Mark Zuckerberg says his management style involves no 1-on-1s, few direct reports, and a 'core army' of 30 running Meta
Forget the typical CEO playbook — Mark Zuckerberg runs Meta on his own terms.
The Meta chief, speaking during a Tuesday fireside chat with Stripe cofounder John Collison, said he doesn't enjoy managing people or delegating.
While he doesn't have 60 direct reports like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the two tech titans do have one thing in common: they don't have recurring one-on-one meetings with their top leaders.
During the Stripe Sessions fireside chat, Zuckerberg opened up about his hands-on, no-frills approach, a key part of which is having a "core army" of handpicked lieutenants and just a few direct reports.
A 'core army' of 25 to 30 people runs Meta
Zuckerberg favors a non-hierarchical structure at Meta, which he organizes thematically.
"Our management team is not really just my direct reports, it's sort of this broader group of like 25 to 30 people who I try to include in everything," Zuckerberg said. He added that this "core army" is empowered to get anything done across the company, and that he makes sure this inner circle is up to speed on what's going on inside Meta.
"Those people are all brilliant and I work with them super closely, but I also go directly to the people who are running whatever the thing is that I care about, so we're very non-hierarchical in that way," he explained.
Zuckerberg said Meta is divided into around 15 product groups, covering everything from Facebook and Instagram to its ad system and virtual reality.
He outlined how each group is led by its own executive. The leaders of Meta's app-based products report to Chris Cox, the chief product officer. Heads of cross-functional services, such as ads, infrastructure, and integrity systems, report to Meta's chief operating officer, Javier Olivan. And leaders working on future technology platforms report to Andrew Bosworth, the company's chief technology officer.
Zuck doesn't have many direct reports
Zuckerberg views the people in charge of the 15 product groups as "the people who are running the real things" and shared that he doesn't want to have 15 direct reports, which is why they report to other members of the management team.
"I don't have 60 direct reports, I don't even like managing people," Zuckerberg told Collison.
Zuckerberg also isn't interested in micromanaging. He said, "I think if you're going to report to me, you need to be able to manage yourself."
He doesn't believe in delegation
The Meta CEO rejects the idea that leadership is about hiring people and delegating tasks to them. Instead, he prefers to stay closely involved in critical decisions.
"I just don't believe in delegating," he said. "I think that that's generally a good way for founders to operate. If you're running the company and you're on the hook for everything and there's something that's important at whatever level of detail in the organization, I don't get the logic of saying 'I'm not going to be involved in that.'"
He added, "You want to have humility and know that if you're diving into some decision, you may not have the most context immediately, but I generally think that you want to be able to just have the cultural expectation that things are not going to be so hierarchical and you're just going to dive into whatever you want."
No recurring one-on-one meetings
Zuckerberg said he tries to minimize standing meetings and has just two weekly recurring meetings with a small group. One is an open-ended strategy discussion, and the other focuses on company priorities.
He said, "When I say I don't have one-on-ones, I don't have recurring scheduled one-on-ones, I talk to all these people constantly, more than they want to talk to me I'm sure, but I do it when I have something that I want to talk to them about, or if they want to talk to me I try to generally keep a bunch of time open."
He also tries to ensure that he has a block of time each day to focus on key tasks, or he will "get really frustrated" and be in a "bad mood."
He said, "It's like, you have too many days like that in a row and I just like explode, so I think you want to make sure that you keep a meaningful amount of your time open so that way you can just go talk to the people that you want to either about whatever you want to get done or whatever you want to learn about about what's going on in the organization," he said.
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