Throwback Thursdays: How I work with collaborative teams (and what SNL has to do with it)
Our company camping trip is coming up in three weeks. Every summer, the company takes a bus up to somewhere north (near Sacramento) for a weekend camping trip. It’s been a tradition since our second year. (Our first year, we ended up going to Rancho San Antonio because we couldn’t afford a camping trip yet) My coworker is planning the trip for the third year. Two weeks ago, she called my name from across the floor.
“Do you remember this?” she said, pointing to her computer screen. In 2016, she had emailed the whole company with a pack list in a google doc. I pasted her list into our an internal knowledge page so people can search for it. That started a chain of amazing events.
An engineer followed with “for developers, I created a gist in a github.” Then an account manager followed with “for finance folks, I created an excel spreadsheet.” Then a designer followed with “for design, I’ve attached a version of the pack list in Sketch.” Then a valuation analyst followed with “I’ve attached an AICPA-compliant Packing List report.” Then the success team member said, “for Customer Success, I made a support article. Don’t worry it’s not actually published.” Then someone from the sales team said, “for the sales team- a meme infused RFP.” Then someone from marketing said, “for Marketing — an illustrative pack list.” Then someone ended with “that was EPIC. I love this company.”
I would say that was one of the best moments of our company.
It is also one of the examples of how we collaborated and became a really effective team. How did we do it? I didn’t know the answer until I read about how Lorne Michaels ran Saturday Night Live. Here are four things that kept SNL so successful for decades and how those things also worked for us.
- Having a common vision helps collaboration
Lorne Michaels was able to convince the teams that they had a once in a life time opportunity to showcase their talent to millions of people. As a start up, we felt that we had a mission to fix broken capitalization tables and create an ownership map between lawyers, companies, share holders and employees.
2. Ask for Help
Lorne Michaels always encouraged collaboration between the writers and comedians. Comedians could rely on the writers for sketch ideas. And all they had to do was ask! Same with us. From the beginning, we had created a helpful company culture. I don’t know whose idea it was. It was kinda like paying it forward. Helpful employees became role models that later employees would model their behaviors from. And it paid off!
3. Never blaming anyone
One of the keys to being successful, is feeling safe about making mistakes. SNL created many ideas but also iterated well. They also did not blame the cast or the writers for failure. This allowed them a room to innovate and evolve as the times, cast, and writers changed.
For start ups, it’s hard to know how a market will react when the market is really young and you only have early adapters. This is why start ups need to experiment. It’s one of the reasons why MVPs are so vital in the early stages.
We asked all new employees to read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. In the beginning of the book, Dale Carnegie talks about a serial killer who finally got caught after many months. When a reporter criticized him for the killings, the killer blamed his parents and his terrible childhood instead of apologizing. When you criticize people for their faults, people will just resent you and it will hurt your chances of getting the person to realize their mistakes, let alone change their ways. They have an old saying in Korea, “a mouse will bite the cat if it is cornered and there is no place to run.”
4. Autonomy
In the book, “Smarter, faster better”, Charles Duhigg suggests to galvanize employees, give them more decision-making authorities and autonomy. Says Duhigg: “Numerous studies show the most productive choice is empowering employees to make decisions for themselves.”
The SNL comedians didn’t follow industry or screenwriting standards. Instead of playing it safe, if they had an idea, they would experiment with it until it was funny enough to be on the air.
At a start up, there are always problems to be fixed. It is hard to work on things when there is a big uncertainty about the future. You are paving the road for the new market. There is nothing remotely similar out there.
Sometimes everyone needs a break from creativity. My coworkers built an arcade machine and played during the day. Why? Because our CEO understood the importance of owning one’s time. Taking breaks when we were dealing with something stressful was a norm for us. Eventually, this tradition turned to going on one on ones with our peers. We actually became more productive because ownership was so ingrained in our culture. People stepped up to the plate and fixed issues on their own without anyone telling them to do it. In an early stage start up, this is so critical.
