Common Truths in Leadership and Business
Predictable dynamics, specific approaches, accelerated impact
If you are leading through high growth and change, you are experiencing both big highs and very challenging moments. These may be new for you or some of the team, but many of the tough dynamics can be predicted and prevented.
As an executive, operator, and investor, I’ve been in the thick of it for decades. Now that I’m helping more founders, CEOs, and funds grow through these exciting periods, I’m reminded of these industry-agnostic, predictable dynamics and top approaches to effectively navigate them with speed and optimal progress.
Common Truths
Humans are fascinating, customers & employees have (most) answers, brand matters, communication & affecting velocity are magic muscles, and we are more alike than different.
These truths and reminders, among others I’ve noted in previous posts, are consistent themes in what today’s leaders, founders, and CEOs are navigating. A little more on each:
As You Grow, Complexity Grows
As you move up in leadership responsibility and as your company expands products, markets, and channels, you expand from functional expert to people leader. Your time allocation and where the most important decisions lie shift quickly as the team grows. One of a leader’s many jobs is to simplify complexity to drive clarity and impact. The business may be complex, but it shouldn’t be a confusing labyrinth of paralysis and bureaucracy.
In a growing business, the wheels should shake, but they should not come off.
This shift to complexity happens quickly for some without the muscle, scar tissue, experience, and wisdom needed to optimally navigate it. It’s ok, no one is ever fully ready for each expansion or acceleration, but you DO have a responsibility to build the skills and understanding needed to effectively lead your teams and business.
Think of it as a G-force. The speed of skipping steps and experience quickly has a serious effect on those on the ride. As jarring as it can be, it is possible to train, be more prepared, and certainly learn to understand what’s going on, so you can maintain a level of respect, calm, composure, and thoughtfulness while you make new decisions and take action.
Fascinating Humans and Our Predictable (often Preventable) Behaviors
At the core of many leaders’ frustrations are predictable and often preventable human dynamics. And what isn’t preventable can be deftly navigated with strong leadership muscles. Part Judo, part Jedi…power, velocity, movement, wisdom, healthy tension, and good vibes orchestrated responsibly can accelerate the progress and growth of all involved.
A few examples:
Executive acting out? Likely they felt out of the loop, not included, caught off guard, or unsupported.
A key leader not acting on big people activities (interviewing, hiring, coaching)? Either don’t know how (many technical experts get promoted with low/no people development experience and skills) or they are still not clear that with every level up, the people side becomes a bigger responsibility and % of the time.
Long-time “rock star” employee not doing their part? Labeling someone a “rock star” is common and dangerous. “He’s a rockstar, but he’s not great with team development”...ok, then he’s not a rockstar. Better stated: “He’s excellent at X, Y, Z, and he needs to elevate his people development skills if he’s going to be a true executive”.
Hearing rumors in the organization - it’s often the fruit of the seed of a not-well-worded detail, that was fertilized in a vacuum of information, that grew into distracting weeds - clipping the weeds doesn’t remove the root. Get to the root. Do better next time.
Strong team member frustrated at not getting the promotion? They are either uncalibrated on how you see them and/or on what is required for the role, and/or not clear on what time and resources the organization can handle to support their learning curve, or you in fact don’t see their potential for various reasons and may lose a high potential performer. Be clear on which it is and jump on it!
For each of these and the many similar iterations, if you are the leader: address the cause, not the symptom. Have a conversation about it. Now. And put plans in place to address, support, and develop if possible. …and if that doesn’t work, it may be time to make changes.
For better and worse, we are all a culmination of what we have experienced in the past - childhood, parents, social circles, media, idols, previous team and leader experiences, and more, and that comes to light more acutely during times of change and stress. Modern leaders appreciate this and use that understanding to inform approaches to driving the company forward.
Customers and employees have “most” of the answers
I get a rebuttal to this point often: “but Steve Jobs knew people needed the iPhone and iPod(RIP) before the customer knew, and the “customer” could not have asked for it”. This is often some attempt at sharing an example of the greatest companies and leaders following their vision and not listening to the customers, but the customers listened to them. That is a warped interpretation of reality.
