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
Ok so this title is a pretty aggressive statement. And that’s exactly because i want it to be.
Using my current process, I do not think there is a single person I have worked with in my career that can ‘outexecute’ me right now. And I’ve worked with some really amazing people over the years.
Yes, i know… very bold. But now let me give you some context and explain my logic.
First, let’s take you back to “4-Hour Work Week”
I read this book soon after it came out in 2007 and fell in love with Tim Ferriss as many folks of my generation did. It was one of those books that changed who I was and the way I looked at things.
It taught you to not just blindly chase some goal but rather think about how to achieve the result in the simplest, most efficient way. A lot like ‘First Principles’ thinking.
One story in the book is of how Tim won the Chinese Kickboxing Competition. Here is how Tim describes it in his own words.
In 1999, sometime after quitting my second unfulfilling job and eating peanut-butter sandwiches for comfort, I won the gold medal at the Chinese Kickboxing National Championships.
It wasn’t because I was good at punching and kicking. God forbid. That seemed a bit dangerous, considering I did it on a dare and had four weeks of preparation. Besides, I have a watermelon head–it’s a big target.
I won by reading the rules and looking for loopholes, of which there were two:
1. Weigh-ins were the day prior to competition: Using dehydration techniques I now teach to elite powerlifters, I lost 28 pounds in 18 hours, weighed in at 165 pounds, and then hyperhydrated back to 193 pounds*. It’s hard to fight someone from three weight classes above you. Poor little guys.
2. There was a technicality in the fine print: If one combatant fell off the elevated platform three times in a single round, his opponent won by default. I decided to use this technicality as my single technique and just push people off. As you might imagine, this did not make the judges the happiest Chinese I’ve ever seen.
The result? I won all my matches by technical knock-out (TKO) and went home national champion, something 99% of those with 5-10 years of experience had been unable to do.
Basically Tim Ferris had ‘hacked’ victory by understanding the most efficient way to win.
I am now going to argue that I have ‘hacked’ execution
Let me start off carefully defining my argument so you don’t think I am a deluded, egotistical maniac.
- Am i saying i am the smartest? No.
- Am i saying i am the most successful? Definitely no. I have friends that are worth many times more than I am.
- Am i saying I will make the best decisions? No.
- Am i saying that given the same desired outcome and level of resources, that I will achieve the ‘business result’ more effectively? YES
Let’s start with some definitions
Defn 1: ‘Business result’ = ‘What you do’ + ‘How you do it’ (ie. execution)
- I define ‘execution’ as only the second part… or ‘How you do it,’ which to me is pure logic/process/math.
- Whereas the ‘what you do’ is more business strategy and tons of other variables. This for me is out of scope.
Defn 2: ‘Execution’ = clear tasks x accountability x transparency x iteration
Now let’s look at these components:
- Clear tasks = well defined what to do, how to do it, in what priority, no ambiguity
- Accountability = who will do it, by when, done on time
- Transparency = how much was done, was it done well
- Iteration = speed of feedback/unblocking/etc
This is what execution is to me. This equation.
Agree? Think I missed something?
Now why am I confident that with my system I will ‘outexecute’ pretty much anyone out there
Again, its not because i’m the smartest or full of myself.
I’m simply banking on the fact that I have created a unique system that is super optimized for this formula above. You can almost think of it like I ‘hacked’ the formula.
I have taken each of the 4 elements of the equation above… and asked myself:
“What is the absolute most efficient way to achieve this with the tools available in the market today?”
With my system I have already seen that:
- I have effectively managed as much as 50-60 people direct simultaneously
- which meant having a super flat organization (ie. almost no politics)
- everything everyone did was tracked as a task (ie. ultra-transparency) that was written clearly and had an accurate due date
- I responded within an hour anytime someone needed support by keeping my notifications clean
- On average each person got my feedback several times a day (as opposed to traditional managers who do a weekly 1-on-1)
- I also completely wiped out all regular meetings (team and 1-on-1’s)
- and surprisingly the teams… loved it.
Can a traditional manager claim these things?
And if not… can a ‘traditional’ manager beat me on any of the four compoenents of my ‘execution’ equation above?
Even if they somehow beat me on one… i will beat them on the other three. And therefore my total for ‘execution’ will exceed their’s.
Are you starting to get my point?
I’d love to test my theory
This above is a theory.. but i would absolutely love to put it to the test.
As in literally round up the very best ‘traditional’ managers out there and remove the ‘what’ by giving us the same end outcome and level of resources.
Then we just compete on the ‘how’.
I use my system and they use the traditional management approach of team meetings, 1-on-1’s and the rest of it.
Then we see who executed faster and more accurately.
Even if they were far smarter and more driven than me… I would still put the money on me simply because i’m using a process that is highly optimized for the equation.
For me it is like being Tim Ferriss and pushing those world-class kickboxers out of the ring… because they were not trained to defend against it.
Further Reading
Note that I haven’t talked about how my system works as I’ve discussed it in numerous past posts… if you’re interested you can find those posts here:
