Category Archives: Management

Transition Reflections

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Monarch chrysalis (Danaus plexippus) in its “neutral” phase.

Over the past year, I have had several clients going through periods of transition. Some have been co-founders who realized that it was time for a more experienced leader to take their business to the next level. Some were just ready for something new. Others have shifted their roles from leader to individual contributor and in one recent case, a CEO-founder sold their company and is now transitioning to a leader within a very large organization. In each of these cases, these were not overnight changes, but rather they were thoughtful shifts that each managed with intention. By transitioning with intention, we are more likely to come out on the other side with more clarity, less stress and with a higher likelihood of success – in whatever way each individual defines success.

The book Transitions, by William and Susan Bridges, outlines the three stages of transition – The Ending, The Neutral Zone and The New Beginning – and encourages the reader to pause and understand each of these phases during their own transitions. This is something most of us do not do with intention – whether it’s ending a relationship, changing a job or transitioning from a household of kids to an empty nest. When it comes to our employment, we have our last day at an old job on a Friday and start our new job on Monday; perhaps taking a week or two in between to decompress. Most people do not have the luxury of long breaks between jobs or extended periods of time to think about their transition before they step into the next thing. Additionally, as Bridges points out, we often don’t see when we are in a neutral zone – that time when we have officially “let go” of who we were before things ended, before we fully embrace the new beginning. Think of it as that time between how you associate yourself with “we”. When you stop saying “at my last company, we…” but you have yet to associate yourself with the “we” of your new role and still refer to your new team as “you”. E.g., “How do you do things here?” It is in this neutral zone where we are truly able to start our transition to a new beginning.

With this neutral zone in mind, I encourage my clients to take a moment – even if it’s just an afternoon – to consider the impact of a transition and what lies ahead. This is usually in the form of journaling where they write their responses to the prompts below and then we discuss them together. Whether or not you have a coach with whom to process your answers to these prompts, you should find journaling your responses to be a useful exercise. You might also consider asking a friend or partner to be your listening guide as you talk them through; be sure to encourage them just to listen and be curious about insights vs. helping you try to solve things.

The prompts below are very career-centric, geared towards startup founders. However, one can easily apply this guide to any type of transition.

Document Your Feels

There is lots of research proving that writing what’s going on in our brains is an important way to process and organize our thoughts. Whether you keep a journal or are just taking a moment in transition to write your thoughts, consider the following:

Highlights & Lowlights

  • What are 1-2 highlights from your experience? This could be a memory of your first big product launch, closing a hard funding round or even just that night that all hell broke loose and you fixed a hairy bug at 2am. What made these experiences great? What do you remember about how you felt – physically and emotionally – about these events? How did they motivate you going forward?
  • What are 1-2 lowlights from your experience? It could be that one time you really thought the company was dead or when one of your best employees quit because they just couldn’t adapt to the frenetic startup life. What made these experiences awful? What do you remember about how you felt – physically and emotionally – about these events? How did they motivate you going forward?

Learning

  • What have you learned as…a leader, partner, employee, peer, innovator, business-person? Most leaders wear many hats and it’s important to use these different lenses to fully embrace all the learnings that came from your journey.
  • What specific skills have you developed or mastered? Consider all functions within an organization – financial, sales, product, hiring, etc. These are typically your marketable skills and are often very transferable for the next gig.
  • What are you more aware of about yourself that you may not have known at the start of this journey? For example, you may have thought you were not technical, but after having to build your company’s first app because you couldn’t afford to hire a developer, you now know you are more technical than you thought you were at the start!

Evolution

  • How have you evolved? Consider phases in your journey – by role or “eras”. For example, perhaps who you were as a strategic leader was very different when you were bootstrapped vs. once you raised your A-round and had a board of directors. Or, perhaps you have shifted in the way you approach the work day as you went from being single to being married with children. 
  • Who have you become? Think about your key characteristics, your behavioral patterns and attitudes. How is the current “you” different from who you were when you first started this journey? Do you feel differently about things (family, relationships, career) or have changed your reaction to certain situations (more/less triggered, sensitive, focused, caring)?

The Future

  • What new tools do you wish to ADD to your toolbox? For example, a product-oriented CEO may wish to learn more about creating a sales playbook or experience venture from an investor’s perspective vs. as the fundraiser. What tools are missing from your toolbox?
  • What existing tools in your toolbox do you wish to HONE? For example, a founder may have led a small team and might want to know what it’s like to lead a larger team at scale. Or perhaps you were great at building a social media campaign, but want to learn more about the broader elements of marketing and brand functions.
  • What do you wish to leave behind? Consider elements of your role that you didn’t enjoy and that you don’t want to do again (e.g., finance or maybe even management!). Similarly, consider behavioral characteristics that no longer serve you. Were you a micromanager who spent too much time in the weeds? Did you spend too much time on product and not enough time on the rest of your business? Think about what drove you to develop these behaviors, why they did or didn’t serve you in your role and how they will or won’t serve you going forward. 
    • NOTE: The act of physically releasing things can be very healing. Start by writing a few sentences or drawing pictures on a piece of paper and (safely) burn it or fold it into a paper airplane and toss it from a city window or into the sea. Instead of writing, you could also use natural objects to represent things (e.g., an acorn to represent your tough outer shell or a dried leaf to represent being fragile in certain situations). State your intentions – out loud or in your mind – as you let these things go. What will be different once you let them go?
  • What do you wish to teach others? Whether your transition is related to a great exit or awesome promotion or because you feel you failed in some way – your business imploded or you were fired – you have lots to teach others! My father called any learning, even if we failed, “money in the bank”. Take time to reflect on what you learned (above) and how you might be able to mentor others to grow or avoid pitfalls. Not only will this help others following your path, but this will also help you further process your transition.

When journaling the above, I encourage writing full sentences and fully expressing your thoughts around each. Don’t worry about being legible – you may never go back to read them – it is the act of writing that is key here. As you write, look for themes or patterns – do these further inform your transition? Do you see new patterns and/or growth opportunities?

Other Opportunities To Reflect And Reach Closure

If your transition involves others such as cofounders or partners, consider conducting a group reflection process in addition to your individual process. This can be a great way to recognize how the sum is greater than its parts. While each team member played a role in your efforts, it is almost always how the team worked together that led to where you are now. Schedule a couple hours to be together – ideally, face to face and out of the office/home – and share the following with each other:

  • Highlights & Lowlights of the work you did together. Consider specific wins you had as a team and what made that work together special. Name one or two times that the team was not at its best. How did these moments affect the trajectory of your business/relationship?
  • What are you most proud of as a team? Are there events or elements of your business that could not have happened without the team coming together?
  • Key learnings for each individual. Have each person speak to one or two key learnings. It is OK to “+1” someone else’s key learning, but that should not supplant one’s own learnings. Try to acknowledge each of your team members as they cite a learning. “You crushed that big deal. I learned a lot from watching you navigate such a tricky negotiation.” OR “Firing that great engineer who was a bad teammate was so hard. I really admired the way you handled that situation.”
  • State what you wish for each other to encourage their path forward. For example, wishing them a great new partnership or a challenging new role.
  • Finally, commit to each other. This may be very tactical like committing to getting together once a quarter for beers or a family gathering. Or, it could be committing to supporting each other in their journeys going forward (networking, job reference, a place to crash when they are in town, etc.…).

These prompts work best when they are spontaneous vs. prepared in advance, so I recommend sharing the prompts when you come together. This certainly depends on the type of relationship you have with your partners, but if you are the CEO with co-founders all going through a transition, I recommend you do the above with a facilitator OR at the very least encourage your partners to speak first so as not to bias their reflections. Further, if you and/or your partners have significant others, do not lose sight that they too are going through this transition. A partner who’s significant other is all of a sudden more available than they were when they were running a company, or who is feeling insecure because their partner just lost their job, needs to reflect as much as you do. Make the space for this and include them in any group processes that will serve these important adjunct members of your group.

The New Beginning

You may know exactly what your New Beginning is – e.g., your company was acquired and now you’re in a new role at the acquiring company – you’ve got a new business idea or you have no idea what’s next. When you are unsure about what’s next, it can be easier to think about what you don’t want in your next role vs. what the perfect next role might be. Here are a few prompts to consider for the next thing:

  • What types of roles do you know you definitely don’t want? This could be a level of responsibility (e.g., a founding CEO may know they never want to be a CEO again) or within a function of an organization. (e.g., an engineer who became a product leader may prefer to go back to coding).
  • What industries are off the table for you? Maybe you spent the last decade in e-commerce and you’d like to try an adjacent area like MarTech or retail?
  • What type of people do you prefer to not work with? E.g., extroverts or introverts, micromanagers, jerks, etc.
  • What stage of business disinterests you? E.g., does the thought of inheriting a team vs. starting a team from scratch sound miserable? Or perhaps you never want to have to fundraise again.
  • What would you have to see in your future role to signal potential? Often, when in transition, we overcorrect for the things we didn’t enjoy in our last role. You may cut yourself off from something you might enjoy based on fear from your past experience. Consider what characteristics are important to you in a new role that may allow you to step into discomfort in an effort to grow and learn.

Whichever route you take, if you have less urgency to get employed ASAP, take as much time (if not more) to consider what’s next as you do with your reflections about what was. I suggest a ninety day period – yes, I know, that may be an unaffordable luxury – where you take at least 30 days to reflect, 30 days to consider your new beginning and then 30 days to gear up for the next thing. Even if you are working through the next thing during this period, try to recognize that you are still in transition and journal new insights as they arise.

Transitions are not always easy and we often don’t give ourselves the time to fully process our endings before we jump into the next thing. Take the time if you can and I am almost certain you will find it helpful. Have you tried other techniques to help you process a transition? Please share in the comments!

