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
I like to think of the way I work these days as being similar to the way I thought about computer programming a long time ago.
You see in college, which was a longgggg time ago, I took some programming classes.
And although I wouldn’t say I had any special talent at it… I did enjoy it.
For me it was problem solving at its best. I’d break a complex problem down into its next-level logical components. Then I would further break those components down into more components.
I would keep breaking down components until I had something discrete that I could program. In a way you can think of it the way modern service-based software architectures are built… you put together lots of smaller services to create one large one.
I take this same logic and I literally apply it to everything I do. And the method I use on Clickup makes this possible.
Today i’ll explain how I do this and why it is so powerful.
Structuring a project
In Clickup you have numerous levels in a tree-like structure. From space to folder to list to task to subtask.
And so when I think about a very large project I will typically create a ‘space’ for it. Then i’ll break it down into its 1st level component chunks at the folder level. I’ll further break those down into lists and finally tasks.
I will do this in a way that it is exactly how I think about the project from a logical structure.
Why? Because I want to find things easily and doing it this way makes it very easy to find things.
Then Structure Your Whole Company the Same Way
I apply this same method I describe above to my entire company. For example above I have one entity that I run called Techzi, which more or less runs itself at this point.
I’ve broken down absolutely everything the company does into component folders. For example it does paid and organic marketing, it sends newsletters on Beehiiv, it has a site on WordPress, it publishes Youtube and Tiktok videos daily, etc.
So all of these things have their own folder.
Inside those folders all of the processes of the company occur. And processes typically vary based on the subject matter, so each process has its own set of tailored statuses.
Also, there are various people involved in the different processes, and so they have access to the relevant boards and run the processes there.
Most of these processes run with mainly just oversight from me at this point because I’m automatically following all of the tasks.
But literally everything the company does I have visibility on because I get notifications to my Clickup inbox.
And yet the time needed from me to keep these numerous processes in check is quite small.
What I’ve learned from doing this many times
When you create a company or a project in this way many times it starts to get very easy. You are taking something complex and breaking it down into its sub-components over and over again.
And so executing on anything is just a matter of doing this process and then assigning it to competent people to actually do the tasks.
Then making sure you keep your inbox clean so that you have visibility into how it is going and can intervene when it is necessary.
The shit literally starts to become easy.
I don’t need to ask for updates. I don’t wonder where things are stuck.
I have everything in a tight structure laid out for me. And this makes managing a ton of stuff easy.
You would not believe how much time is wasted thinking about what you need to do next or trying to recall the latest status of something. And I spend pretty much zero time on this anymore.
Because literally everything is documented in a clear way where it is easy to find anything.
What I’ve learned from observing those that do not do this
When I see someone who does not have this habit.. I see the same buckets of time waste over and over again:
- They ask for something from their team with nothing documented and so they forget a lot of what they asked for
- The person doing the task faces a hiccup and ends up taking far longer than they should have. Whereas the manager could have unblocked them had they known.
- The manager gets frustrated at someone doing a task because it takes longer than it should have and they did not hear about this hiccup.
- The manager creates lots of one-off documents or emails to remind teams of the tasks they should do.
- Time is invested in meeting updates or team members writing out long weekly updates
I waste almost no time doing any of this stuff. I just keep my inbox clean frequently and check my kanban boards… and I have a far better view on everything that is going on then the manager I describe above.
Plus I’m doing probably 50-200% more with my team because the system just works much better.
But, what about the magic of delegating?
First off.. let me say that I love delegating. Once something gets to the point where it is faster/easier for someone else to do it than me… I outsource it.
But I do not believe in what I call ‘black hole’ delegation. This is where you give a lieutenant a high level goal and then they just disappear and work on it with perhaps occasional updates back to you.
Rather I expect them to use my system and break down the project into its subcomponents in Clickup. And I will be following each of the tasks and coaching them right from the beginning on how they chose to structure it.
I often find that these small tweaks upfront end up saving tons of time later on. Because they don’t go down the wrong rabbit hole.
‘Black hole’ managers are easy to beat
What i’ve seen with managers who do ‘black hole’ delegation is that they are highly reliant on trust. They need people that they’ve worked with for awhile who are very good and understand what they want.
And they get frustrated when folks end up doing something that is different to what they want.
So in my view these types of managers will always be a bit capped in their effectiveness. Because it takes time to find good people and train them on what you want.
I am pretty effective with whoever I’ve got. Even if i’ve never worked with them before.
And if I do have people i trust, i still find i’m able to out-execute a ‘black hole’ manager pretty much every time. For the simple reason that I am anyway micro-steering the person pretty quickly whenever they go off track.
And when you do this… you also have a much better gauge on what their velocity and capacity is. So you know whether and when you can give them more.
Wrapping up
I like to consider breaking down projects into their component tasks a habit. A habit that you just learn to apply all of the time.
And it is not that you need to create absolutely every task for every team that you manage.
Rather I like to kick teams off by creating the tasks myself so that they see how I do it.
Then when they are ready I start letting them create their own tasks and mentor them on the things I think they should correct.
The key is to get your entire team to start doing this in a fairly consistent way with you being added as a follower, so you have oversight and can give feedback.
As they get better at that… you can manage more and more people because they take less of your time. Yet you still have the same level of oversight and control because you’re getting updates from all of these tasks.
Which is why I have even managed 40+ people direct in the past without breaking a sweat.
I not only think it can be done… I highly recommend it because it makes for a far flatter and faster organization.
If you give it a try… let me know how it goes!
