Management Tactics from a $4B Founder, Strategic Thinking vs Getting Work Done - Tactician: #00106

Founders have to take managing accountability seriously.

It’s like, 'You missed your target?

Okay, now you have to use the old coffee machine for a week.

Yes. The one that tastes like burnt popcorn.'

Management Tactics from a $4B Founder

Why Read:

• Valuable insights on building a great team, implementing 90-day plans, maintaining company culture, and ensuring executive accountability, which are essential for startup founders to scale their companies successfully.

Featuring:

• Logan Bartlett, Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures, Podcaster at The Logan Bartlett Show interviews Garrett Langley, Founder & CEO of Flock Safety

• Interview: 

  • “The $4B Tech Startup Solving Crime with AI”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Focus on building a great team, as they will find great markets and build great products.

  • "I am a staunch believer that people and product trumps market. I think great teams build great products and find great markets. I don't know any other way to do it... And so I've just always believed If you have a great team, the rest comes with that."

• Use a 90-day plan for every new employee to drive alignment, set expectations, and ensure they make an impact within their first 30 days.

  • "What we tend to do is put together a very actionable 90 day plan for every new employee. So literally at the beginning of every quarter, my co-founder Paige and I review every single 90 day plan. And that's how we decide what roles actually get open. I trust my CFO James to keep us honest on budget, but Paige and I look at, are people actually gonna make an impact? Is the plan actionable? And what that does is it drives this deep level of alignment between a new employee. Because you're effectively telling them this is how I'm going to keep score…"

• Write down your company culture to maintain it as the company scales, especially in a remote environment.

  • "I got this advice from Ben Horowitz that, if you don't write your culture down, it is inherently weak. In the absence of like a written culture, you will, your culture will just fade away. And in a remote environment, even harder, right? Because you don't see these people, you don't interact with people."

• Ensure that executives are doing real work and not just managing people by having them own OKRs and provide detailed updates on their progress.

  • "I expect anyone pretty much VP and above to own at least one, if not two OKRs. And when I say own, it’s not like, Oh yeah, I'll manage the team and I'll set the goals. No, no, no, no, no, like real actual work. One of the ways we're able to do that is every two weeks when we do a check in, whoever is the owner is actually the one writing the update and it goes to the entire team. It is very easy to smell because you notice that their updates aren't very detailed. Their updates don't have any actual action. Like, ‘Oh, here's the update on the metric.’ Yeah, but what did you do? What did you get done…"

Balancing Strategic Thinking and Getting Work Done

• Why Read:

  • Practical guidance on balancing strategic, long-term thinking with tactical, short-term execution, which is crucial for effective leadership and company growth.

• Featuring:

  • Greg Shove, Chief Executive Officer at Section, Founder at Machine & Partners and Taylor Malmsheime, COO at Section

  • Link: 

    • “The #1 skill every executive should have”

Key Concepts and Tactics:

• Understanding "high-low" work:

  • "Working high-low means you’re able to think and produce across multiple time horizons. You’re balancing initiatives to grow the business over 2 years, hit your plan in six months, and deliver on the most important tasks of the week."

• The necessity of both high and low work:

  • "Most near-VPs envision a role where they can just work 'high' (think big, set strategy, tell others what to do, etc.). It doesn’t work like that. Without going high, you’ll never get to the leadership team – but without staying low, you’ll be the first laid off because you cost too much."

• Characteristics of high work:

  • "To work high, you need to: Have a POV about the future (of your product, team, role, company); Get work started that won’t pay off for a year or more; Ask 'why?' a lot; Make bets and be okay with the associated risk."

• Characteristics of low work:

  • "To work low, you need to: Know your progress against key metrics (monthly revenue, NPS, etc.) and adapt quickly to meet them; Know enough about your team’s work that you can, and do, jump in to help; Kickstart projects yourself when needed (write the brief, scope out V1, etc.); Know what good (and bad) work is when you see it."

• The challenge of balancing high and low work:

  • "Working high-low at the same time is difficult – mostly because you don’t get additional bandwidth to work high. Planning larger bets without clear payoff is hard when you’re struggling to make the month or quarter."

• Practical steps to develop high working skills:

  • “First, audit your existing work. Ask these questions:

    • What problem could I solve that would benefit lots of other teams inside the organization?

    • What am I working on that could help us not just meet our targets, but exceed them by 50%+?

    • What am I working on that won’t pay off in the next 6 months, but could pay off in 12 months? 

    • If a disruptor is coming after our company right now, what are they doing that we’re not doing? (You can do this at the team level too – what is their marketing team doing?)”

  • "Set aside 30 min each week and write down the challenges you see at your team, company, and industry levels.”

  • “Schedule regular (4x per year) discussions with your boss where you chat about longer-term challenges and avoid constraints.”

  • “If you work for a public company, listen to your CEO’s earnings calls or industry briefings.”

  • “Use AI – ask AI to play the role of your CEO or a strategic coach with a 2-3 year time horizon."

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