The Co-Founder Courtship

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Co-founding teams from Wistia, CodeSee, Pandium and Rubicon MD

Recently, I was listening to the Huberman Lab podcast where Dr. Huberman interviewed Dr. Buss, a founding member in the field of evolutionary psychology and Professor of Psychology at UT, Austin, whose research centers around How Humans Select & Keep Romantic Partners in Short & Long Term Relationships. In the podcast, Dr. Buss describes his research on how people select mates and the dynamics of courtship. While the podcast was focussed primarily on heterogeneous relationships, marriage and monogamy, I couldn’t help but think of the parallels with co-founder relationships. My brain is in the entrepreneurship space most of my waking hours, after all, and it made me think about how many entrepreneurs I know are looking for co-founders, yet many don’t appreciate that this is a similar courtship to mating and partnership. 

Many entrepreneurs believe they must have a co-founder and some are pressured by investors to have a particular type of co-founder. The conviction to have a co-founder is often based solely on complementary skills and experience vs. the softer, and often more important, relationship criteria. While there are some working papers out there, I have yet to see definitive research that proves whether one absolutely must have co-founders vs. going it alone as a solo founder. This is a highly subjective situation dependent on many factors; some of which I’ll discuss below. 

Do you need a co-founder?

I’ve worked both for and with hundreds of entrepreneurs in the last few decades and on the topic of co-founder relationships, my observation is that each situation is highly dependent on the chemistry, the experience each brings into the relationship, leadership styles and many other internal and external factors. While having co-founders can de-risk the business and/or complement skills, forcing these relationships can result in bad “marriages” that create more harm to a business than help. Certainly, when a great match happens it can be magic, but just like any marriage, one should not enter the relationship rashly.

When thinking about whether or not you need a co-founder, consider:

  • How could a co-founder balance your skills and experience? For example, if you are a technologist, but lack management or operating skills (marketing, sales, etc.), you may benefit from a more seasoned business leader as co-founder who’s seen the movie before. While many operating skills can be learned, early stage founders may underestimate how critical these skills are to have early on and rookie mistakes can set back (or kill) a business before it’s barely out of the gate. Read Khalid Halim’s thoughts on Hypergrowth and The Law Of Startup Physics for more on this point. Conversely, expertise and experience can be additive to the business without a co-founder title and compensation. Unless you are doing hard science that is your core business, building a business that is technology-forward or relies on tech to some degree is not nearly as hard as it once was. Having a strong first-hire who is technical can suffice; the same holds for someone with strong sales, marketing or other operational skills.
  • Is domain expertise critical for your venture? Unless you are already the expert in the particular field your venture intends to address, you may need a co-founder with domain specific expertise. Having domain expertise will not only inform the product strategy, but will also help the venture gain credibility in the market and potentially open doors on the sales side. Investors may expect or even require there be a domain expert on the co-founding team, but similar to the point above, you may also be well served with a first hire or even an advisor who could serve you in this way vs. a co-founder.
  • Most importantly, ask yourself whether you value partnership, shared risk and collaboration with others. It can be great to have someone to brainstorm with, share the workload and to commiserate with during your journey, but having co-founders – like a committed personal partnership – is also a big test of your ability to be vulnerable, handle conflict and willingness to compromise. There will be many times your co-founding team will disagree on things – from product and hiring decisions to operating procedures and a fundraising strategy – and how you process these decisions together is fundamental to a healthy co-founding relationship. Self awareness, a willingness to lean into conflict and ability to thrive in ambiguous situations will be critical in a co-founding relationship. If you question whether you are up for sharing these experiences with one or more co-founders, you may need to do some introspective work before taking on a co-founder or, perhaps, go it alone.

Anyone thinking about having a co-founder must go beyond the skills and experience aspects and consider the fact that they are entering into a deep, personal relationship. Whether it’s because you couldn’t find “the one” and time is of the essence or because you are self aware enough to know you are better off going it alone, taking the solo route is perfectly doable by rounding out your team with necessary skills and expertise. You might also consider a second in command (COO, CTO, etc.) who plays a key role in the business without the official co-founder title and compensation. These individuals can still receive founding team worthy equity grants and, in earlier stage businesses could be anointed as “co-founder” down the road if the relationship blossoms over time.

The Co-Founder Courtship

If you’ve decided that you really want and/or need a co-founder, you’ve basically decided to seek a mate for a long term partnership. Just like a personal relationship may result in children, big financial decisions (like buying a house), running a household, etc., a co-founding relationship will force you to commit to how you will nurture employees, manage finances and run your business. There are big decisions to make – “how will we educate our kids?” is similar to “what kind of company culture will we have?”. There are philosophies on which to reach alignment – “where will we raise our family?” is similar to “will we have a home office or remote-friendly work environment?”. You can’t have a few coffee meetings with a prospective co-founder to discover how you will answer these deeper questions. It’s a courtship and despite the urgency you may have to get going with the venture so you can raise money, hire people, etc., I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to nurture these prospective relationships.

Herewith a few suggestions on how to court your co-founder(s):

  • Conduct a listening tour by meeting other startup co-founders. Talk with them about their own courtship process. Ask if there were questions they wish they had asked and hurdles they had to overcome early in their relationship. Even the greatest co-founding teams have war stories to tell about stressful situations in their relationships and what they learned from these experiences.
  • Using insights from the listening tour, along with your personal preferences, write a co-founder job description (JD) and include experience, skills and your ideal, softer, characteristics for this person. If you already have someone in mind, try to stay objective and not write this JD to ensure they can fill the role (confirmation bias). Use this as your guide as you meet prospective co-founders and adjust as you go. It’s very likely that the more prospects you meet, the more tweaks you’ll make to that JD and finding “the one”.
    • NOTE: If more than two of you are thinking about becoming co-founders, do the JD method as a “diverge-converge” exercise. Discuss potential roles each may fill and have each of you, independently (diverge) write the optimal co-founder JDs for each role. Once each has taken a stab at this exercise on their own, share these JDs with each other (converge) and discuss where you were all coming from for each role. Not only will this better define each role, but it will allow you and your prospective co-founders to expose perceptions and expectations of each other and how the leadership of the business will play out.
  • Experienced hiring managers know that it is rare they’ll hire the first candidate they interview for a newly created role because they may not be clear on the right fit for the role until they’ve met a few types of candidates. The same holds for co-founders. You may have to test a few potential co-founder candidates before inking a co-founder agreement. Try to meet at least a half-dozen people who may solve for the gaps you are hoping to fill (expertise, experience, chemistry, etc.). Yes, this may mean you are “dating more than one person at a time”, but you’ll be far more clear about fit through this series of conversations.
    • NOTE: Finding a half-dozen candidates may not be easy. Tap into your network, ask prospective investors, former professors, etc. and tell them what you’re looking for. Share the JD. Attend conferences, talks etc. and be clear you are in the market for a co-founder. YC also released a co-founder matching tool that may be helpful.
  • Test the relationship beyond coffee chats and dinners. As noted in the Huberman podcast noted above, relationships are truly tested when the parties engage in experiences that allow them to see more dimensions of their personalities. For example, go on a road trip or partake in an activity that neither of you have done before. See how each of you make decisions together like where to eat lunch or which trail to hike. Even a game of mini golf at a course neither of you have visited or playing a video game together can test how you collaborate and/or handle competition. You might also consider working on a start-up related project together to see how that feels, such as co-creating a pitch deck or conducting customer interviews together.
    • NOTE: If you are considering a first time co-founding relationship with someone you’ve worked with at a company in the past, this does not give you a “pass” to skip this part of the process. Co-founding a business with a former coworker is like going from dating to living together. You are sharing responsibilities you likely did not have when you were colleagues at a business where someone else was accountable for the overall successes and failures and, likely, making more strategic decisions than you were privy to.
  • Have vulnerable conversations. One of the most popular sessions in my course at HBS is the discussion around one’s relationship with money. Most adults have very different perspectives on money and typically this is rooted in deep family or personal experiences, sometimes starting in early childhood. A parent losing a job, having to work at a young age to support family, credit card debt, anxiety about school loans, etc. Understanding how you and your co-founder think about money will give you a lot of perspective when it comes time to raise capital, price your product, pay employees, etc. Similarly, it’s important to talk about any peak moments in past jobs, school, etc. that inform your attitudes about leadership, culture and how products are designed/built, etc. While these conversations may feel very uncomfortable, it’s a step towards a solid working foundation in what will almost surely be a roller coaster of a journey together. Being able to have these conversations also tests how you’ll handle and support each other during conflict and stressful moments. You will have context and better understand where you are each coming from. Most importantly, these types of conversations don’t stop once you agree to be co-founders; they should be ongoing throughout the life of your venture as each co-founder and the relationship matures.
  • Finally, I recommend that prospective co-founders meet each others’ partners/families/BFFs. Not only does this further uncover the broader context of who these individuals are, but it also helps these important people in your lives understand this new relationship you may be entering. So, when you are up until 2am slacking with your co-founder about the upcoming pitch or how to deal with a customer issue, they know who that person is and how they are partnered with you.
    • NOTE: For those considering co-founders who ARE your partner/family member/BFF, I encourage you to enter with a mindset around taking a personal partnership from no kids to four kids. It brings the relationship to a whole new level. This can be an incredibly rewarding experience for you, but it can also test the relationship to the max. While this person/people know and probably trust each other better than strangers co-founding a business together, it also means there is likely baggage that can create more emotion and triggers around certain issues than the average partnership. I have worked with incredibly endearing and high performing co-founding teams made up of siblings, married couples and BFFs, but I have also seen these types of co-founding teams erode due to irreparable events rooted in their personal history. Do not take this choice lightly. Consider getting a coach early on who specializes in working with co-founders who also have personal history together. I guarantee you will not be able to put your personal stuff in a box outside your business. Personal tensions will come up – either overtly or subtly – and having the support to work through it will be crucial to your long term success.

One cannot rush the co-founder courtship process. The most successful co-founding relationships I’ve seen inevitably end up being far more than co-workers. They are practically family and while that means potentially more emotions are at stake, it’s their mutual understanding and deep respect for each other that allows them to traverse this often treacherous journey. They have mutual trust and are committed to ensuring the success of their business, together.

There are many other articles and videos published on this topic, but a few I like are here, here and here.

Do you have lessons learned from your co-founder courting and/or working relationships? Please share in the comments!

