they do for parenting: it’s a false dichotomy. You want to be supportive and demanding, holding high standards and expectations but giving the encouragement necessary to reach them. Basically, it’s tough love. Disagreeable givers are gruff and tough on the surface, but underneath they have others’ best interests at heart. They give the critical feedback no one wants to hear but everyone needs to hear.”"

"However, in November 2010, the last event, his health was not in good shape, and he left the table after only sipping miso soup. In any case, the board dinner was held at Keizuki for five consecutive years. Apple’s board of directors in 2006 included a distinguished lineup of members. Starting with Steve, there was former Vice President Al Gore, Bill Campbell from the finance software giant Intuit, Mickey Drexler from the apparel giant J. Crew, Arthur Levinson from the biotech giant Genentech, and Eric Schmidt from Google."