He and many of his leaders were geniuses and epic innovators, but not clairvoyant. The customers and employees are ALWAYS saying and showing what they need and could benefit from, but of course, it didn’t come in the form of “make me an iPhone”.
Great leaders read human behavior, need states, and life changes, and think about how what they are capable of making or doing can meaningfully improve their lives and those conditions. Customers (and employees!) communicate opportunities, challenges, and ideas, but they don’t often articulate the exact problem or solution, and they don’t have the full authority to do something about it at scale.
It’s the leader’s job to look, listen, learn, find patterns, interpret them, and turn that into priorities that get brought to life with the appropriate risks, time horizon, communication, energy, resource allocation, and belief.
I often tell the story of my mom leaving my dad. I was 9 years old and knew very well that he was an alcoholic. There were many scenarios where things were unhealthy and unsafe. So when my mom came to me and said we were leaving - much to her surprise - I didn’t get upset, I said, “what took you so long?”
The lesson in that is that the people closest to the action know what the right thing to do is…long before the leader makes the call.
So the trick in life (and business specifically) is to stay as close to the action as possible and use what you learn from those close to the transaction (customer, sales, service, support), merge it with your unique perspective across the stakeholder ecosystem and market, and set the most impactful priorities with the highest likelihood of impact.
Brand Matters
At first, the brand is the product, and the founder's story if it’s known. Over time, the brand is much more. It’s a promise to (and expectation by) the customer - as perceived by the customer - and the belief of whether that promise is being met, missed, or exceeded in every market and channel, with every expansion of product or service.
This is formed with a combination of experiences with the product, team, and business over time, what the brand says (all marks, marketing, visual assets, etc.) vs what it actually does (all touch-points and “moments of truth”), and the net memory and resulting beliefs from those experiences. A brand (by this definition) evolves over time, so asking, answering, and acting on key questions on a regular basis will help you keep your brand strong and healthy.
Healthy brands maintain BOTH differentiation and relevance. I have covered this in detail in more brand-focused posts, but if you like audio, I dive deep on this topic in the Invest Like the Best podcast with Patrick O'Shaugnessy and the Pomp Podcast with Anthony "Pomp" Pompliano.
Some questions or exercises that may help to check in on your brand (ask them often, not every few years in an expensive brand study or employee survey):
Show an image of the product, logo, etc., and ask, “What does this make you think of”? (The answers to this open-ended question and the patterns you will find will blow your mind. I ask this any time entering a new market or channel or launching a new product)
What are our underlying assumptions about this product, market, channel, that we are betting are consistent for the next channel? Have we asked the right questions to go a layer deeper and have more certainty?
How are we perceived by our current and desired stakeholders (internal & external)? Find a way to ask openly and make it easy for people to answer candidly.
Are we delivering on the brand DNA and promise in a channel-relevant way everywhere we go?
You can do a fun exercise like asking: If we were an “X” (Car, Celebrity, Food, Shoe, Song, Movie), what would we be? Have you read the book, “If I were a tree, what would I be?” ...it’s like that
What is the “job” of each product, channel, and market? Are they doing their jobs?
What could we stop doing, that you wouldn’t miss or wouldn’t hurt the business?
What could we start doing, that you would love?
If you were me, what’s one thing you would do differently to make the business/brand/product/better?
Decide how you think and feel about the answers, prioritize the few most impactful opportunities, and act on them. Your brand is your promise and over time, it is less defined by what you say and more defined by how each customer experiences every interaction, across the entire brand ecosystem.
Communication and Affecting Velocity
Great leaders are thermostats, not just thermometers. You must, of course, be attuned to the pace, energy, and temperature of your company (thermometer), but it is best to use that knowledge for good and be sure to bring more heat and speed or cool and calm as needed (thermostat). And once you take the temperature and know how you want to affect speed, direction, and urgency, stellar communication will drive desired outcomes much faster than shitty, disconnected comms.
The biggest mistake I see leaders make in driving velocity is communicating solely what they want to say, with no reference to the varied impact of the effort and the differing perspectives of the teams and audience. Empathy will get you everywhere (almost).
