With his bioelectrical engineering background, Dara Khosrowshahi frames the CEO role as a large-scale engineering challenge. He sees companies as machines run by people, where the leader's job is to design the system, set the right goals, and assemble the components to achieve a desired output.
Dara Khosrowshahi believes that for a CEO to receive honest, unfiltered information, they must first be radically transparent. He views this as a self-defense mechanism; if leaders sugarcoat reality, employees will do the same, starving the CEO of the hard truths needed for good decision-making.
Dara Khosrowshahi's M&A experience taught him that great acquisitions often seem overpriced. Markets value companies on linear projections, but transformative companies grow exponentially. The key is to pay for the unseen "hockey stick" growth curve that the market misses, meaning you will always overpay relative to current sentiment.
Dara Khosrowshahi asserts that the most critical skill is learning to work hard, comparing it to the discipline of elite athletes who combine talent with relentless effort. He argues this skill can be cultivated and provides a compounding advantage, and it's something he aims to instill in his company and his children.
Dara Khosrowshahi adopted a framework for failure from mentor Barry Diller. After losing a major deal, Diller's public statement was "They won, we lost, next." This approach avoids both sugarcoating failure and obsessing over it, instead focusing on acknowledging the loss, learning, and immediately moving on.
Uber's effort to reset its culture by crowdsourcing values from employees resulted in a forgettable list of corporate buzzwords like "teamwork." A later, more successful attempt involved leadership defining unique, specific values like "Go Get It" that truly reflected the company's distinct identity.
Dara Khosrowshahi attributes his relentless drive to his family losing everything during the Iranian Revolution. This created a core feeling of "never feeling safe" and the sense that everything can be taken away. This insecurity prevents complacency and fuels a constant need to build, improve, and never take success for granted.
Unlike companies that pay lip service to work-life balance, Uber's CEO is explicit: new hires are expected to work incredibly hard, and underperformers will be pushed out. This upfront honesty acts as a filter, attracting individuals who thrive in a high-intensity environment and ensuring cultural alignment from day one.
After failing to hire the right leader for Expedia's largest business unit twice, Dara Khosrowshahi realized he didn't understand the job's requirements. He took on the role himself for several years. This hands-on experience gave him the deep operational understanding needed to finally identify and hire the right person.
Uber's CEO advises against overly detailed career plans, arguing they create confirmation bias and a lack of curiosity. People with rigid plans look for signals that validate their path and ignore unexpected opportunities. His advice: "Before you go out and try to change a world, let the world change you first."