On Hiring: Beyond the Interview

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There are no books you can read or blog posts you can scan that will guarantee that you make the right hire 100% of the time. From bad chemistry to misunderstandings about role expectations, even the strongest candidate may not work out. Also, despite best efforts, early stage companies or new teams inside scaling business often don’t know what they need until they have someone in a particular role. You might realize “oops, this person is great, but their skills are not what we need!”. It happens at every company. Hiring is HARD.

While you can’t prevent occasional mis-hires, you can try to minimize the possibility by including a project or testing phase in your hiring process. This is the stage beyond the standard interview questions and reference checks that gives you a sense of who this person really is, their skills and how they will approach their role. The goal of these tests is to allow the candidate to demonstrate what they are capable of and what it might be like to work with them once they are on board. These tests are critical and will either help you dodge a mis-hire or give you a higher degree of confidence that this is “the one”. I recommend that these tests are performed when you have 1-2 finalists and just before you are ready to do reference checks and make an offer. This can be an especially helpful step if you are down to two finalists you really like.

With this in mind, below are some tips on how to do these tests. For each of these tests, it’s about how the candidate approaches the test and the problem vs. getting correct answers. Build alignment with your team on what “good looks like” for each test and plan to debrief once the assignment is complete and/or presented. Examples of what good might look like are included below.

“The First 90 Days” Test

This is a good general test for any new hire, especially an executive, but also for a people manager or technical leader. Have the candidate explain what their first 90 days on the job will look like. Either leave it wide open or offer a few prompts like “Who will you spend time with?” or “How will you get to know the business?” or “What accomplishments do you hope to make by the end of the first 90-days?”. Avoid being overly prescriptive or leading questions like “Name all the team members you’ll want to get to know” or “Will you spend time with marketing and sales?”. An experienced candidate should have a good sense of how they would spend their first 90 days based on the research they’ve done on your company and insights they’ve gained from interviews with the team.

What good might look like: 

  • Thoughtful about talking with the right stakeholders and when – align with your team on who they’d expect to see on the candidate’s list and when they’d expect to meet with this new hire within the first 90 days
  • Organized and realistic about what can be accomplished in 90 days – align with your team on what you’d expect
  • Asks good questions to get a feel for the assignment – shows they are comfortable with getting clarity on situations (not arrogant)
  • Articulates assumptions made (if any) – often a requirement of leadership roles and demonstrates strong communication skills
  • Cites examples from conversations they’ve had with team members/research they’ve done on the company, market, etc. – demonstrates they listened, interested and have taken the time to understand the opportunity

Engineering and Design Tests

While there are some nifty tools out there that can test coding skills for engineers, I am a strong advocate for testing the human side of these skills. Those who design and/or build your product should be able to demonstrate their work beyond coding or portfolio samples. The best tests here are brief scenarios that demonstrate not just depth of syntax knowledge or design best practices, but also how they will work on a problem with your team. These types of tests can be done as “homework” although it’s nice if it can be done in-person as part of an onsite/video interview. Present a scenario and ask the candidate how they will approach it. You could give them some alone time to think it through and then ask them to talk you (or a domain expert) through it. Ask them to cite how they thought about it and explain the direction they took and why. Prepare to have another approach or idea for the scenario when they walk through their work. This can help gauge how the candidate handles feedback and if they are willing to collaborate on ideas.

Try not to give an assignment that takes more than 1-2 hours to do unless you pay them for the work. I know a company who always pays for the time taken to do the test and if the candidate declines payment, they make a donation to their charity of the candidate’s choice for their time. (So cool!)

What good might look like: 

  • Asks good questions to get a feel for the assignment
  • Articulates assumptions made (if any)
  • Able to explain their work and creative approach; approach aligns with how your team operates and/or offers new ideas that will expand the possibilities for your team/product
  • Comfortable receiving feedback; bonus points if they’re willing to riff on the idea and take it to a better place.

Scenario Tests For Functional Teams (Marketing, Sales, Product, etc.)

Functional leaders are often asked to present a past project they did as a way to demonstrate their work. While this lends insight into the candidate’s past work, I prefer scenario tests. While the former does tell you an experience they had and what worked or not, it will not expose their work on something new. Further, a walkthrough of a former project may not give you insight into what they (vs. other team members) actually did to achieve success. In those cases, I listen for “we did this…” which begs the question “what part of that did YOU do?”. Here are some quick examples of scenario tests for a few functional areas:

Product: Our CTO just came back from a “listening tour” with some of our customers and wants to explore a new set of features to expand our product offerings. These offerings are not on the product roadmap. What steps would you take to understand these new features and how would you approach the prioritization process?

Marketing: We’re about to launch a new product for our customers. It is the first new product we’ve launched in a year. What steps would you take to plan for this product launch and how will you measure its success?

Sales Leader: We are building a product to attract new customers in a new vertical. What information do you need to prepare your team to sell this new product and how will you set sales goals for the team?

You could imagine similar scenarios for finance, customer support or other functional roles. Remember, they still don’t know how your business functions day to day and this isn’t whether they have a perfect plan, but more about how they approach the problem. For functional roles that will require strong communication and presentation skills, have them present their assignments as they would if they were doing it for your team, board or customers, depending on the scenario. For presentations, the ideal flow is interviews, assignment for finalists, and then a presentation to all those who interviewed the candidate. Other key stakeholders could sit in on the presentation, but to mitigate overwhelming the candidate, I suggest only those who interview them do Q&A after the presentation. Q&A should probe what’s being tested (what good looks like) and not to have candidates try to get correct answers.

What good might look like: 

  • Demonstrates research they’ve done to prepare the assignment
    • Including people on your team they may ask to speak with to prepare their preparation
  • Presentation skills – both oral and written. Focus more on content and less on pretty graphics on presentation decks unless that’s an important element of the role
  • Articulates assumptions made (if any).
  • Scenario solution is thoughtful, logical and realistic – align with your team in advance on what this would look like
  • Bonus points if they add insights that the team can learn from (e.g., I once had a VP Marketing candidate tell us what was broken with our SEO and how to improve it as part of his presentation of a hypothetical scenario. It was brilliant!)

With all of the interviews and testing, you still may not get it right every time. Again, hiring is HARD. For some roles, a “try before you buy” is often the best way to go for both the candidate and the company. Not every candidate can opt out of benefits or other things they need from a full time job to do a trial, but if it’s possible or they can do it outside of work, go for it. Pick a project that’s reasonable to do in 30-45 days and agree on what good will look like before they get started. Pay them an hourly rate and set the candidate up for success so they can hit the ground running (e.g., security access to your code repo, slack, etc,) and continue to test the soft skills as they go. if applicable, tell the candidate in advance that if they are hired, equity vesting will start when they started their project vs their actual start date. It’s a nice incentive for them to take the project seriously and know you are invested in their success. 

Finally, if you’re hiring a role for the first time and no one on your team has experience with that role – no one knows what good looks like – ask an advisor, investor or friend with experience to be part of the interview process. They should not only be able to interview the candidate, but also help you formulate the tests!

Do you have other tests or projects you like to use as part of the hiring process? Please share in the comments!

Paving The Way For Less Experienced Hires At Early Startups

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Photo Credit From: https://hfaplanning.com/

So many of the early stage companies I work with are struggling to hire talent. Despite the pandemic, they have raised capital and are looking to hire everything from engineering and UX to marketing, sales and support. You’d think with the pandemic there’d be a lot of people looking for work, but in startup land (tech or not), it’s definitely a candidate’s market…unless you are considered too inexperienced for a role. I especially see this for candidates in underrepresented talent groups where there are less opportunities to develop strong networks. Further, less experienced candidates coming from first jobs at a big company where they hoped to gain mentoring and experience before going to a startup can be boxed out before they even get their careers of the ground. These candidates are often viewed as unable to work in a more scrappy, smaller scale organization.

The most common reason for not hiring less experienced talent in a very early stage company (say, less than 20 people) is lack of time to manage and mentor these team members. I get it. If you are a startup leader, you want an A+ team of people who are self-starters and have seen the movie before. While also more expensive, experienced hires should know how things work and in theory should hit the ground running. That said, even experienced hires rarely work effectively and that independently on day one. Further, I don’t know a single startup that has hired an all senior team and never had to let someone go (or they quit) within their first 90 days. This can be because of a mismatch in expectations, lack of alignment or often it’s because the more senior team members had become accustomed to managing more than doing in their prior roles; they were potentially “startup curious” and couldn’t scale down and/or they had lost their player-coach edge.

It is rare that any startup gets their first twenty hires right. Iteration, learning what you need in your team and evolution as your product changes and company grows is a likely cause for lots of refactoring of teams in the first few years. Therefore, hiring a few less experienced folks could net the same result as one senior hire – some will work out, and some will not. Yes, letting someone go or having them quit and starting over is a total time suck, but that’s part of the game and most companies get better and better in finding and keeping great talent over time. From my personal experience working for several startups early on, each of which had insane growth, I found having a mix of seasoned and less experienced team members can be a super power. Less experienced team members were hungry and eager to learn and the senior team members enjoyed mentoring and handing off the more menial tasks so they could focus on meatier and often more strategic work. It was a win-win and many of those junior team members have had incredible careers after we gave them their first shot.

