3 tips to manage your Start-Up to Success
Increasing results for your start-up is easier than you think, just have to be better at your job.
Peter Drucker (one book here) and Dale Carnegie (good book here), and a few others have all dedicated their lives to managing people and teaching others how to do it. If you have not heard of the two people in this paragraph, you really need to stop reading this right now and go read their books that I linked to as soon as you can.
Tip # 1
You ask the question, “What are you working on now?” a lot.
You should be asking those same people about the things they told you they would get done, not asking them what are they working on. If this is happening to you, you’re an asshole and I’m not sorry about saying that. You are asking people to know-how-to-do and execute their job, yet you don’t even know how to do yours properly.
How To Do It
Do a “standup meeting”. This is how we do it:
a. Have a meeting at the same time everyday for 10-minutes and stick to it — if you don’t get through everyone, then you know you need to have everybody be quicker and more efficient (ours at SoFetch is at 10AM EST EVERYDAY), thats step-1.
b. Go around to each person and ask them 3 simple questions
c. (1) What did you do since the last meeting yesterday at 10AM? (this tells you what they got done).
d. (2) What are you going to do from now until tomorrow’s meeting at 10AM EST? (this tells you what they THINK they’ll get done).
e. (3) Is anything potentially blocking you? (If they need your help or someone else’s, this is the time they can ask for it and have your attention)
[Case-study] how we use it at SoFetch.io
We do this everyday and I’ve done this every-time I’ve had a consulting project before growing SoFetch. This meeting is literally a silver-bullet. This will turn around any and all projects immediately and get them on track. Also: you won’t have to fucking ask dumb questions everyday.
Since we hold these meetings in Slack. We even built a tool (Standup Bot) , which a lot of other companies now use too, that facilitates this meeting for us and gives us a nice report afterwards so we don’t have to waste time taking notes.
Beautiful benefits of doing this meeting
If someone repeats the same thing the next day, its an indicator that I need to step-in and figure out why, since they might be stuck or something. Another beautiful by-product of this meeting is that people will also start saying only the things they’ll get done after the first couple of meetings. Who the hell would want to start saying: “i’m going to do get these 10-things done by tomorrow!”, only to get 3 of them done. Guess what? They’ll estimate better during the next meeting.
“i’m going to do get these 10-things done by tomorrow!”
If theres a problem of someone not pulling their weight, you have more than enough examples to let them go. Harsh to say, but guess what, thats business and if someone is doing a great job, they’ll love these meetings. If someone is poisoning the organization, like Gomer Pyle did his platoon in Full-Metal-Jacket by not doing their job. It’s bad-for-business for the people that have to do the work of that person too, let them go. Beating them with soap is not advised this day in age, though.
Tip # 2
Have you told anyone “Hey, great job earlier for X” on your team today that they have done a good job?
Everyday presents problems. Everyday there will be someone on your team that has something going on in their personal life. This shit should matter to you, man. If not, surprise: you are the problem again.
How To Do It
You need to make sure you care and show some sort of appreciation. When I was working for/with someone, I should have heard “Hey man, great job by the way on X” more than I did (and no, not being arrogant). EVERYONE on the team needs this. I can’t tell you how many times it’s been nice to be able to say that to people I work with, even if the work has been less-than-stellar for a particular day. It doesn’t fucking matter. This is why you are a manager. You are there to pull people on your team out of the shitter and keep them motivated and to know that at least one person cares.
[Case-study] how we use it at SoFetch.io
We communicate 99% of the time through Slack. I try to make it a point every week to reach out to everyone (sure, sometimes I slip and don’t make it to everyone, but I do it often since I really do appreciate everyones work).
If you are bad at saying something, here are two examples of what I felt at that moment in time to someone (If you cold-copy these, you really need to see a Counselor to talk about your feelings, email me and I’ll suggest one):
Hey, thank you for getting that done last night.
And another one:
Great work on getting that audit done.
Its very simple. I’ve explained this to quite a few companies in San Francisco on a recent trip and many of these people have come back to me and said thank you since it helped bring more togetherness in their organization immediately.
Beautiful benefit of saying these things
For starters, you’ll be better off in your personal relationships. And so will the people you say this too. For example I know understand all the things I could have done more in my personal intimate relationships with a female. I now understand what doing acts-of-kindness-without-something-in-return is. Those flowers your wife/girlfriend/female-friend likes randomly? Yea, I get that now and am more than happy to do that to express my appreciation. Those chocolate bars your boyfriend/male-partner/LGBTNWDBIL-whatever-political-correct-label-for-your-relationship likes, yea, stop and get one while you’re paying for that Bottle of water at the check-out station is.
Generally, just being nice and empathetic. The quote below is from someone that is no longer around and I really wish they were so I could get more wisdom from them
Be nice and say nice things
It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to know that being nice is a great way to have a great team.
Tip #3
Reaching out very often to ask every member on your team, privately, “Is everything going OK? Any issues that I need to know about that I can fix??”
If you don’t ask this, I don’t know how the hell you got your job, but what it does tell me is you are a great salesman. You need to do that instead since you’re good at it.
How To Do It
Open your calendar and set times/reminders and be VERY specific as to WHO you will ask on that date at that time. This way, when you’re done with that appointment, you can set another random date and time for that same person next week or next month to ‘check-in’. I literally ask ‘Is everything going OK?’. I stop what the fuck I’m doing and I ask that question to the right person because I want to make sure I can fix whatever issue they might be having. Sometimes my follow-through sucks, but at least I’m aware of it and asked the question.
[Case-study] how this has worked at SoFetch.io
After asking this question to one person, they immediately told me an issue they had. I was able to come up with a solution that fit into their day and into the process we were using and now it’s no longer an issue. That person now uses the SHIT out the time in standup (that 3rd question, “Anything blocking you”) like it’s the easy-button and I can’t appreciate that enough. It has made such a difference.
Beautiful benefit of asking this type of question periodically
You can prevent so much angst and hatred and really become the manager you should be. People want to feel like they have room to tell you things. If they can’t say it in public, hopefully they can tell you in private. If they don’t tell you in private the first time, the 2nd time you ask they might give in, but if you keep asking, they will eventually tell you something, so please, do not give up on this, this is extremely important.
The whole reason you’re a Manager
You have the beautiful blessing of being able to lead. The people on your team need to be taken care of. In simplest terms: these people are plants that you need to water and take care of everyday. If the sun is too bright in one spot, take the time to move the plant to a better location so it doesn’t get fucked up. That’s your fucking job. If someone on the team isn’t performing, they need to be let go. If someone on the team is being an asshole to someone else, ask them to be nicer — if not, tell them to hit the fucking road.
There, you have 3 simple tips to manage people awesomely.
Theres a few other nuggets of management knowledge I could drop on you, but i’ll save those for another post if people share/recommend this one enough to their friends and family and network and other managers. So yea, do that if you found value in it — if not, well, hopefully my next article will wet your whistle.
