Doug Wolfe, the head of Online Operations for Facebook in Austin spoke to the BHP sophomores last week during their lyceum course. He captured the students’ attention with riveting tales of his time in the military and sound career advice. His path is anything but typical, but he explained that there is a common thread, even if it may not be fully apparent at first glance.
Wolfe attended Officer Candidate School when he was an undergraduate and spent nine years as a U.S. Marine Corps Officer. His specialty was in logistics and he went on multiple deployments, including Operation Iraqi Freedom. He then earned his MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, while simultaneously serving as a Naval ROTC instructor at the school. He then spent four years at Morgan Stanley & Co. in institutional services. When he realized he didn’t want to do investment banking anymore, he spent many sleepless nights trying to figure out what it was that he wanted to do. He finally focused on doing what he loved to in an industry he found compelling, finding an operations and organizational leadership role at Facebook in 2010. He recently assumed the position of head of online operations for Facebook’s Austin office.
So what is the common thread? Chaos said Wolfe. He talked about the chaos that exists in serving in the military, where you are consistently faced with new challenges; the chaos that exists in the financial markets; and the chaos that ensues from trying to meet the needs of billions of Facebook users. “I like working in chaos, with some amount of control. The environment keeps you agile. There is value in inefficiency and the space it creates to innovate and learn.”
Leadership and ethics are the two focus areas for the lyceum course and Wolfe said his philosophies on both were heavily shaped by the Marine Corp.
As a leader, he tries to find the best position for someone based on their skill sets, shape them in that role, and then give them the autonomy and practice they need to execute on their own. He stressed the importance of understanding people’s motivations, so you can emotionally connect them to what they are doing.
When talking about ethics, Wolfe recounted the old motto of, ‘You are what you do.’ “Integrity is a bridge between your words and actions,” he said. He explained that Facebook has five values, and one of those is to build trust. He takes that seriously and said that seeing the consistent reflection of Facebook’s five values in their actions is part of what attracted him to working for the company.
Several students asked questions alluding to criticism that Facebook has faced from their users over the years in response to changes made to the platform. “We are user-driven, not necessarily user-led,” said Wolfe. “We have a ship-evaluate-change-ship again philosophy. If you aren’t trying something new, someone else will, and you will lose your position as the market-leader.”