For the Manager

Here are a few things to consider for those anxious about hiring less experienced talent:

  • Pipeline: In this candidates’ market, hiring managers need to treat recruiting like a sales exercise. Fill the funnel! Overly prescriptive job descriptions will limit applicants (especially women) – this includes being too specific about the number of years of experience required which may not translate well for someone who’s been coding since middle school, but has only been in the workforce for 1-2 years. Get the resumes in, then decide how you want to weed out less relevant candidates.
  • Pre-Interview Screening: Don’t judge a resume by it’s timeline! As noted above, many inexperienced candidates – especially engineers – have been doing relevant work well before they went to college or may be understating their contributions in their current roles. They may lack the confidence to promote their work, but that doesn’t mean they can’t get the work done. Consider having a screening question about how long the candidate has been doing relevant work that may not appear on their LinkedIn/resume.
  • Interview: Size the questions and/or the coding exercise with the experience. Determine if the candidate can learn quickly, whether they ask good questions and whether they can deliver on time. Early on in their careers, these are the key skills that will assure they will thrive vs. showing you their perfect coding capabilities in an interview or through a take-home exercise.
  • Potential for hire: If all that is keeping you from hiring a less experienced candidate who shows tons of potential is having the time or talent to mentor these candidates, look beyond yourself and your more experienced team. Have advisors who can sign up to serve as mentors for inexperienced folks. This can range from doing code reviews before check-ins to helping an inexperienced salesperson practice their pitch. These mentors do not have to have full context on your business or the details of the work; if they are seasoned, they know what to look for and should be able to offer objective guidance (and you should offer them some equity and have them sign an NDA, obvi!).
  • On the job: Yay! You are ready to hire a less experienced team member. Set the right expectations and scale the work. As with any hire, they won’t be up to speed on day one. Their 30-60-90 day onboarding process may look different than a more senior hire though. Start small and work up to more challenging tasks. As my favorite leadership coach Brené Brown says in her amazing book Dare To Lead “Paint what ‘done’ looks like.” The most common reason for failure between employees and their leaders in any job – regardless of experience – is misalignment about what the endpoint should look like. Always define and communicate measurable, clear, goals.

NOTE: If you will hire for a role within the next six months, but are not actively filling it, and a current candidate shows promise for that future role, hire them! You don’t want to kick yourself in a few months that you didn’t hire that candidate when you had the chance. This of course assumes you have the budget to do so.

For The Less Experienced Candidate

For folks dealing with the catch-22 of needing experience, but not getting job interviews or offers because you lack enough experience, here are some things to consider:

  • Highlight Transferable Skills: Look deeply at your resume and try to tease out skills you have gained in past roles that are applicable to the job you wish to land. Were you a camp counselor while in college? You likely have strong leadership skills, can multitask and work well in teams. Worked as a waitperson in college? You have sales and customer service experience! Were you on the robotics team or helped friends build their first websites in high school? You started building your technical skills earlier than you think! This also works for job shifters – pull out the buzzwords that highlight your transferable skills. Be explicit under each role such as “Product Management Skills:…” or “Sales Skills:…”.
  • Get Help: Find someone in your network to help you further tease out your experience in your resume and help you practice your interviewing skills. Tap into former bosses, advisors and college professors. If they can’t help directly, they may know someone who can! Practice both technical skills and general communication skills. Both are important.
  • Continuous Ed: Continue to develop your skills outside of school or your day job. Take coding classes online (there are tons) or participate in one of a gazillion webinars designed for core skills like sales, growth marketing and design. A silver lining of the pandemic is that there are now so many great online resources! If you complete these courses, list them on your resume; this shows initiative, willingness to learn and the ability to multitask if you did this work outside of your day job or school.
  • Never Assume: Finally, never assume that just because a company doesn’t have a job posting commensurate with your experience that should not apply. This could be a stretch opportunity or the chance to get a warm introduction to the hiring manager for a future opportunity. Taking steps like this is a first sign that you are ambitious and creative and many people will hire talent despite a position lining up perfectly or even being open. As noted for hiring managers above, good people are hard to come by! I have personally hired many talented people without a perfect fit or a role open at the time because someone showed promise or I knew I’d need them within the next six months.

If all else fails…

Still not sure you can bring someone less experienced on board or can’t get a young startup to take a chance on you? Get creative and offer a “try before you buy” option. Even if part time, it can be great for both the company and the candidate to do a small project together – for pay. The manager can get a sense of a candidate’s work and the candidate can get a sense of what it’s like to work at the company. 

Tips on this concept:

  • Agree on a project that is no more than 2-3 weeks worth of work for a junior team member and with a clear deliverable.
  • Use the time working on the project to meet other members of the team. Schedule a quick meet and greet on Zoom or join team meetings to get a deeper sense of the company culture.
  • If the trial goes well and an offer is made, the equity vesting/cliff start date should be from the start date of the trial project. 
  • Be careful about competitive situations. If a current employer has a clause in their employment agreement that says any relevant work done outside of business belongs to them, don’t do a trial role like this for a related business (sounds obvious, but I have seen this happen too many times!).

I am truly hopeful that more young companies will take chances on less experienced hires. This is where magic can happen for all involved and I can’t tell you how amazing it is to see some of my most junior hires “back in the day” now in senior leadership roles or starting companies of their own. Hopefully, they are now paying it forward!

How have you figured out ways to hire less experienced people or find a role as a less experienced hire yourself? Please share in the comments. You can also read more about my thoughts on hiring here.

Balancing The Many Hats Of A Startup CEO

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Illustration by Amelia Austin (c)

Startup founders wear many hats that they take on and off as company priorities ebb and flow; especially, but not exclusively, CEOs. One moment they are the CFO and raising capital and the next they are the Head of Product and making critical roadmap decisions. As a quarter-end nears, they become heads of Sales and as the company expands (or contracts) they’re running HR. There can be tremendous stress when a founder tries to wear too many hats at once or struggles to decide which to wear, which to remove, and which to hand off to someone on their team – if such a team exists! The entrepreneurs I coach have used the following framework I’ve created to help them determine which hats to wear and when to wear them. While this article is largely focused on startup CEOs, the framework can also be an effective tool for other organizational leaders.

Updated July, 2023

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The Hats

The most common array of hats that a CEO may wear at any given time fall into the categories below, but no CEO – early stage or not – can split their time and attention so perfectly as the chart denotes.

Before deciding which hats to wear and when, a startup CEO should first identify with what their hats (categories) are in their current role. Here’s how I define these very common categories:

Product (What & When): This is what the company produces. It includes customer discovery, design, building, shipping and support. It also includes prioritization and tradeoff decision making for features, new products and services. Many startup CEOs are product people and this can often be one of the hardest hats to take off completely – if ever. Note that being a product visionary and/or a great coder or designer does not necessarily mean one is a great Product Manager – knowing how to make tradeoffs, analyze customer requirements or develop a product roadmap. Be sure to fully explore this “hat” before deciding it’s one to wear or take off.

Culture & Process (How): I was inspired recently by a coaching client of mine who combined these two into one category. If the culture doesn’t work, then the processes won’t work either. Creating high performing teams goes well beyond what workflows, policies and procedures are in place. It is how the team communicates, operates and evolves as a living organism. Never underestimate the value of focusing on culture with process starting from day one! Some CEOs are natural culture builders and system thinkers, but if this is not a strong suit, it’s definitely a hat that should be worn by an in-house culture expert or by someone with natural team-building/program management skills.

Strategy (Why, When & Where): Determining the company’s True North, setting direction for at least the next 12-18 months and making critical decisions about the company’s mission for things like fundraising, revenue growth and human capital. This is also about defining and communicating why the company is doing what it does which is as important as where it is going. Employees and investors/board members all perform better when there is clarity on why the company is moving in a particular direction. This hat is quite commonly on the CEO’s head forever.

Talent & Development (Who): A company will not succeed or grow without hyper focus on the growth of their employees. It is vital to the success and stability of an organization to establish best in class hiring practices and programs as well as to develop each person’s skills as individuals and leaders. As companies grow, CEOs must be thoughtful about where to focus hiring efforts, how to provide incentives to retain top performers and how to grow those with high potential. In addition, as companies grow, there will always be tradeoffs on when to promote from within, when to hire more experienced talent and when it’s time for some team members to move on. CEOs often wear this hat more often than others, but many have COOs or strong HR leaders on their teams who wear this hat permanently.

Back Office (How): A company can have the best product and team in the world and mess things up royally because the back office hat was on the wrong individual’s head. This is mostly finance (accounting, receivables, payroll, etc.) and legal (employee contracts, partnerships, etc.). I’m amazed at how many CEOs wear this hat for too long. It’s ok early stage, but let the professionals do this work once the company hits product market fit and is beginning to operate at scale. Some CEOs are former CFOs who are perfectly capable of leading back office teams, but data shows that CFOs often lack “Outside-in” thinking (a strong mega-trend and customer focus)” and lack the creative and inspirational leadership qualities of a great CEO. While CEOs must always be fully aware of cash flow and the financial health of the business, the back office hat can be taken off once operating at scale.

Marketing, Sales & Business Development (What, Why & When): Brand identity, target audiences, community development, filling the pipeline, closing deals and creating strategic partnerships. These tasks often require CEO leadership – especially early stage when a CEO must stay close to customers to evolve the product and close deals. Some CEOs are very marketing/sales oriented which can derive huge benefits for the business as long as there are capable leaders on the team wearing other hats. However, many CEOs are not marketers and, like the Back Office hat, should leave that work to the experts.

The Have-to-dos, Want-to-dos & Good-ats

Rather than being stressed out trying to balance all hats at once, it is best to focus on wearing 1-2 hats at a time. These 1-2 hats are those that HAVE to be done. It’s great when these prioritized hats also happen to be hats a leader wants to wear and require skills that they believe they are good at, but that is not always the case – especially for early stage CEOs who often need to do a lot of things that they may be good at, but don’t necessarily want to do. Similarly, there can be things a CEO is good at and wants to do, but the business doesn’t require them to do it. Finally, there are times when something has to be done, the CEO wants to do it, but they lack the skill to do it well (self-professed or not!). Here are a few examples:

  • Finances – CEOs may be good at doing the accounting for the business and it has to be done, but often very willing to give that up as soon as they can hire a head of finance. They don’t want to do it!
  • Product/Technology – No matter how much a founder/CEO wants to design or code – and they may be good at it – there is a point as a company scales when CEOs have to take off this hat. They are no longer “have to-dos” at their level. Note, I have seen a number of CEO-Founders take their CEO hats off to dive back into the product!
  • Hiring – Inexperienced CEOs may be managing people and leading teams for the first time. They have to hire and want to hire, but are often unskilled when it comes to sourcing, interviewing and managing the onboarding experience. They also may not know exactly who and what they are looking for and may have to iterate a few times before getting the first few hires right. This is a skill they are not yet good at. However, this may be a skill they have to develop vs. hand off to someone to do for them.

