This article was written by Ken Leaver who comes from a product & commercial background. He has founded multiple companies and held senior product positions at SEA tech companies like Lazada and Pomelo Fashion.
Now Ken runs his own agency that helps early stage startups with content and traction called End Game.
Guest Author: Ken Leaver
- Ken talks about the need for ‘passion’ in your team, like a team of entrepreneurs that you guide rather than manage
- A function run by a person that is just ‘going through the motions’ to him is a future failed function
- So how do you create a team like this? Ken thinks he’s got a way
The past couple weeks we ended up parting ways with a couple of contractors in our team. Both of whom in my view were just going through the motions rather than operating out of a passion for what they do.
For me, in a young startup you absolutely need people that care about what they do and have a passion for it. Otherwise it won’t improve.
They’ll be completely happy to just go through the motions each day without pushing themselves to learn anything.
There are entire armies of these types of people in the corporate world…. and in my view they should stay there for as long as they can. Because that is the only place they will still survive.
I want hungry assassins.
And i’ll sacrifice some experience and some intelligence for the mindset of an assassin anyday.
Now let me explain.
Why do I consider ‘passion’ the key ingredient in my team members?
Passion to me means you enjoy and care about the work you do. You want to get better at it long-term.
Without this a person will typically just wing it and do as little as they can get away with.
More importantly they will not try to get better. And in today’s competitive world…. if you have a function run by someone that is not trying to get better…. you can essentially consider that to be a failed function.
Doesn’t matter if it’s creating software, creating content, marketing, whatever… that shit will fail. Period.
So I look for passion. The people who are thinking about the problem or challenge they are facing even when they are not working… and coming up with ideas.
People who are constantly asking me… “Hey Ken… can i try this?”
This passion is also very contagious. When a person is passionate and others see them.. they will naturally feel pressured to level up.
And when you have an entire team working like this… well then you have a team of ‘assassins.’
Large companies are full of people going through the motions
I’ve worked with a number of larger organization in the past… a few times as an employee but much more as a contractor. And if I were to estimate how many of their employees i would have let go if they were working for me… the number would probably be well over 30%.
They were just comfortable at doing the bare minimum at their job and were often slow to respond to anything that didn’t come from their direct boss.
But to their boss.. they were often angels. Because that is the one relationship that they invested very heavily into.
This is the ‘norm’ in large companies. And it is also why you see so many large companies getting their asses handed to them these days.
Because they are a magnet for these types of people. They breed them like a virus. A virus that will eventually lead to their downfall.
But I do not let this be the ‘norm’ for my teams. These people typically don’t last more than a couple weeks with me. Because I have a system that makes me like a human weed whacker for these types.
Why my system is great at weeding out those without passion
I’ve talked about the management system I use a lot so I will not go into it in detail here. If you’re interested in a refresh than just check out my last 4-5 articles.
Essentially I use a system in which I can manage lots (eg. 30-50) of people direct efficiently by ensuring that:
- Everything everyone does is a task in Clickup. If no task than don’t do it.
- Any work that someone does is reflected as a comment on their assigned task. No comment = no work was done.
- I follow hundreds of these task cards that my team are working on and typically respond within an hour on all comments/updates. Meaning i clear hundreds of notifications each day.
- By doing this I remove management layers and therefore am typically managing 30-50 people direct without that much strain.
If you do this… you will get to know each person in your team quite well. Their strengths, weaknesses, how fast they are, how responsive they are, etc.
People cannot hide in this system. I have quite a bit of direct exposure to everyone.
I contrast this to experiences in my earlier career where I ran teams that were 2-3 levels deep and there were some people who I had very little idea how they good they were.
But often if I worked with them direct… it was a coin toss as to whether I thought they were passionate and good at what they do.
That doesn’t happen with me anymore. I’m in the details with everyone in my team. Because i have a system that allows for it.
My secret insight… People who respond slowly typically suck (in my system)
As I have used this system for over three years now and literally managed hundreds of people with it… certain patterns begin to emerge.
One clear one has been that people who respond slowly on Clickup in my team almost universally suck in my experience.
Now this probably comes as a shock to some of you… as you probably don’t evaluate people based on how fast they respond. After all the common thinking is that quality of work is what counts most.
But what if the quality of your work is actually highly dependent on working in a transparent way so that you don’t go off in the wrong direction?
Or what if your work requires coordinating tightly with other people who are also working remotely and perhaps in different time zones?
Well then I can tell you what happens… quality becomes a direct function of how well and how fast you respond.
I do not recall a single person that has worked for me in the past three years that was slow to respond but I considered them good. Why?
Because they often held up lots of things. And their slowness often resulted in redundancy where someone else did something they may not have had to.
So now i have just concluded for myself… “With my system… if you respond slowly.. you are out.”
Harsh I know. But we are playing in a highly competitive world… and people in most functions are very easy to find. And I have almost no friction in bringing on new team members since I use mainly Upworkers and an automated onboarding process.
Parting words
Anyway… I know this article may come off a bit aggressive. But I think you need to be a bit cold blooded till you have your team of ‘assassins.’
Then when you get there… I’m all about the love 🙂
