Building a World-Class Business Organization
Seven Lessons Learned as a Leader on the Edge of High Tech
“There is no other secret sales team hiding on the floor below us. This is it, we are it, and we cannot fail.”
I say these words in every interview with a potential new hire on my team as an initial litmus test — does this statement scare them off, or does it make them want to join our organization even more?
I borrowed this phrase from a character in the film Zero Dark Thirty, about the CIA intelligence team in Pakistan tracking Osama Bin Laden. I know, not exactly the first movie that comes to mind when you’re looking for advice on how to be a great manager at a tech startup, but it works…. In the film, frustrated about the lack of progress on their mission, the team manager brings all of the analysts into a room and (very passionately) reminds them that there is no other secret team of analysts on another floor. There is no one else to complete the job; if they fail, that’s it.
The quote perfectly encapsulates the intense reality of joining a business organization at a startup — we are it. The thrill of that level of responsibility must be one of the top reasons someone is interested in joining my team. If you want the opportunity to create and implement a business strategy from end to end that will change the trajectory of a company, then you absolutely must be eager to run head first into the challenge. And if you’re the one building and leading that sales organization, you better run faster and harder than you had ever thought possible.
To be honest, I never experienced this level of responsibility during the first decade of my career in Google’s business organization. As much as I wanted to think I was a key part of our success, the reality was that the sales organization had exceeded 30,000 people by the time I left. If my team didn’t hit our target, well, there were 30,000 other people on hundreds upon hundreds of other floors who would make up for it to hit the quota. When I joined Nexar, I was ready to take on an entirely new level of responsibility: to build and lead the one sales team that would have to hit the revenue target.
The fun really started as we started to build the world class business organization we needed to succeed. Over the past 10 months, I’ve gone from leading a team of one to leading a team of 12, and it’s been an absolute thrill every step of the way. Having the trust of our co-founders and our board to embark on this journey has been essential, and I’ve benefited immensely from the mentorship of our CEO and several of our investors. For those of you who are also on the journey of driving business at a startup, I wanted to share seven key lessons I’ve learned this year.
#1: Your #1 Job is to Empower Your Team
I hold weekly one-on-one meetings with all of my direct reports, and I always start with the same question, week in and week out: “Do you have what you need to be successful?” It’s easy to get lost in a flurry of account updates, customer challenges and pipeline health reports in your weekly meetings, but as a manager, your most important job is to make sure your team members have all the tools and resources they need to successfully manage those accounts and customers and that pipeline.
Most people will simply answer “No, I’m good,” when you first start asking this question, so make sure you push on specifics — “Do you have the right sales collateral? Are you getting the sample data sets you need from the product team in a timely manner? Do you need new lead gen tools to help build your pipeline? Are you getting support for operational tasks — NDA’s, product questions — so you can invest in customer development?” It’s your job to make sure that everyone on your team can do their job successfully, so get into the specifics and help them articulate what they need. And of course, make sure you actually deliver on those needs as quickly as possible.
#2: Facilitate Smaller Cohorts of Team Members, Especially in the COVID Era
At a startup, there is very little time (or budget) for middle management. I have a lot of direct reports at the moment. In addition, we’re located on two different continents, spanning 10 hours of time difference. But the reality is that our organization is still so new, and as a company we are still finding our product-market fit across different customer segments, so this is the best organizational structure for the time being.
To combat potential fragmentation, and to ensure that a large number of individual contributors don’t feel so, well, individual, I encourage small cohorts of two to three people to work together on different customers and opportunities. I can’t be available to answer every question or attend every important meeting, but when two to three people are working together on every customer, there is enough diversity of perspective, experience and skill sets to increase our success rate. And with COVID isolating us all in our homes, this match-making improves overall well-being. You may need to start by explicitly telling people with whom to work, but if you emphasize the importance of working in small groups, everyone starts to naturally coordinate and unlock the power of their collective problem solving.
#3: Encourage a Culture of Structured, Strategic Thinking
One of our sales leads recently closed an exciting sale with a major autonomous vehicle company. It was the first time we had ever unlocked revenue for this use case, and something we were of course eager to scale out. I asked the sales lead and our analyst to put together a comprehensive go-to-market strategy for this opportunity. Only by examining the opportunity size, customer demand across multiple segments, and the technical feasibility of the use case would we be able to determine how much to invest in this domain moving forward.
