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
Earlier in the week I was catching up on some episodes I missed of Lenny’s podcast. One of them was with Andrew “Boz” Bosworth, the CTO of Facebook.
I had heard of him before but didn’t really know him.
He’d been one of the earlier engineers at Facebook and made it all the way to CTO and has stayed there for years. So he must be very smart and pretty good.
As I was listening… I agreed with most things he said till he came to the part where he was talking about how he manages.
First he talked about how he finds that it is important for a manager to repeat the same things over and over again so that a higher portion of people start to ‘get it’ and adopt it.
I used to believe the same thing… now I do not. If something is important… I incorporate it into the process so that it is done systematically.
I don’t rely on ‘hoping folks digest something’.
Next he talked about how he likes when the folks he manages send him an email update once a week or so…. and let him know if everything is moving as planned or whether they’re having any issues.
This is something i did a long time ago… and find to be completely ineffective compared to the way I manage now. As in… that is some ‘horse & carriage’ type shit… and in comparison now I feel like i’m cruising in a Ferrari.
So I finished the interview thinking to myself…. “Some of the most renowned managers in the world believe that this is the best way to do things…. and so folks that listen to them think that this is best practice.”
But I don’t. I think there’s a much better way.
Scratch that… I KNOW there is 🙂
Let’s begin.
To me…. execution is a math function
What I mean is that…. execution is more or less a direct function of only a handful of things:
- Quality of people
- Clarity of the goal and tasks needed to achieve that goal
- Productivity of the team members on their tasks
- Iteration (receive feedback & course correct)
So your job as a manager in my view is to use a system that optimizes for these 4 elements. It’s pretty simple when you think about it this way.
To optimize the equation, you first break it down into its subcomponents
So let’s break down each of the four components above into their key subcomponents that influence them.
Note that this list is probably not complete… but I put what I consider the most important elements:
1- Quality of people
a. How you recruit? (includes who you target, how you target, etc.)
b. How much you compensate them?
c. Do you have a system to ‘prune’ the team?
2- Clarity of the goal and tasks needed to achieve that goal
a. Are the goals/tasks clearly documented?
b. Are things maintained updated when they change?
c. Is there a systematic prioritisation of the most important tasks?
3 – Productivity of the team members on their tasks
a. Is their level of productivity transparent?
b. Do they have access to the most optimal set of tools to achieve high productivity?
4 – Iteration (receive feedback & course correct)
a. If they get blocked, how fast do they get unblocked?
b. If they need feedback, how good and how fast do they get it?
Next you look at each subcomponent with the aim of optimizing
Let’s start with “1. Quality of people.”
- Can you recruit from the top schools/companies? Or maybe you can use the leading (expensive) headhunters?
- Can you pay better than everyone else?
- For me I don’t have much room to optimize here…. I mainly use contractors (from Upwork) as it gives me a lot of flexibility.
- So I focus on systems to ‘prune the team quickly.’ In many cases i’ll test 2-3 people for a week.. and then keep the best one.
Now let’s go to “2. Clarity of the goal and tasks needed to achieve that goal.”
- Absolutely all tasks are written clearly and maintained up-to-date… so it would be nearly impossible for any traditional manager to beat me on this point. It’s math.
- We also systematically prioritise on a kanban for each team each week. So again, very hard for any manager out there to do this better than what I’m doing.
Next… “3. Productivity of the team members on their tasks”
- I am following every task for everyone I manage. And we operate on the philosophy that “any work that is done should be reflected as a comment/update to a task card.”
- So I literally see the productivity of each team member each week and sometimes use dashboards with points to measure it and keep it at a target baseline.
- Can someone do something better than this? Perhaps.. but difficult.
Lastly… “4. Iteration (receive feedback & course correct)”
- Me and everyone in the team utilise a system where we clear all Clickup notifications every couple of hours.
- This means that if you tag someone else and need their help… you will get an answer within 1 hour about 50% of the time and within 3 hours 100% of the time.
- This is in part enabled by the fact that nobody in the team has any recurring meetings that they are stuck in.
- So if someone needs feedback from me… they get it fast. This allows me to do lots of ‘micro course corrects each day” on their tasks. And thus much less likely that they waste large amounts of time shooting off in the wrong direction.
- Can someone beat this standard? Very difficult in my view.
So now let’s compare a traditional manager vs. a manager using my system
Are you a manager? Ask yourself… “How are you going to beat me?”
And note that we are removing strategy from the equation. Assume we have the same goal/strategy… and we have isolated it to who can execute it more efficiently.
Now you can probably beat me on the component “Quality of people”. Because you can recruit more expensive people with more robust recruiting systems.
And i’ve got my hands tied here due to the nature of the work I do… ie. project-based work where I work for various clients.
But it is extremely unlikely that you can out-optimize me on components 2 – 4.
And that’s not some opinion statement… in my view it is math.
There is an equation. There are levers to optimize that equation. And I have taken most of those levers to about their max.
I am challenging you to change the way you think about ‘how to manage’
Instead of how you thought about it before… I’m trying to get you to think of it like a simple formula that can be optimized.
And note that nowhere in this formula do you see strong dependencies on things like culture or relationships.
Those things will develop over time anyway without much effort being invested into them. Especially if everyone follows the system.
Rather than Mary liking Jane because they meet for lunch at the cafeteria…. in my system Mary has never even met Jane but likes her because everytime she tags her in to get support, Jane helps her almost immediately and competently.
That is how I like my teams to run.
And when you do it this way…. the politics remain at bay. And decisions get made because they are the most logical ones, and not because of someone’s relationship.
Parting Thoughts
Pretty much anyone can use and get good at this system.
Meaning you can become better than the vast majority of others at ‘execution.’
So why wouldn’t you?
But note that it takes time.
And it takes a mindset shift.
Are you ready to make that shift?
If you do.. than I think you might start to see an evolution like the one I’ve seen in myself the last few years.
Where the ‘new’ me just gets a LOT more done than the ‘old’ me.