If a company has the runway, the CEO can usually move swiftly to swap or delegate hats with the support of their co-founders and leadership team. They may hire more seasoned leaders or specialized team members and/or offer training for those who need to develop their skills. However, for the fledgling teams who can’t fund these improvements, it is even more important to make hard choices about which hats to wear…even if that means letting some things slide or not executing perfectly. The tradeoffs can be hard and it is extremely common for CEOs to become so paralyzed about which hats to wear that the performance of the company is suffering more than if they had just picked 1-2 hats to focus on and move forward. The focus of this exercise can allow a leader to move quickly from one to the next so things don’t slide for too long.

To get started on assessing “have to-dos (HTDs), want to-dos (WTDs) and good-ats (GAs)”, I recommend a two-pronged approach:

  1. Identify the primary categories (hats) you wear today. This can be done together with personal hats (Mother, Caregiver, Volunteer, etc.) or two different charts – one for work and one for non-work hats.
  2. Reflect on the hats identified and assess your HTDs, WTDs and GAs today – Y for yes and N for no. This exercise requires a large dose of humility and is a subjective assessment – what good means to you, may be viewed differently by others (team, investors, partner, etc.). If unsure, do a 360-feedback survey with your team or ask for candid feedback from your cofounder(s) and/or investors.
  3. Define the actions (if any) you plan to take to change your assessments. For example, if Talent Development is something you have to do, want to do, but you’re not good at it, what steps will you take to improve? Hire a coach or mentor? Take a course? Read a book? Similarly. if you are good at Back Office, but you don’t have to do it or want to do it, what actions will you take to supplant your efforts? Perhaps hire a fractional CFO or an in-house accountant?
  4. Finally, actions are only useful if they can be measured. How will you know you have effectively achieved your goals? Will employee satisfaction or retention numbers improve and, if so, by when? If you are bringing on a fractional CFO, when would they come on board and how will you know you’ve officially taken that hat off? 

Here is an example of the chart of a CEO of a post series A startup with product market fit:

In the above example, the CEO has prioritized Product, Culture & Process, and Strategy as the hats they have to wear. Here’s how they thought about it these and the other hats:

  • As a former engineer and product manager, Product is their area of expertise and therefore not a hat they need to explore at this time. They will continue to oversee the product team. [NOTE: this particular CEO’s cofounder is CTO who oversees the engineering team]
  • Both Culture & Process and Strategy are still very important hats for this CEO to wear, but they have assessed that their skills in both areas could be improved.
  • In terms of Talent & Development and Back Office, this CEO has squarely decided that they no longer have or want to wear these hats. They realize “people stuff” is an important focus for the business, but fully admit it’s their least favorite thing to do so will hire a head of people to wear that hat.
  • Even though they are good at Back Office work, they really don’t enjoy that work and know it can easily be handed off to a combination of a fractional CFO (finance) and their head of engineering (IT).
  • Finally, this CEO knows they still need to be very involved in Marketing, Sales & BD, but they don’t need to wear the leadership hats for any of these efforts. Therefore, with fresh cash in-hand after their series A, they will hire heads of marketing and sales who will report to them and with whom they will partner to develop their go to market strategy.

I recommend that leaders who follow this process check in on progress quarterly, but it all depends on how one works and how fast change is happening inside the organization. Choose what works best for you!

No Recipe Is Perfect

The exercise above is one way of thinking about how to balance many hats a CEO – or any leader of a large team – might wear. There’s no perfect algorithm and while one might aim to only wear a maximum of 2-3 hats at a time, there will be times when more hats will have to be worn. I’ve also seen CEOs who find that once they’ve mastered a new skill, the hat they didn’t want to wear is actually one that they enjoyed wearing more than they expected.

There are of course sometimes when CEOs realize that no matter how much training, coaching or mentoring they get, they are not able to wear any of the hats well or they just don’t enjoy wearing them. This is often when the company is achieving a level of scale that requires more experience than the CEO’s own professional experience. Some CEOs recognize this and work with their boards to find a successor, but sometimes this can be a decision taken out of a CEO’s hands when their board/investors decide the business can’t wait for the CEO to grow into the role. I’ve also seen many CEOs who find a great partner (President or COO) to run the business with them and augment some of the skills they have yet to or want to master. This not only keeps the company on the rails, but gives the CEO a role model to learn from along the way.

Conclusion

CEOs should be performing a regular assessment of where their time is focused, identify measurable results when changes are made and what actions to take to get there. Even a simple visual like the Before and After on the balance wheels below can kick start the process. Identifying what the current focus areas are (before) and where should they be (after).

BEFORE
AFTER

No matter how a leader decides to assess and prioritize their hats, leaning into the balancing process will likely mitigate stress and potential burnout. What processes have you seen that are effective towards balancing hat wearing? Please share in the comments! Meanwhile, if you are thinking about trying this exercise, I have created a google sheet template for anyone to use to start this process. Feel free to save a copy of the template for yourself and dig in!

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NOTE: The balancing hat illustration at the top of this article was created by my daughter, Amelia Austin and is copy-written.

Testing Leadership During Trying Times

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The stress created by the global spread of the Coronavirus is an opportune time to take stock of how leaders, well….lead. Now more than ever, employees are looking to their leadership teams for strength, guidance and direction. Some leaders may have already had led their teams through storms — perhaps financial, operational, or otherwise — and are tapping into what they learned prior. However, many are leading through a storm for the first time and are being tested.

In the early days of Akamai circa 1999, ~200 of us were learning how to run what was then called the world wide web and manage a newly public company. Many of us were learning how to lead at scale and at an extreme pace with little-to-no experience. One of our founders was an academic, one a business school student and the other a computer scientist. The C-suite included seasoned leadership from outside the company, but it was the founders who were setting the tone for leadership across the organization — especially the computer scientist (Danny Lewin, RIP) who regularly tapped into his military background as an officer in the Israeli Defense Forces. He could be abrasive at times, barking out orders and demanding our attention to mastery, but he was smart as f-ck and his passion for the company was infectious, so we obeyed and tolerated his occasional tirades.

Before 9/11, the company was undergoing tremendous scale challenges while the internet bubble was showing signs of an impending burst. Danny knew we were all feeling the strain and one day decided an inspirational message was in order to rally the troops. The company was distributed across the globe — in the time before Zoom or Hangouts. So, he wrote a long email to the entire company about leadership that today most of us who were leading at that time can summarize in three main points:

To inspire trust: Lead by Example

To build trust among teammates: Suffer Together

To restore trust when it weakens: Hold People Accountable

When September 11, 2001 hit us hard both personally and as a business, most of us had never managed teams through a crisis. So, when the world was in crisis (and we lost Danny on the first plane that hit the towers), the points he made about leadership were absolutely brought to light. We did our best to lead by example, we suffered together and we held ourselves and each other accountable. The trust built among our teams was like no other I had experienced and many of those young leaders — some of my dearest friends — are now master leaders of teams and companies; quite surely in part from what we all experienced together in 2001.

With the world in crisis today, leaders should consider Danny’s advice.

  • Lead by Example: If you tell people to self-isolate and work from home, then you too should work from home. If you are restricting travel for employees, abide by those same restrictions. If team members are clueless about how to work effectively from home, demonstrate how it’s done or appoint experienced employees as mentors to guide the newbs. If you expect people to communicate clearly and often, do the same. During times of confusion and ambiguity, leaders are the guiding light — even if the only thing you can say is “I don’t know”. Being vulnerable and not having all the answers can be as powerful as having a perfect plan. It also allows others to do the same.
  • Suffer Together: Now more than ever is when teams need empathy; that you’re in this together. Employees are not just worried about personal illness; they are worried about their family, trips they have planned in the future, their personal finances and how business will fare during a volatile time. No one will be unscathed from this current crisis. You are all suffering together. Create forums for people to talk with each other, offer support and listen. Even if many people in your organization do not get sick or have ill family members, they are dealing with a crisis that is very real. The news and social media is in their faces and they will not ignore it. Accept this and share your own worries and concerns. Show your vulnerabilities and they will do the same. From my 9/11 experience, I can say that crying with co-workers was one of the most transformational moments in my career. No matter our differences, we had a shared experience that strengthened ties and allowed us to rise to the challenge and succeed.
  • Hold People Accountable: Times of crisis are when leaders show their true colors. Great business leaders during tough times are decisive and put the company, their employees, their customers and investors ahead of themselves. They are not seeking friends or trying to win a popularity contest and may make unfavorable decisions. Decisions like closing the office, cancelling a conference or back-burnering projects to accommodate business disruptions are not consensus building exercises. Decide and move forward. Once those tough calls are made, communicate very clearly who is accountable to execute on next steps. Set clear expectations on how everyone is expected to move forward; including communication protocols (cadence, timing and audience). Employees want leaders who can make calls — especially during tough times — even if they don’t like the decision.

If you are old-hat at dealing with times of crisis, reach out to the less experienced leaders in your network and offer a hand. If you are a first-timer, seek counsel from mentors, coaches and peers. You don’t need to figure this all out on your own. This is not time for heroics. Great leaders get help. We’ll get through this, just like we have in the past, and we’ll be ready for the next one. Be safe, lead…and wash your hands!

Are You Being Strategic About Hiring?

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If I had a nickel for every time I get an email or text asking if I know any full stack developers for hire, I could cover the cost of my next trip to SF. I’m also struck by the number of founders who say they’re raising more money simply because they need more engineers to code, yet they do not have a good hiring strategy.