To get started, I set a meeting one month out for the sales lead and analyst to present their strategy to the CEO and CTO, so there was a clear output and due date. Then, every week, I met with them to review their work. Neither one of them had put together such a structured go-to-market presentation before, so I coached them on the format, challenged them to back up their recommendations with as much data as possible, and most importantly, encouraged them to work hand-in-hand in the process (see #2 — those cohorts really work). As you build out your team and your business, be sure to always carve out time and dedicate energy to these go-to-market exercises. Making structured thinking a foundational element of your constantly evolving business will create a stronger culture and yield better sales results.
#4: Create Clarity on the Mission, Enable Creativity in the Execution
At Google, I was fortunate to receive extensive managerial training over the years, and one framework I continue to revisit are the Ten Characteristics of Great Managers (article). While every characteristic is important, the one that I have found to be the most critical in our fast-paced startup is that “A manager has a Clear Vision/Strategy for the Team.” This is actually a need we hear consistently across the company in our quarterly feedback surveys, and it’s especially important for our young business organization.
While we frequently pivot on important topics, like which sales channels to prioritize, or even which products to develop, I make sure to constantly reiterate the true north of our business organization. At our weekly Company Wide meetings, we always start with our three-pronged blueprint for success, and at our weekly Business Team meetings, I always start with the corollary of what our team’s blueprint for success is. While “Creative Commercialization” is at the core of what we do, and my team members have the freedom and support to pursue the strategies they themselves develop, I always make sure that every initiative and opportunity ladders up to the ultimate commercialization vision.
#5: Make Sure Everyone Stays Focused on their ONE THING Each Week
Early on in the days of building our organization, I told my manager, our CEO, that I was feeling overwhelmed. I had approximately 8,347 things to get done that week, and it felt like every hour there was more to do. He encouraged me to always have that ONE THING that I must accomplish for the week. Don’t just make a list every morning, pick ONE THING you must ensure gets done for the week and keep that top of mind every day.
I started getting calls throughout the week from people on my team telling me that they had so much to do and sometimes found it difficult to prioritize, so I began to emphasize the concept of the ONE THING. In our weekly team meeting, we do a round robin where everyone shares the ONE THING that they must accomplish, and then we discuss how different people on our team can support them with that ONE THING. Keeping the ONE THING top of mind, and knowing that ONE THING everyone else is working on are among the most important sanity checks we all do every week.
#6: Over-invest Time in the Onboarding Process
Unfortunately, at a startup you don’t have enough time to deliver a week-long training seminar for every new hire, nor do you have a people ops manager to handle it for you. As a result, it’s very easy to underinvest in the onboarding process when someone new joins your team. “It’s a startup, they’ll figure it out” is an all too familiar refrain.
When someone joins my team, I make every effort to meet with them everyday in their first week. I prepare a personalized Week 1 overview with key topics and links to relevant materials, and schedule a dozen one-on-ones for them with different team members before they start. I spent hours writing a 20-page document breaking down our overall company structure, individual roles and responsibilities, and creating a list of all the tools we use and why. The more effort you put into onboarding someone upfront, the faster that person will be able to bring value to your team.
#7: Be Your Best Self; Your Team Needs You
Now that I’m a manager of twelve within a fast growing startup, I have twelve more reasons to be my best self. You can’t support and coach and lead and inspire effectively without a constant level of energy and focus. That doesn’t mean you have to be one of those leaders who does Ironmans or meditates for 60 minutes a day or, god forbid, drinks soylent. But you have all the more reason to do the things you know you should to be your best self.
I always wake up by 6:04 a.m., never a minute later. I always find at least 45 minutes to exercise four times a week. I always eat at least two pieces of fruit per day, and I (try really hard) never to drink alcohol during the week. I’m not bragging here; it’s just a simple set of rules that I follow to keep my energy levels high enough to inspire, my endurance levels high enough to focus anytime someone on my team needs to talk, and most importantly, to maintain my intense desire to do everything possible for us to succeed. Because I always remember that there’s no other secret sales team sitting around on another floor waiting to do our job for us.
