Category Archives: Leadership

Build Businesses That Solve Problems You Understand

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Better for you and your customers to tackle problems you have experience with. If you come from nowhere with no expertise in the sandbox you want to play in, you’re at a severe disadvantage because you cannot directly empathize with your customers out of the gate and need to spend that much more time on research to catch up. You’re behind before you begin.

What problems have you suffered in life and have educated theories strong enough to beat them? If you move forward without an underlying passion to solve a personal problem, what then will continue to fuel your fire? How can you possibly stay excited about an idea you have no emotional attachment to – a problem you do not understand?

I’m not telling you not to stretch yourself. And I’m definitely not telling you to skip the research altogether and go for what you know. Understand, however, that jumping into a business blind comes with much higher risk and a harder path to pave. One in ten million people get lucky building something they do not understand and making a business out of it. Press your luck to be the one or press your experience to build something you care about instead.

Mix Your Company Up

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If you hardwire flexibility into your core company values, it will make things much easier to pivot later when you need to. Make a point to mix things up as much as possible. A new office layout, random events and shifting roles can keep things fresh for your team and prepare them for bigger changes when they come. Build an environment where everyone can comfortably go with the flow and you might actually survive a major company transition.

Find the Root of the Problem

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You cannot cure a disease by suppressing its symptoms. A quick fix will not make things better down the road. Do your research, break down the constituent parts and interview everyone involved. Understand why something is happening. Find the when, where, why, who and how. Do not be afraid of the answer. Accept the possibility that the cause of the problem may be yourself or someone close to you. When you find out, solve it. Make big changes. Whatever it takes.

End With the Good News

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“I’ve got good news and bad news.” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah, which do you want first?”

Always start with the bad news and save the best for last. It will always be more difficult for people to get over the sour news (most people dwell on bad stuff longer than good stuff), so the best thing you can do is end with the good news and hope for a softer blow overall. By ending with the good news, you stand a chance to inspire solutions, optimism or even an antidote to the bad news.

Trial & Error

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Trial & error has two parts: trial and error. You must accept both before you embark on an experiment. Stand behind both as they happen. Separate yourself emotionally from failure – few experiments in this world have great batting averages. Remind yourself that every action comes with a reaction you often cannot control. Have fun with it.

Gratitude: Social Currency

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It feels great to get a pat on the back. Everyone needs a little appreciation here and there. Dish it out to others as much as you can. Genuinely thank someone for making your life better. If you can’t find an honest way he or she makes your life better, identify a characteristic you admire and point it out as a good thing. It makes a huge difference and may win you a new friend. Express enough genuine gratitude, and you may find yourself surrounded in friends.

Do Not Build A Product You Don’t Use

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What’s the point? How could you possibly believe in what you’re doing? How could you understand what you are doing? Or why you’re doing it? Or who you are doing it for? If you don’t use the product you’re building, how can you really understand the value it provides? The way it works and the way it doesn’t? How and where it fits in the marketplace? If you do not use the product you are building, how can you truly inspire your team to believe? Inspiration, relevance, and quality comes from the top. If you don’t do it, how can you expect anyone else to? How can you genuinely market to customers and ask them to? How can you build a successful business you’re not invested in?

Hierarchy Does Not Work Anymore

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In a world where everyone in an organization needs to be on the same page, hierarchy can be fatal. The time it takes for information to travel up and down the ladder, pass decisions up to the qualified decision maker, and fix broken translations will derail your team. Hierarchy in an information-age company turns into a big clumsy game of telephone, a jumbled mess of words and directives totally unacceptable and avertable in a world ripe with efficient communication technology.

Hierarchy today helps only in one scenario: eliminating the time it takes to collectively vote on a decision that needs to be made. In some situations, big decisions need to be made quickly without consulting the committee. That said, the time it takes to disseminate and re-orient everyone around the decision may take as long or considerably longer than taking the time to vote in the first place.

An efficient organization awards every member of its team the autonomy and trust to make decisions and solve problems when they arise. An efficient organization rallies everyone around a core mission and invites everyone to shape objective extensions of that mission. An efficient organization promotes true transparency, total accessibility, and the free-flow of information. Everyone who needs to have a say has a say. No one is left out. And no one needs to answer to anyone but themselves and their work.

The Three-Step Interview Process

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Interviews by themselves are not sufficient for thoroughly realizing your connection with a potential candidate. It takes at least three of the following steps before you can even scratch the surface:

Vocational Interview – classic meet and greet to dissect the position together.
Social Interview – drinks, meal, exercise or games to test a cultural fit.
Portfolio – collect samples of past work like writing, formulas, apps, design, etc.
Shadowing – an observational half-day tour of the office, team and work ahead.
Co-Piloting – a hands-on tour of the job, shared and observed in part by an employee.
Contract Work – full trial of a person’s skills and autonomy to complete a project.
References – a second opinion from people who worked with the candidate before.

The more involved your interview process is, the better. Candidates who make it through show true dedication to the position ahead. There’s always a way to work with someone in advance of hiring them, even if it means tours or co-piloting after hours or remotely.

Big Things Are Difficult to Move

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If you need to move something big (like a company, brand, bureaucracy or collective theory), take the mafia approach: chop it up limb for limb so that you can fit the parts in your trunk and move on. As with any complicated problem, you need to break it down into several constituent parts, analyze them and reconfigure them into a package that’s easier to manage. Many smaller problems tangle into larger complex problems if left unchecked. To completely clean up the mess, you need to resolve them all. It takes an analytical mind to separate everything and navigate the labyrinth. Not easy to do. And it takes a lot of time. Sometimes it’s not worth it. Certainly not worth it to butcher a corpse. Some ships need to sink. More often than not, you need to try. Do what you can to break it all down, focus on the details and figure things out.