Amp It Up Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity

Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly Bestseller

The secret to leading growth is your mindset

Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman is one of the tech world's most accomplished executives in enterprise growth, having led Snowflake to the largest software IPO ever after leading ServiceNow and Data Domain to exponential growth and the public market before that. In Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity, he shares his leadership approach for the first time.

Amp It Up delivers an authoritative look at what it takes to transform an organization for maximum growth and scale. Slootman shows that most leaders have significant room to improve their organization's performance without making expensive changes to their talent, structure, or fundamental business model—and they don’t need to bring in an army of consultants to do it. What they do need is to align people around what matters and execute with urgency and intensity every day.

Leading for unprecedented growth means declaring war on mediocrity, breaking the status quo, and making conflicted choices daily, all with a relentless focus on the mission. Amp It Up provides the first principles to guide that change, and the tactical advice for organizing a company around them.

Perfect for executives, entrepreneurs, founders, managers, and leaders of all kinds, Amp It Up is a must-read resource for anyone who seeks to unleash the growth potential of a company and scale it to heights they never thought possible.

FRANK SLOOTMAN is the Chairman and CEO at Snowflake Inc. Frank has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and executive in the enterprise software industry. Mr. Slootman served as CEO and President of ServiceNow from 2011 to 2017, taking the organization from around $100M in revenue, through an IPO, to $1.4B. Prior to that, Frank served as President of the Backup Recovery Systems Division at EMC following an acquisition of Data Domain Corporation/ Data Domain, Inc., where he served as the Chief Executive Officer and President, leading the company through an IPO to its acquisition by EMC for $2.4B. Slootman holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics from the Netherlands School of Economics, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Part I – Amping Up 1

Chapter 1 Introduction: The Power of Amping Up 3

Chapter 2 My Journey from Teenage Toilet Cleaner to Serial CEO 13

Part II – Raise Your Standards 33

Chapter 3 Make Your Organization Mission Driven 35

Chapter 4 Declare War on Your Competitors and on Incrementalism 45

Chapter 5 Put Execution Ahead of Strategy 55

Part III – Align Your People and Culture 63

Chapter 6 Hire Drivers, Not Passengers, and Get the Wrong People off the Bus 65

Chapter 7 Build a Strong Culture 73

Chapter 8 Teach Everyone to Go Direct and Build Mutual Trust 83

Part IV – Sharpen Your Focus 91

Chapter 9 Put Analysis Before Solutions 93

Chapter 10 Align Incentives for Customer Success 99

Part V – Pick Up the Pace 103

Chapter 11 Ramp Up Sales 105

Chapter 12 Grow Fast or Die Slow 113

Chapter 13 Stay Scrappy as You Scale Up 123

Part VI – Transform Your Strategy 131

Chapter 14 Materialize Your Opportunities—the Data Domain Growth Story 133

Chapter 15 Open the Aperture—the ServiceNow Expansion Story 143

Chapter 16 Swing for the Fences—the Snowflake Growth Story 151

Part VII – The Amped-Up Leader 157

Chapter 17 Amp Up Your Career 159

Chapter 18 Just for CEOs—Dealing with Founders and Boards 171

Chapter 19 Conclusion—Great Leaders Have Great Outcomes 181

Acknowledgments 183

Index 185

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