For decades, there have been books and articles about building engineering teams. The infamous book The Mythical Man Month, by Fred Brooks should be on every software engineer and tech startup leader’s reading list (It should also be re-titled either “The Mythical Person Month” OR “Nine women can’t make a baby in one month”…just sayin’). There are also many blog posts explaining why full stack engineers are unicorns. Yet, when I did my latest poll on twitter on top hiring priorities this is the response:

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Sure, it’s fine to look for a generalist [or augmenting your team with an outsourced dev shop] to get basic stuff done, but being more strategic about your hiring process, is what could be the difference between a great product in the market vs. something basic that is slow to ship. Below are some tips on how to be more strategic about hiring:

  • Product prioritization leads to hiring prioritization: If you’re doing proper product prioritization via discovery – talking with customers and understanding what you need to get to product market fit or grow adoption – then these priorities set the hiring agenda. For example, if you’re realizing that your on-boarding process is too complicated, then hiring a User Experience (UX) person may serve you far better than someone who can code a fresh UI. If performance issues are causing churn, then hire a performance engineer; someone who knows how to diagnose and fix performance issues. Just like you are building a product to solve for the job to be done, hire the engineer for the development job to be done. 
  • Understand the roles: Do you understand the difference between a front end developer vs. designer vs. UX expert? (if you don’t, read this) Are you fluent enough in your architecture to know what type of engineer should be building which elements of your product? Many early stage companies are started by engineers who know exactly what they’re doing, but many are biased in the areas of which they are most familiar, even if that is the suboptimal choice for their current products. I’ve seen products built with .NET simply because the seasoned engineer-founder knows that platform best, without considering whether it is the best platform for their product and/or whether they’ll be able to hire engineers who are skilled in .NET (or want to learn it) to build it at scale. I’ve also seen many startups default to the language of choice for the full stack engineer they found to build their first prototype and then let that language dictate future work as their product gets market fit and scales. This rarely works out, unless that first engineer is a ringer, and most of the time the reality of having to refactor your entire codebase or port to a new language hangs over the product team…forever. 
  • Long term need vs. short term fix: Another common mistake is hiring a full time expert in an area that only needs occasional work. E.g., Performance engineering. Certainly, if you’re building a complex, distributed, application that has heavy computation or many API calls, then a performance engineer is a critical full time hire. However, it may behoove you to find a good contract engineer who specializes in performance tuning as needed; at least until you’re operating at scale. Same thing for a designer – unless you’re at scale and adding new features/products at a steady clip, then a contract designer may be prudent while you iterate on your MVP. You may pay a little more per hour for these contractors, but that far outweighs over hiring and paying a full time salary early on. 
  • Time Delay + J-curve: Just because you have cash in hand to hire, doesn’t mean you will find and hire the right people right away AND each time you add a new person to the team, there will likely be a j-curve impact on productivity.
    Screen Shot 2019-06-03 at 1.47.59 PM.png
    Therefore, when you prioritize hiring, factor in how long* some roles will take to fill (e.g., we don’t need a designer for a few months, but it could take three months just to find the right person) and be thoughtful about the cadence of adding new people to any team. Adding a bunch of new engineers at once is not going to accelerate development over night. Each time a new person comes on board, it’s disruptive to team’s flow – and this is not just about training them. It disrupts the whole     dynamic of the team. If you’re doing a lot of hiring over a discrete period of time, set the right expectations (with yourself, your company and your investors) that a ramp in hiring will likely slow things down until new teams settle into new norms. If the ramp is constant, by the way, your teams will never settle into a groove leading to employee dissatisfaction, high turnover, product delays, etc.

    *This delay should also be considered in the budget exercise for these roles. Don’t front-load salary expenses for open jobs that may take weeks or months to fill. 
  • Humans are not robots: Hiring is hard, and even when you get really good at it, at the end of the day these hires are human beings that have their own unique needs, past-job baggage and career aspirations. Their added productivity, how they diversify and/or add to your culture is only part of the consideration. Having a strategy to prioritize manager, team time and money for their human needs (benefits, HR support, a strong on-boarding experience, ongoing training and mentorship, etc.) is just as important as having a strategy to prioritize these hires! 
  • Apply the 80-20 rule: A great product leader will tell you that if you invest 80% of effort to understand the problem, it should result in 20% effort to build the right solution. The same applies to hiring. If you take 80% of your effort to develop a great hiring strategy and program, it should lead to 20% of the effort to bring great people on board and retain them for the long term. 

There’s a severe opportunity cost that comes with bringing on the wrong people and/or at the wrong time and not having the right people programs in place. Even if you are a tiny early stage company, having to let someone go, or having them quit, and finding a replacement not only stresses out the manager and team, but there is a productivity hit to all while you go through the process. Even though it may feel like you’re moving slowly through the process of building a team, a strategic approach will pay off.

You can read more about my thoughts on hiring for startups here. Please share other ideas on this topic in the comments!

Beyond Their Funds, How Can Your Investors Be Helpful?

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An entrepreneur recently said to me “When it gets really hard, I feel like I’m doing it wrong.” She went on to say that sometimes she’s not sure how her investors could be helpful — even if it’s just validating what’s hard vs. advising on how to work through certain challenges. I’ve heard other entrepreneurs say they’d like to get help from their investors but worry that purely by asking for help it will signal a weakness. Conversely, I’ve heard investors say they wish the leaders of their portfolio companies would be more transparent about challenges they are facing and ask for help. As one investor said to me recently, “They already sold me on the business and have our money. It’s now our firm’s job to help them succeed.”

In an informal Twitter poll I recently conducted, 56% of entrepreneurs who responded said their most common ask of their investors is for hiring help. Second to that (31%) are asks for introductions to potential partners or customers and a small percentage (13%) tap their investors for financial management advice.

I also polled my investor friends on what questions they like to get from their portfolio companies. What they shared made it clear to me that they can and want to be helpful well beyond their funds!

“Good entrepreneurs are learning machines so they’re always asking for advice and guidance from multiple sources of expertise, including their investors. In fact, the best founders are outstanding at squeezing every bit of insight, advice and contacts from their network of investors and advisers.“ Jeff Bussgang, Flybridge Capital

Do you know how to get the most from your investors? Below, I have outlined what I consider to be basic asks (table stakes) as well as suggestions for deeper asks.

What To Ask For

Hiring

Table Stakes:

  • Referrals and warm introductions
  • Posting job links on their websites
  • Invitations to recruiting events

Beyond the Basics:

  • Seek examples of job descriptions (JDs) and/or critiques of those you’ve written. Most investors were operators once and have a good sense of how to write a good JD; they may also have a recruiting arm at their firm who can counsel you on specific searches. [See point on compensation in Financials, below]
  • New to hiring? Practice interviewing candidates with investors or their associates before bringing actual candidates in for the real interview.
  • Resume screening can be an easy ask and a quick job for someone who’s seen 100’s if not 1000’s of resumes. Experienced eyes can point out immediate red flags and give you specific areas you may want to probe for a particular candidate.
  • Invite an investor to help diversify an otherwise homogeneous interview team. This can be a game changer for a candidate who may otherwise feel like they are a token hire. Knowing the extended team around the business is diverse, can allay these concerns.
  • Ask your investors to help sell the business to prospective candidates. This can be especially critical if you’re trying to hire a senior team member or a start-up first-timer.

    “This is something we continue to do, even with mid-level hires in mid-stage companies when the founder feels like a highly desirable candidate could use an extra push. It’s not a huge burden on our side, but can have a very strong positive impression on the candidate who probably feels like getting board/investor visibility is a strong positive in their career development. “ Rob Go, NextView Ventures

  • Investors can also be helpful offering insights on how your company is perceived as a workplace from their own perspective or from feedback they’ve garnered in the market. (people talk…)
  • Finally, but very carefully, investors may be able to help you get backdoor references on potential hires. I wrote more about this particular topic here. Backdoor references can be helpful, but only if done right!

Marketing, Sales & Partnerships

Table Stakes:

  • Introductions to potential customers and/or partners
  • Putting your company logo on their website; putting their firm’s logo/board member on your website
  • Invitations to marketing & sales events
  • Tapping their social media presence for sharing news and events

Beyond the Basics:

  • Investors look at markets all day, every day, and have an objective perspective on not just current market forces, but patterns over time and how markets move and customers buy. They may not know your specific market details or the intimate buying patterns of your target customer, but as Bob Mason of Project11 says “We often ask the right questions informed by our opportunity to step out of the day to day urgency of running the business. We have enough knowledge to understand the big market forces, see patterns from other businesses and can help drive an engaged dialogue. For the engineering-centric founders, you can think about this as ‘debugging’ an issue. When coding, you might bang your head for hours trying to find the root cause of a hard bug. But you bring over a colleague and talk through the situation and often a solution will appear. They didn’t tell you the answer, but the process of conversation brought insight to your mind.”
  • Whether you are building an enterprise product and need access to a buyer inside a potential large customer or trying to develop partnerships for your business (B2B or B2C), investors can provide invaluable insights on what drives particular companies, who the “real” decision makers are and how their buy/partnership process works. They can reach out to execs at companies and get an early feel as to how important such a potential deal or relationship could be.
  • Investors are generally good at analyzing marketing or sales funnels. If they are former marketers or sales people, they should be able to help you understand the “magic moment”, points of stickiness, drop off, etc.. They also won’t have the biases you likely bring to the table and can look at the numbers objectively.
  • Investors can be helpful with developing your company and product story as well as speak with folks in the industry to see how the story resonates.
  • Beyond offering advice on digital marketing and leveraging social media, your investors may also be helpful with brand awareness and offer PR opportunities. Perhaps they are sponsoring an event where you or a key member of your team can be a speaker? If one of your investors is a blogger, ask for a mention in their next blog post about a topic you’ve been discussing, or perhaps even a guest blog spot. Be creative about how your investors can help shine a light on your brand, product and team!

Product

Table Stakes:

  • If they can use your product as a firm or as individuals, they better be using it! Whether it’s for testing the MVP or to dogfood the brand, no excuses. There’s nothing more compelling than an investor who offers you a cup of coffee made with one of their portfolio company’s new beans or the investor who has a “powered by” one of their companies on their website. Have you asked your investors to use your product?
  • When asked (or not), investors never lack for advice on how your product can improve. Just remember, you are in it every day, they are not. So, always weigh that advice against what your team is discovering with your customers and progress accordingly.

