A fantastic resource for any CEO or leader. This is one of the most practical, actionable, immediate-impact business books I’ve read, with no fluff, business speak, or even a single page wasted. This book also is a treasure trove of recommendations to other highly valuable business books, and the recommendations don’t waste any pages either, either saying “book XXX explains how to do this, so go read it, we won’t waste time repeating it here” or “book YYY explains how to do this, but here’s a one sentence/paragraph summary of what you need to know.”
To be fair, the book is highly opinionated, and many of those opinions are optimized for VC-backed, hypergrowth startups, so not everything here applies to every company (e.g., sentences like “once you get there and begin the blitz-scaling process…”), but there are still a lot of gems here for just about everyone.
Here are some of the key takeaways for me:
Avoid a 50/50 split with co-founders. Having to make unanimous, consensus-driven decisions day after day is inefficient, exhausting, and can easily destroy a company. Having a clear decision maker for every decision eases the burden for everyone and produces better outcomes.
Don’t grow beyond 6 until you’ve achieved product-market fit (PMF). Companies get exponentially slower as they grow, so stay (very) small until you have clear PMF: that is, companies are willing to both buy your product (after the test phase) and recommend it to others. Don’t be fooled by large enterprises who have budgets just for trying software; ensure they actually renew after the trial & recommend to others. Look at metrics like revenue, renewal rates, and NPS.
Scaling past 20. Every company goes through a dangerous transition as it grows from fewer than 10 people to more than 20. Communication breaks down, productivity breaks down, and even as you hire new people, they don’t seem to produce much output. The solution in almost every company uses the same three ingredients:
- Establish a vision and goals for the company, each team, and each individual on a regular basis (typically quarterly)
- Communicate the vision and goals to every team member
- Track and report progress towards these goals on a regular basis (typically weekly).
At Google, they use OKRs for this, but the name doesn’t matter; just these three ingredients. Although it sounds simple, in practice, establishing this system effectively from just reading instructions is very, very hard. The solution: hire a COO to establish and run this system, or temporarily hire an ex-CEO to help establish this system and then hand it over to you.
Use GTD for an organizational system. Go read the book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity and follow the advice there to organize your inbox (that is, email inbox, Slack inbox, and all other TODOs) into Next Actions, Waiting For, and Someday/Maybe buckets, process them on a regular basis, etc. There’s even a great pointer in the book for how to organize GMail to show these three buckets.
Block out 2 hours per day to work on your top priority. This comes from the book Essentialism and the key idea is to ensure that you have two hours blocked out every single day, ideally as early in the day as possible, to work on the absolute most important thing on your plate. This is what lets you move the needle on the things that really matter.
Show gratitude every day. Add a trigger to remind you to show gratitude to your team every single day. Ask:
- “What’s good about this situation?”
- “What is good about this team member?”
- “What is good about the company?”
- “What is good about my life?”
Be specific: names of people, actions they took, etc.
The role of sales: trust. People buy things only when they’ve built trust in them. If the product is cheap (< $100), you don’t need much trust, and you might take a risk. But for more expensive products—especially B2B products that costs tens of thousands of dollars and up—trust is essential. Building trust from a website (self-service) is very hard, so that’s the role of sales. Without it, most B2B products just don’t work.
The role of customer success: hand-holding. Most people are overwhelmed with products and new things to learn, and while good design, docs, and streamlined onboarding all help, they aren’t enough, at least in the B2B world. In the B2B world, you need a customer success team to hold the hand of the customer, walk them through onboarding, answer questions, and help out with technical issues along the way. Without this, the customers don’t on board properly, they never see the value from your product, they don’t renew, and they end up resenting you.
The loudest voice in the room. By default, the CEO almost always has the “loudest voice in the room,” and people will assume you know more, and go with your suggestions, even though they truly prefer something else (which they then never articulate). To avoid this, and to get people really bought in, allow everyone else to voice their opinion first. Better yet, have them write it down async, and then voice it. Only then share your own opinion.
Impeccable agreements. A common cause of inefficiency is being sloppy with agreements, so people don’t get done what you thought they agreed to. To avoid this, you need to:
- Precisely define the agreement, which means it is captured in writing, and an objective third party could look at the agreement and determine if it was accomplished successful or not.
