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What’s Important: The Right Answer, Not Being Right

Sean McVay, head coach of the Los Angeles Rams, shared how he led the Rams to win the Super Bowl this year. Sean is the youngest head coach in the NFL. Some of his players are his age or older. I was curious about what he had to say. Part of his formula for success is listening to his players. He acknowledges that he and other coaches don’t have all the answers. He cares about what’s right, not who’s right. This stood out to me and reminded me of something similar Ray Dalio said:

I just want to be right—I don’t care if the right answer comes from me.

Dalio also tweeted a similar thought a few months back.

It’s telling that two credible people in different industries are saying the same thing. If you’re a founder, consider taking a second to ask yourself: Do I care more about being proven right or about getting to the right answer?

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Will a Body Count Be Part of Your Founder Story?

Founders tend to be impatient people. They have ideas, but they realize that it’s the execution of their ideas that matters. Most have high expectations around execution. They manage others with a focus on getting things done quickly. Their impatience can be a superpower, but it can also have unintended consequences.

Focusing exclusively on rapid execution at all costs can be a slippery slope. That type of management gets results, but at a cost. People burn out. The company’s culture can turn toxic. The business churns through people. The body count rises.

If you’re a founder, consider: Do you want a high body count to be part of your legacy? Does your current management style align with the legacy you want to leave behind you?

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Founders, Be Willing to Get Your Hands Dirty

An early-stage founder asked me for advice on handling a weird cofounder dynamic. This CEO realized that his team doesn’t respect his cofounder. Finding this odd, I dug in. I learned that the cofounder is used to a more corporate setting with resources and a team beneath him. He sees his lane as being narrow and stays squarely in it. Translation: the cofounder isn’t used to getting his hands dirty and taking on tasks he isn’t experienced in.

Early-stage companies are in constant flux and usually have only a handful of people. What needs to be done changes constantly, and there are never enough resources to get everything done. Often, everyone works on tasks outside their role—leaders included—until the company has the resources and scale to hire sufficient staff.

Early-stage founders should lead by example and be ready to get their hands dirty. Otherwise, they risk losing the respect of their team. It’s hard for your people to wrap their heads around running through a wall for you if you won’t run through one yourself.

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Part-time Commitment Won’t Help a Business Realize Its Full Potential

I recently became a customer of an interesting business. It seemed amazing, and I wanted to learn more. The product is great. I was surprised it hasn’t seen explosive growth. I decided to dig deeper and spent time observing and talking to the team. The owners are absent most of the time and live somewhere else. Once they got the business open, they began to focus on other projects, relying on general managers to run this business. Two general managers share the load, each running the business for approximately six months at a time. I spoke with one of the managers and asked about this arrangement. She said she has other projects outside this job that take priority and this role was never intended to be a full-time or long-term commitment. I spent time with the junior team members as well. They all live close to the business, and this is their full-time and only job.

I realized what’s missing. The owners and managers of the business aren’t fully committed. Leadership all have other things they’re working on that are more important to them than this business. The rest of the team sees the lack of commitment and has adjusted accordingly. None of them spoke of this as a place they see themselves long-term. They view it as a job and are passing through until their next opportunity.

There’s no one on the team fully committed to seeing this business reach its full potential, so it hasn’t. It’s just chugging along as a mediocre business. I suspect another entrepreneur will come along and see its potential. They’ll buy it and commit to taking it to the next level.

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Exit Interviews, Done Right, Are Golden

In the early days of a company, the team is small. One person leaving the company can be a big blow to the team. To an early founder not anticipating the departure, it’s frustrating. Usually, team members opt to leave when things aren’t going well, so the departure combined with challenges in the business can feel like a double whammy and cause founders to question themselves as leaders.

Departures happen at start-ups. The first leaver likely won’t be the last. You want to do all you can to build a great environment and have everyone aligned on the mission, but however hard you try, people will leave. It’s a setback—but also an opportunity to get candid feedback on the business, how leaders are perceived, and the mood of the rest of the team.

I’m a big fan of doing exit interviews when team members choose to depart. Along with thanking them for their service and letting them know they’re always welcome to come back (if they were a good team member), it’s important to ask them for candid feedback. When someone is departing, they’ll usually give more direct feedback because they don’t have anything to lose.

Listening to feedback from someone leaving a hole in your team is hard to do. But it’s super important to look past how you feel about the situation and the extra workload caused by the departure. Listen to understand the why behind the person’s decision to depart, what’s going well, and what can be improved. You may not agree with everything they say, but this opportunity to learn and improve in various areas doesn’t come often. It often leads to valuable golden nuggets.

If you’re an early founder and a team member exits, don’t dwell on the fact that they quit. Instead, focus on what you can learn from the situation to minimize the chances of it happening again and to make your business better.

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Founders, Your People Are Vital to Business Success

I’ve connected with numerous founders who have a big vision but don’t value how vital other people are to its success. They understand they’ll need help, but how they see other people is always telling. They may view others as necessary to execute specific tasks but replaceable. They treat them as an expense line item, with the compensation, equity, and responsibility they offer reflecting that mindset.