Beyond the Basics:

  • If your investor is a former operator, especially at an early stage company, odds are they have built/tested many an MVP. Engage them in the MVP discussion. Review product priorities and test plans. Again, their objectivity and experience could give you a fresh perspective. This will also help them understand the tradeoff decisions you are making and can be very informative when it comes to strategic thinking about the company’s product roadmap and long term direction.
  • Speaking of roadmaps, if you’ve got a former head of product or VPE on your investor team, invite them to a planning session. Same reasons as above — fresh perspective and added insight when it comes to bigger picture discussions.
  • Security and compliance is an area often overlooked and where investors can probably draw on their own or other resources to ensure your company doesn’t get tripped up on a sale or regulatory issue because an “I” was not dotted or “T” crossed. They may have access to pen testers or be familiar with compliance requirements for things like PIA, HIPPA or SOX through other portfolio companies’ experiences; even if it’s just asking when to worry about it vs. holding off on investing in this work.
  • Also helpful is tapping investors’ technical EiRs and/or network. When I was CTO at DigitalOcean, it was amazing to have someone like Martin Casado at a16z, our lead investor, to bounce ideas off of and even help us with some tricky architecture decisions. Similarly, my friend Jocelyn Goldfein of Zetta Venture Partners said she’s often tapped by her portfolio companies to help with developing data strategies and answer questions about data rights. Know who the experts are in these firms and they’ll probably love the opportunity to get into the details with you since it’s no longer their day job.

People

Table Stakes:

  • If they are involved with financial planning, investors should be helpful with basic headcount and organizational growth plans (what roles to fill, how many and when)
  • Investors are generally not shy about telling you (sometimes unsolicited) if they think a key employee they are interacting with is great, needs coaching or may not be successful in your organization. Just remember, if you have a board, other than the CEO, they don’t make hiring or firing decisions. That’s your job.

Beyond the Basics:

  • Whether they were former operators, or have just seen a large number of companies operate, investors can give helpful insight around people and culture. You can ask how to work through team challenges, enhance your company culture or even how to make remote teams work. If they’re not the experts in these areas, they likely have companies in their portfolios who are doing creative things or who maybe learned from mistakes and are willing to share tips and tricks to avoid pitfalls as you scale.
  • While it may make you feel vulnerable, asking your investors for guidance around your own personal development demonstrates your willingness to grow — especially if you are a first-time CEO, or other member of the C-Suite. I’ve seen investors coach leaders on everything from how to lead their teams and handle challenging employees to how to run a great board meeting. I’ve also seen investors support and sometimes even pay for executive coaches and training programs for high-potential leaders.

    “Drop your shields, if you think asking for advice or help from your investors is showing signs of weakness you have it all wrong. Your investors are by definition already on your side and any problem you are facing or any area of growth where you think they may be able to contribute to or connect you to someone who can be helpful, go for it. I want leaders to ask me ‘what am I doing wrong, where can I level up?’” Reed Sturtevant, The Engine

  • Beyond headcount and budgets, investors with experience leading teams at scale can be very helpful with how to think about organizational design through various stages of growth. Investors can also have a really good sense of leveling across organizations and have seen a lot of creative approaches used across companies.

Financials

Table Stakes:

  • Investment checks
  • Future rounds  —  financing strategy, valuation, etc.

Beyond the Basics:

  • It’s never too soon to get “budget religion”, especially if you have a capital-intensive business where you need to figure out working capital, financing with manufacturing, etc.. Ask for guidance on how best to manage your funds as well as how to track burn and prepare data for future financing to make the diligence process easier for new investors. They may even have models or frameworks other portfolio companies use that you can borrow.
  • Not sure whether your compensation packages are competitive or fair? Or how to think about equity vs. salary splits? Comping your sales team? Your investors have probably seen many different configurations and can help you get creative if you’re trying to land a key hire or to retain and motivate your current team.
  • Other financial areas where investors can be helpful are ways to think about marketing spend as a ratio of investment in engineering or sales/revenue, pricing models and tax considerations.

In all of the above cases, if your investors can’t help you directly, odds are very high that they know someone who can. Good investors won’t expect you, especially if you are a first-time founder, to figure it out all by yourself. For me personally, I always appreciate the humility that comes from anyone who knows what they don’t know and asks for help. It is impossible for anyone to know everything!

How To Ask

There are three ways I think every founder should interact with their investors outside of board meetings (if you have them).

  1. Investor update emails are always a good vehicle for asks. If you’re not sure if anyone on the investment team can be helpful, be specific: “Looking for advice on digital marketing strategies.” or “Would love to talk with someone in your network who can advise my team on HIPPA compliance.”.
  2. Routine 1:1 calls or meetings are a must. This establishes a good touchpoint with investors to establish a rapport and catch up informally instead of waiting for a crisis or issue to arise as a reason for a call. I suggest you always have at least one ask for these meetings and always follow up with a quick email with that ask in writing.
  3. Identify at least one domain area where each investor may serve you best (e.g., I am usually the go-to person for product & engineering or organizational planning for my angel investments and advisees). When the needs arise, set up face-time to dig into that specific topic with that investor.

Remember, your investors are not just here to provide cash. They are invested in you and your company’s success. As Jason Seats of TechStars says, when in doubt, “pretend that they are not an investor and figure out what you’d ask them. If you can’t come up with anything, they may not be a good investor for you.” This can also be a nice hack around targeting the right investors from the start.

Have other examples of ways your investors have been helpful beyond their funds? Please share in the comments.

 

Go Big, Or Go…Startup

big Fish Little Fish

Image source unknown

A common career advice question I get all the time is what the tradeoffs are between going to a startup vs. going to a big company. There are many things to consider and lots of “it depends” when it comes to where you are in your career, where you live etc., but when it comes to the general aspects of a startup vs. mature company, most of the situations don’t vary that much. I’ve done both, several times, so here’s a perspective on the tradeoffs based on my own experiences.

Startup vs. Mature Company

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(c) 2018 Julia B Austin

Putting aside for a moment industry and how you feel about the products the company is building (both of which are very important!), most of the differences between a startup vs. a mature company are pretty obvious. In a mature company, you will likely have more role models to learn from and stronger teams to collaborate with, a clear direction and a mature board. The role you consider may have a narrow scope, but could offer deeper learning and of course great benefits, compensation, etc.. You’ll also get exposure to what good (or bad) looks like at scale and possibly a nice brand for your resume.

Startups can offer a chance to do “all the things” which can be either a blessing or a curse depending on your interests. You may miss out on having peers to collaborate with, have to look outside of your company for mentors and role models or have limited budget to get stuff done, but you may get high value equity in exchange for lower than market-level pay. If you want to dig more into deciding which startup to join, I suggest Jeff Bussgang’s book Entering Startupland which goes deep on the different roles at startups and how to get your foot in the door.

Leadership

One thing often overlooked when considering a new job is the leadership of the company. Serial entrepreneurs will have a very different approach than someone who has limited real-world experience and mature company executive teams can be world class or “legacy” leaders who can’t move with the times. There are many tradeoffs when factoring in leadership into the decision process of startup vs. a mature company.

Screen Shot 2018-10-15 at 10.55.10 AM

(c) 2018 Julia B Austin

Startup founded by serial entrepreneurs: This can often be the best case scenario if you want to learn from those who have “seen the movie before”. They likely had no issue raising money and were selective on who their investors were and who sits on their board. They will know how to get the flywheel moving incited by past mistakes OR failures.

“When I started my fifth company I knew exactly how I wanted to build the team. So, on day one I hired a head of recruiting to get things off to a strong start. I also knew market adoption would be critical to fundraising so focused on growth very early on – before we even had a product!” – David Cancel, CEO & Co-Founder Drift

Serial entrepreneurs may also try to overcorrect in areas where they failed the first time, such as over analyzing or delaying decisions, being too conservative on cash flow or focusing too much on scalability too early in the product development process. If you’re interviewing with a serial entrepreneur, it’s always good to ask what lessons they learned in their last startup and how they’re bringing those lessons into their new venture.

“I joined Drift in part because I wanted to learn from the experience of the co-founders. They’ve seen it before so they anticipate issues, they know when (and how) to hire experts to level up the team, and they know what’s “normal” for a hypergrowth company. It’s the best of both worlds: you get the rollercoaster startup experience with some of the more measured leadership and strategic characteristics of a bigger company.” – Maggie Crowley, Product Manager Drift

Industry veterans doing their first startup: Founders coming from mature companies with no startup experience can have big company confidence, be great at hiring and leading teams, but lack scrappiness to get a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) out the door and work towards product market fit.

“At our first startup after a series of roles at large enterprise software companies, we tried to force a big company perspective on how we did employee feedback and reviews. We were too structured with this initially and quickly cut back to a more loose feedback and review process with our team.” Izzy Azeri & Dan Belcher, Co-Founders Mabl

They may also be too used to having teams of people and systems in place to cover the more mundane duties of running a company and don’t want to get their hands dirty. On the flip side, they often know how to implement those processes and know the people to hire to run them so once the flywheel is moving and cash is in-hand, they can get momentum quickly.

“Earlier in my career, I hired a small team within a large corporation that was scrappy and had entrepreneurial mentality. At my startup, I quickly realized the benefit of once having a corporation behind me when things weren’t working out. The impact of a bad decision or process was much greater with no safety net.” – Karen Young, CEO & Founder Oui Shave

Startup with limited leadership experience: Working with a skilled group of founders leading teams for the first time can be tons of fun. If you bring some experience to the table, it can be very gratifying to not only work from the ground up, but also work alongside these founders as they grow. However, it can be frustrating if you find yourself figuring out things on your own because there’s no one in the company to mentor you. These situations can be very rewarding if you’re patient and you can always get outside mentors and advisors if they’re not available at this type of startup.

“When we started, we got a lot of advice like: stay focused, don’t expand too quickly, be careful that experienced hires match your culture.  All good advice, but we discovered there’s no real substitute for learning the hard way. The lesson just doesn’t sink in until you feel the pain of doing it wrong.” Wombi Rose, CEO & Co-Founder LovePop

Mature company with inexperienced leadership: If they made it this far, they are either wicked smart, lucky or both! More likely they also have surrounded themselves with strong, experienced leaders, investors and/or board members. You can learn a lot from joining a company like this, but they are very, very rare! When companies scale too fast, they can also suffer from having people in roles that have outgrown their experience. Read more about the impact of Hypergrowth situations written by my friend at Reboot, Khalid Halim, for First Round.

