"We look like a clown car"

Julie Greenwald is chairwoman and chief operating officer of the Atlantic Records Group.  She offers the following comments on leadership and running meetings:

I spend a lot of time in small meetings.  I make sure that we constantly talk about culture and what we need and why something is not just one person's responsibility, and that we all have to have ownership.

I constantly talk about how we have to be vulnerable, and that it's not fair for some people in meetings to just sit or stand along the wall and not participate.  It you're not going to participate, then that means you're just sponging off the rest of us.

It's important for everyone to understand we're a company where risk-taking is necessary.  I know it's not easy sometimes.  I hate public speaking.  The only way I conquered it was being put on the spot all the time.  In order to lead, you have to be a public speaker, and you need to be able to really drive the meeting.

I'm not afraid to call a meeting and shove 17 people into a tiny office.  We look like a clown car.  But you know what?  It's O.K. because that's when you feel like, "All right, we;re this tight knit unit."  So I started to assemble a whole other set of meetings, like SWAT teams, in my office.  Sometimes I look around and I think, "Am I an idiot that I've got 50 people cramming into my office?"  But we're so on top of each other you feel like "It's us against the world."