Here is a VERY basic template:
“X” is happening/changing or we are launching “X” (high level, but don’t bury the lede)
Why/Conditions (what will happen if we don’t do this & if we do this) (confront reality, align on drivers of decisions, dispel/prevent rumors)
And that is why we are: …..a bit more detail on “X”
Acknowledgment of varying perceptions/impacts/questions and how various groups have weighed in thus far and will continue to do so (empathy, connection)
Belief in why and how they can do it (confidence)
The least people need to know at a high level (clarity - minimize early confusion)
What comes next (additional comms, meetings, names of key players and their roles, etc.) (prevent or lower stress/distraction)
How you will stay close, get feedback, and iterate, including where people can direct questions or ideas. (humility - demonstrates ongoing learning and opportunity for change)
Gratitude and a reminder of how this connects to the broader company/employee/customer culture, vision, and success (culture and connection to the engine of the company)
Increasing speed and urgency:
This can be done in a productive or unproductive way. Some common unproductive approaches include unexplained change of pace and amount of pressure, micromanagement, telling the teams to “do more, go faster”, and displaying shiny-object syndrome/throwing many new things at the team.
Any version of “do more, go faster” is relative to the receiver of the message and highly dependent on many other people in the organization. This approach often just increases the messiness of suboptimal activities. It can also make the leader look disconnected from the interconnectedness and dynamics inside the business.
Instead, I’ve learned to be a productive driver of velocity.
One approach is to bring in noticeably more capable talent. Nothing like proximity to kick-ass leaders to fire up the high potential folks, reveal mediocrity that’s been allowed to grow, break some patterns, and energize the organization.
Another approach is to create an initiative with a specific purpose and name, beginning and end, that accomplishes a particular outcome, but what it really does is build a new muscle and pace in the organization. This not only ensures the vector is correct (productive direction) but also is about something near and specific, versus broad and all-encompassing.
Work with the stakeholder team to craft and name an initiative to both increase speed and impact immediately AND build a muscle that lasts beyond the initiative. (I like numbers in my project names): Project 10x6, 4 in 40, 20x2, 2x1x3. Have those doing the work come up with the approaches, share roadblocks and enablers needed, consider and address any cross-organizational impact, and be sure leadership puts appropriate contests and incentives around the increased impact and performance.
Examples:
Need to speed up sales when average net enterprise deals are at a 3/month run rate? Project 6x6: Close 6 net new accounts each month for the next 6 months.
Want to create more sense of urgency around customer service and care? Project 10 Smiles: for the next quarter, each rep to get 10 “wow” messages from customers per week - service so good they can’t help but write in!
Want to increase overall connectivity to the core of the business? “Outreach week”. Once a month or once a quarter, conduct “Outreach Week” where almost everyone in the business has an assigned stakeholder to call, ask questions, thank, and learn more about them. Then bring all back together to share what they learned.
Need to increase the speed of experimentation and failure? Run an impromptu hackathon involving various groups in the org. If you like the impact, schedule them 2x/year with increasing breadth and intensity, while maintaining the “pop up hackathon” option. Open up one group’s challenges to a diverse solver group in a tight timeframe.
Slowing down and taking a breath, creating empathy across the org:
Schedule and conduct an offsite with a focus on going deep with individuals on the team
Townhall and mini department meetings to help the org understand the disparity in different parts of the organization
Time in the field: ride in the truck, work the phones with tech support, sales, or customer care, work in the factory or point of sale
These practices to drive velocity and change behavior should show benefit long after the initiative is done. Not up then back down, but up, and possibly have a new baseline, or in some situations, up and then settle a little lower, but much higher than the previous baseline.
We are all more alike than we are different
If these messages hit home, it’s because regardless of our industry, stage of company, and backgrounds, we are all more alike than we are different. Some companies move at radically different speeds, cultures vary, and overall capabilities in business and leadership range from horrible to incredible. But the vast majority of tough stuff can be prevented by asking, answering, and acting on the right questions long before you are forced to do so. And then you have energy and clarity for the things you can’t prevent or expect. That builds trust and effectiveness over time.
Keep people around you who will help you, your team, and your company continue to level up and get a little better at these things every day. And if you want to build on this topic or my other occasional posts, and dig into related topics in person, please add a comment below, DM me on any social platform, or join our monthly subscriber zooms and Clubhouse rooms!
Onward.