Mature companies with experienced leadership: These organizations have all the standard things you’d expect. Probably more politics and process than you’d ever find at a startup, but the benefit of exposure to great role models and best practices can be invaluable. Sometimes, these bigger companies can also expose you to the “dark side” of leadership and processes which are also great learnings on what not to do in your next job or company you may start yourself.

Which comes first in your journey?

For those doing early career path planning and knowing they want to do both a startup and a mature company at some point, there’s always the question of which should come first. Hiring managers at early stage companies can get “spooked” when they see someone with too much time (5+ years) at mature companies; questioning whether the candidate will be able to transition to startup life. Not that it’s impossible, but it’s something to consider. For these candidates, I suggest highlighting any scrappy “ground zero” work they may have done at their companies to demonstrate they can handle ambiguity and take risks. I am also a huge (and very biased) fan of people who’ve joined companies early and scaled with them. They have learned a TON from those experiences and can often start scrappy, but know how to operate at scale. Win-win.

Conversely, someone with a lot of startup experience may have a hard time adjusting to mature company. A hiring manager at a mature company may question whether a candidate with only startup experience can handle a slower pace or won’t know how to navigate a complex organizational structure that requires political and communication savvy. You may have to sacrifice title and maybe some salary to get a foot into larger institutions who may view your past role, which may have been very senior at a startup, to being pretty junior if those around you have decades more experience. However, I always find those with startup experience can be invaluable to a team that needs to be shaken up, take more risks or explore new ground. Often, those who sacrifice title and pay when they joined, make it up fast as they move up the chain in a larger organization.

There’s no right or wrong place to start. A lot depends on how you define your skills and how willing and patient you are in either case to adjust. Much can depend on who hires you and their management philosophy. I’ve seen some people bounce between both types of situations over and over, some that just can’t handle startup life, and others who have startups in their DNA and should just stick with that world 🙂

“At a startup, every job matters and you can see almost daily that you are creating something that wasn’t there before. You have the ability to learn quickly and have a fast feedback loop to let you know how you’re doing. It’s very different working at an established company vs a startup, but you can learn a lot at both – you’ll just learn very different things.” – Rebecca Liebman, CEO & Co-Founder LearnLux

Questions To Ask

Regardless of whether you are a seasoned veteran or fresh out of school, as you ponder whether you want to join a startup or a mature company here are some final things to consider:

  • What tools do you want to add to your toolbox? Will the role allow you to hone skills you already have or add new ones?
  • Who do you want to learn from, and how do you want to learn? You can learn from experienced colleagues and mentors, but having bad role models can also teach you a lot about what not to do. Similarly, if you are an experienced hire coming into a company started by inexperienced founders, you may want to learn by mentoring or teaching these young leaders. Taking the skills you’ve developed over your career and applying them to a new situation in itself can be a very enlightening experience.
  • Who do you want to work with? How important is the size and culture of the team you’ll work with? Remember, you’ll probably spend more waking hours of the day with these people than anyone else in your life – regardless of the size and nature of the company you join.
  • What do you value? At the end of the day, love what you do and decide what role will allow you to maintain the integrity of who you are and who you aspire to be!

Do you have other tips on how to decide whether to join a startup vs. a mature company? Please share in the comments!

Mastering The Team Meeting

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No matter how much we hate going to meetings, there’s a generally accepted best practice that teams should meet with their manager as a group on a regular cadence. More often than not, I hear leaders and/or their staff dreading their team meeting. Instead of these meetings being the least favorite time suck of the week, wouldn’t it be great if these were the meetings we looked forward to? That we felt it was time well spent with our colleagues and added value to our roles in some meaningful way?

There’s no reason you have to suffer or make your teams suffer through another tortuous hour or more. A while back, I shared protips on Mastering the 1:1. Now, herewith my tips on Mastering the team meeting…

Meeting Purpose: Set a clear purpose for your team meeting. What do you want your team to get out of the time spent together? Do you want them to stay informed about larger topics in the organization? Get to know each other and their respective work better? Whether you are rebooting a long standing meeting or you are a new leader of a team gearing up for your first routine meeting, talk with your team members about what they want out of the session. This time is much more about their needs than yours, so align the purpose with their needs. A fun way to get this dialogue going is to ask each team member to complete this sentence: “My favorite meeting of the week is my manager’s team meeting because……” What would they say?

Agenda: I am a firm believer that if a meeting is important enough to have, it should have a time-boxed agenda and always be followed up with notes and action items (“AIs”). Protips on setting the agenda:

  1. As the team leader, you should solicit 1-2 “hot” topics per meeting from your team. I recommend you do this no more and no less than 48 hours before it is scheduled so ideas are timely and content is fresh. Topics should not be tactical – that’s what stand-ups and 1:1s are for. Instead, focus on strategic discussions and information sharing. On the latter, do not make it a status reporting meeting. Information sharing could be a product demo, or draft of a presentation someone is preparing for a conference or a preview of a big announcement to solicit feedback before it goes out.
  2. Always send the agenda for the meeting 24 hours in advance. This sets expectations and ensures no surprises and attendees are well prepared.
  3. Prepping for the meeting should take less than 15 minutes. Solicit agenda items – prepare agenda – communicate agenda. Long slide decks and spreadsheets created just FOR the meeting is a total waste of time. If those materials already exist and can add value to the discussion, then owners of said content should A) share these materials ahead of the meeting for pre-reading and B) bring said materials with them and be prepared to share them at the meeting.
  4. Lead by example for your team and read all materials sent in advance before the meeting. If you have not read them, no one else will and again, you’re wasting people’s time. If you’re prepared, everyone else will be prepared.
  5. Finally, always carve out 10 minutes at the end of the agenda to take a pulse on your team. My method is “share thumbs at one”. Three, two, one and on one have everyone in the meeting give a thumbs up, down or sideways. I do a quick read of the room and video screens to gauge if we’re trending in a particular direction and, if so, take time to discuss. People feeling really up? Share why! People feeling down? How can we work together to make things better? This simple, transparent, way of sharing how the team is feeling is a great way for you to lead and for them to support each other. I also find doing this at the end vs. the start of a meeting tends to be a better read because no one is bringing the stress from a prior meeting into their pulse check.

Meeting Engagement: No one wants to listen to a monologue at the team meeting and no one wants to be in a meeting with other people who are checked out. Several protips to avoid this:

  1. Ask 1-2 members of your team to take the lead on the hot topics in each meeting. They do not need to be the experts on the topic, just the topic leader. This includes having them facilitate getting pre-reads to team members ahead of the meeting. The more they have ownership in a topic, the more engaged they’ll be.
  2. The team’s leader should not speak more than ⅓ of the time throughout the meeting. Other than updating your team about broad company topics, your job is to facilitate the discussion and LISTEN. If you’re a bad facilitator (not every leader’s strong suit), then appoint or bring someone in to facilitate. I’ve seen everything from EAs and HR leaders to program managers serve as facilitators of meetings – they keep the meeting on topic, on time and pay attention to the room. I don’t recommend one of your team members be the facilitator – they are there as an engaged participant, only.
  3. READ THE ROOM. Are people reading their email, checked out on a remote phone or video line or rolling their eyes at each other (visibly or under the table on their cells via text…)? Pay attention to what’s happening in the meeting and pause if you see this kind of behavior. If you’re losing people, you’re wasting everyone’s time and you’re costing the company money. (do the math, the average team meeting can cost a company thousands of dollars every week!). Tell people to put their phones or laptops away if they are checked out. Ask people called in remotely if they have anything to add to the conversation. Pull them in. If the topic is falling flat, be direct and ask why or solicit suggestions on how to make it more engaging. E.g., budget discussions are rarely engaging so even a simple “bare with me as we get through this” can go a long way.
  4. Have fun! It’s great to start a meeting with a funny anecdote or personal story to wake up the room. Maybe someone on your team has a good customer story or had someone on their team get a “win” worth sharing. Perhaps you have a fun personal story to share that shows your human side. Keep it light where you can, but serious during some of the tougher topics (budget, staffing, etc.). This fortifies the culture of your team both inside and outside of the meeting.

Tactical Stuff: When you meet and who goes to the meeting is just as important as the agenda and the content. Protips:

  1. Timing: Got a distributed team in multiple timezones? Find a time that’s mutually convenient for all team members. Do you find the meetings always run over? Schedule it for an extra 30 minutes and if it ends early, everyone gets time back – you’re a hero. Does the team have family responsibilities in the morning or after work? Don’t schedule the meeting such that it disrupts their lives outside of work (if it can be avoided). I also generally discourage team meetings on Mondays (frequent holidays/long weekends means rescheduling or skipping too often) and Fridays (long weekends and if hard topics, no time to debrief/process offline before the weekend).
  2. Decision making: If a meeting has >8 people attending, it is an “information sharing” meeting. Less than that, and decisions can be made at the meeting. If you have a team greater than 8 people, tee up decision topics for discussion and, unless it’s a layup, take the actual decision off line. Otherwise, there are “too many cooks”.
  3. Assign and rotate a note taker at every meeting. You and/or the facilitator cannot read the room and take notes at the same time. Further, by rotating the role across your team, you foster engagement and get fresh perspectives on the meetings each time. Notes should be distributed no later than 24 hours after the meeting while things are fresh. Always call out AIs with owners and deadlines in the notes.
  4. Guests: An agenda should always build in intros for guests and should be time-boxed for cameos. For example, if the head of HR is a guest at your meeting to talk through the next review cycle with your team, the team should know that person will be there and why. Further, unless there’s scheduling trickiness, have guests come at the start or end of the meeting so as not to disrupt the meeting with people coming and going throughout. My personal preference is guests at the start. Then we get into our regular routine.

Most important, don’t set it and forget it. If you do change things up, be clear on why you’re doing it and give it time to settle. Starting or overhauling your meeting process won’t necessarily show positive results the very next meeting and changing it too often will not only cause unrest with your team, but can create distrust if the rules of engagement keep changing. Have at least 4-6 meetings for a new routine to set in and then evaluate whether the changes are effective and adjust as needed. Solicit feedback from your team regularly too – after all, it’s their meeting!

Do you run a kick ass team meeting? Or, do you have ideas on how to improve the team meetings you attend? Share your protips in the comments!