- Get everyone to commit to it—in the high integrity commitment sense, as defined in Conscious Business, and again, capture this in writing.
Put these written agreements somewhere everyone can see them regularly. Everyone is expected to follow through on agreements: if you find out that you can’t, you must proactively let all stakeholders know immediately and work to update the agreement; if you fail to notify others, then you have broken that agreement. This has consequences. The first time around, you are given this explanation about how to uphold agreements (or notifying others & altering the agreement in the rare cases you can’t). If you keep failing to do this, you are fired.
Identifying key company issues. Ask team members to write in their own private documents thoughts about the company that elicit joy, excitement, sadness, anger, and fear. For anger and fear, you must write (a) facts, where you explain what the camera saw, with no judgments / opinions, (b) story, where you explain your judgments / opinions, and (c) proposed solution, with specific actions, deadlines, and owners. After everyone has done this, you have them add their items to a big shared document, with no attribution. You then all read the document, getting inspired by what creates joy and excitement, bonding over what makes you said, and figure out how to incorporate the anger & fear items into the roadmap.
Conflict resolution. The vast majority of interpersonal conflicts arise from people not feeling heard. In most cases, people don’t necessarily need you to agree with them, but they do need you to hear what they are saying. If you just argue back immediately, that doesn’t happen, and you get a conflict. The solution: don’t argue right away; first, repeat back what the person told you, in your own words (“I think I heard you say”) until the other person says, “that’s right!” When you hear that, that means they feel heard, and now you can share your own thoughts.
Two-way communication mediums. For any sensitive discussions, such as giving performance feedback, always use a two-way communication medium, such as a face-to-face chat or live call. These sorts of discussions always require rapid back-and-forth to clarify things, deal with emotions, etc. With a one-way medium (e.g., email, chat), you can’t do this, and the recipient may become angry & defensive, with no way for you to see it or respond to it.
Effective intros. If you need an important introduction, such as to an investor, find everyone in your network who knows them, and ask 3-5 of them to send recommendations that they meet you, all at the same time. Getting one intro is good; getting a whole bunch at once makes you seem amazing.
Look for partners, not investors. You want an investor who contributes more to your company than just money. The way to find one is to build a relationship before trying to ask them for money! In the first call, tell them, “I only want to work with investors with whom I have a good relationship. So let’s start with coffee and get to know each other personally.” Have a few chats like this—in person, via Zoom, etc—before talking about raising money at all. In those chats, ask about their lives and work; prove you heard them (“I think I heard you say…”); prove you remember (“last time we talked, you mentioned…”); let them know what you appreciate about them. If you do this, the investor will eventually say, “I like you and want to invest in you. Tell me what your company does.”
Telling your story in a humble way. Here’s a formula to sell yourself and tell your own story in a way that sounds humble, rather than bragging:
- Credit: “It could not have happened without…”
- Hard work: “We had to work so hard to make this happen, such as [example]…”
- Vulnerability: “It was most difficult when…
- Duty: “We were driven by our dream to [noble motive]…”
- Gratitude: “I’m so proud and thankful that…”
Interview questions. Ask each candidate:
- What were you hired to do? [Ideally, some sort of OKRs]
- What accomplishments are you proud of? [Ideally, these link to #1!]
- What were some low points during the job? [Keep asking until you get an honest answer]
- Who were the people you worked with?
- What’s your bosses’ name and how do I spell it?
- What was it like working with them?
- If I ask them for your biggest strengths & weaknesses, what would they say?
- Who were your peers and how do I spell their names?
- Who were members of your team and how do I spell their names?
- How would you rate the team when you inherited it (A, B, C)? And when you left (A, B, C)?
- Why did you leave that job?
Reference check questions.
- In what context did you work with them?
- What were their biggest strengths?
- What were their biggest weaknesses back then?
- How would you rate their overall performance from 1-10? What about their performance gives you that rating?
- They mentioned they struggled with _____. Can you tell me more about that?
Rating: 5 stars
Yevgeniy Brikman
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like my books. If you need help with DevOps, reach out to me at Gruntwork.