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.
Ken runs his own agency that helps early stage companies execute faster and cheaper. Check out his linkedin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenleaver/
Guest Author: Ken Leaver
One thing that almost anyone that has worked with me in the last few years would say is that I am systematic. To an extreme.
Years ago the old me would have tried to downplay this or even hide it… in an effort to ‘be more like other managers’.
But those days are long gone.
I work for myself and I make my own rules for nearly four years now. I don’t have any HR to answer to. I don’t have anyone telling me what I should and should not say or do.
And so this new me embraces my quirks and use them as my competitive advantages. Which is probably what I should have done many years ago… because it is these quirks that are my sharpest weapons.
As an example, in recent years if you gave me any task, then if I thought it was going to take at least 10 minutes I would always create a Clickup card for it.
I would make sure it had a clearly written context and goal, an assignee, etc.
And then i’d update that card as I made progress on it with comments. These comments would be written out very clearly, even if i knew that the only person that would ever read them is me.
I pretty much never cut corners. I do it this same way every time. Again and again and again for years. No matter how busy I am.
And the reason I do this comes down to a philosophy about scaling that I will explain today.
The Navy SEALS are a metaphor I often like to make
The Navy SEALS are one of the elite fighting forces in the world. There have been numerous films that cover them like “Blackhawk Down”, “Lone Survivor” and “Zero Dark Thirty”.
The kill-to-be killed ratio of SEALS is estimated to be between 100:1 to 200:1. Especially during events like the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993, upon which Blackhawk Down was based.
And while the SEALS have better weaponry it is really their training and discipline that sets them apart.
They have trained so much that pretty much everything that they do becomes mostly just instinct. They repeat the same actions over and over again the same way each time.
Or as I like to say… “They load, aim, and fire the same way. Every single time.”
And because one SEAL knows exactly how all of his fellow SEALS were trained, they work as a team extremely well.
Because they can predict and rely on the same patterns of actions by their teammates even when all hell has broken loose.
And so while their enemy is in disarray… they’re cuttin’ them down one by one. Methodically.
I also “load, aim and fire” the same way everytime
Each and everyday I repeat the same set of actions.
From how i prioritise my day by copy & pasting a structure from the previous day, and then revising it (like below).
To how I clear all of my email and Clickup inboxes a few times per day in cycles with each project being a separate browser.
To how I create new tasks and new projects. Always within a well organized tree-like structure of folders.
To how I give feedback to my team.
I do it all the same way every time. Again and again and again.
I do not take shortcuts.
Shortcuts are like thinking you can day trade profitably long-term
If you’ve ever tried day trading stocks you probably know what I mean. You might think it’s brilliant for awhile, but in the longer term everyone almost always gets burned and then gets out.
It’s just a far safer and wiser bet to play the long game and invest in an index fund or something like that.
Shortcuts in how you work are the same logic to me.
I’ll give an example of design or engineering tasks. When I want some edits to the work, I always create subtasks that are structured exactly the same everytime.
Would it be easier to just forget about this and write the person doing the work a slack message or call them? Yes. It would shave some seconds or minutes here and there.
But then you need to remember how and what you told them, rather that just assuming you can always follow the same process.
And when you do as much shit as I do at the same time, you cannot be changing your process otherwise it slows the whole system down.
Because instead of just executing you are instead thinking or searching for threads to try to remember what was said.
Whereas I never try to remember what was said. I just know where to find the task and I know exactly how the task will look.
And I find that whatever small amount of time someone else shaved early on by taking a shortcut… once things are at scale I have left them in the dust.
This is the difference between managers that scale vs. those who do not
The vast majority of managers out there have weak systems. They think it is important to just get things done fast and efficiently.
And that process and structure is not that important.
These are also the ones that typically plateau quite early. You cannot give them more than a relatively small scope. Or you cannot give them a very big team.
Because their systems just do not scale. Chaos ensues.
They end up spending a big part of their day trying to remember things they said but didn’t document. Or trying to search for documents or messages that have valuable information or decisions they need to reference.
It is this inability to scale that causes such managers to harp on how important it is to remain very ‘focused’.
Meanwhile I’ll be doing 3x more shit than they are and getting it all done faster & better than them.
How?
The same way the SEALS are defeating their enemies with 100:1 ratios.
Extreme discipline to how I execute.
Do you bring ‘extreme discipline’ to how you execute?
Most folks out there will blow this off and think it isn’t necessary. Till one day you need to compete against a individual, team or company that operates like this.
Then I think you’ll think differently.
For those that make this a long-term pursuit the way I have… I think you will find it is like investing into index funds over a long period of time.
The returns compound.