The classic example I see is a nontechnical founder building a software company. He wants to use offshore development or hire a junior developer whom he’ll manage. He thinks he needs someone to just build a product and tries to get it done as cheaply as possible. What this founder doesn’t grasp is that the software is the company. The software is a living thing that will evolve and become more complex over time. The people building it are not just an expense. They’re critical to building and maintaining a product customers will pay to use, and they should be treated as such. And there needs to be someone at the leadership level—other than the nontechnical founder—who’s responsible for this critical part of the business and incentivized by cash and equity.

When I was a founder, I learned (the hard way) that you can go further, faster with a solid team that shares in the upside.

If you’re trying to do something great, think about how you can get the best people possible around the table to help you, not how you can spend the least amount possible. That shift in mindset could be the difference maker.

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Founder Optimism

I’ve been following the recent news about Nikola Corp. founder and former chairman Trevor Milton. He’s been charged with misleading investors. I have no views on his guilt or innocence, but his situation reminded me of conversations I’ve had with founders.

Many early founders are optimistic about their companies. To survive, they have to be. The chips are stacked against them. If founders focus on the million things that could go wrong, it’s hard to motivate teams to run through walls. So, many of them see the glass as half full and focus on what could go right. I like this approach. It’s what teams need to do the impossible.

But . . . though optimism is great, there’s a line that founders shouldn’t cross. They should be clear about what has happened versus what they’re planning for. Saying you’ve hired a rock star CTO is different than saying a CTO will come on board shortly when you conclude final negotiations. One’s a done deal. The other’s an expectation. Founders can get themselves in hot water if they position something as having already been concluded when it hasn’t. Even if it’s highly likely it will happen soon. Maybe it won’t. Maybe Murphy’s Law will kick in. Or maybe the founder’s view of what’s “highly likely” is skewed by his rose-colored glasses.

Founders should be optimistic but also clear with all stakeholders. Optimism without transparency will erode trust over time. If a team doesn’t trust its leader, it’s doomed.

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The Rise of the Retreat

With more companies working remotely, I’ve been hearing more founders searching for ways to keep their teams connected on a deeper level. Some of them are putting more thought into their retreat planning. Retreats are usually meetings outside the office where everyone gets together to bond and discuss the business. Some last one day; others are multiday. Many include team-building activities to allow team members to overcome a challenge together.

I’m a big fan of retreats and attended two a year before the pandemic. Most were for two to four days and attended by other entrepreneurs. Without a doubt, these have been some of the most transformative and enlightening experiences I’ve ever had. I’ve always left more focused and excited about what lies ahead.

Retreats were helpful before the pandemic, but I think they will be a critical tool for leaders going forward. Can’t wait to see all the creative ways people find to get teams to bond.

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A Picture—or a Clear Summary—Is Worth a Thousand Words

A friend does real estate projects, which I love hearing about. As we walk his sites, he tries to describe the end product. It’s hard to grasp what it will look like as I listen and look at the incomplete construction. He recently began getting renders, and he showed me one of the final version of his current project. I got it right away. The rendering brought his words to life and filled in all the gaps in two seconds. We discussed how helpful that rendering was for someone like me, and he shared an insight: it’s also been helpful for his workers and vendors. They understand what he’s aiming for now, and they make better decisions on their own that align with that vision rather than constantly ask him questions.

This past week I had a conversation with an early founder who’s building a software company. We’ve been working on his one-page strategic plan for the last few weeks. It includes his vision, mission, values, target market, three-year-goal, annual goals, quarterly goals, and quarterly projects. It’s essentially a roadmap that measures progress. It details where the founder wants to go, how he’ll get there, and what he needs to be working on this quarter and this year. The founder rolled out the plan to his team and got an interesting response from a team member: “I don’t feel like an employee anymore. I feel like an owner now, and I know exactly where we’re going and what I need to be doing.”

The founder was surprised that a simple one-page document was so illuminating. Having been a founder, I knew exactly what he meant. I also knew what he was missing. I reminded him that founders have more background knowledge about their market and where the company is heading than anyone else on the team. It’s all in the founder’s head. He’s been thinking about it nonstop. It’s clear to him. It makes sense to him. Other team members’ knowledge is full of gaps. Laying it all out in a simple way fills the gaps, making clear to everyone what’s so clear to the founder. It can be a rendering, a one-page strategic plan, or something else. If it connects the dots for other people, the outcome should be the same.

These two conversations were independent and about different industries, but the founders’ conclusions were the same. It’s important for founders to empower teams by painting a clear picture of where they’re going and how they plan to get there!

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Teams Will Have Their Ups and Downs

Yesterday I watched an MLS game and noticed something interesting. The game was overshadowed by an unfortunate dynamic on the home team. The star player and the coach weren’t seeing eye to eye, so the player sat out the game. His team lost. There’s no guarantee the home team would’ve won if their star had been on the field, but naturally the fans, including me, wondered.

As in most relationships in life, teams go through their ups and downs. There will be wins and losses. Good days and bad. It’s normal—part of the journey. The teams that achieve greatness find a way to ride it out when things go wrong and stay united in their goal. They continue to operate as a team.

Building a big company requires a team. Founders should be mindful that keeping their team united and motivated to move toward the goal is one of their main responsibilities as the leader. Compromise will be required. People will have to put their egos aside at some point. At the end of the day, it’ll be worth it if the team wins together!

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