Theme.
This week's #founderhacks are about what we can do to help people be brilliant.
Seen.
Tooled Up
This week one of us had someone report back on a failure.
An external advisor to a company we're involved in wasn't able to achieve what we needed. The instinct was to accept this, but something gave pause for thought.
The advisor certainly knew his stuff, but did he really know the business?
So instead of accepting the failure, and instead of berating the advisor, the business focused instead on tooling him up. Giving him more ammunition to continue the fight.
The reaction was a surprise. The advisor came back more committed, engaged, and ready to redouble his efforts.
It's easy sometimes to give up. It's easy too to blame the person. But sometimes a new set of tools - be it information, resources or a reminder of passion and purpose - can unlock unexpected levels of performance.
Read.
Scaled Up
We found a top tip from psychologist Adam Grant, courtesy of James Clear's fabulous newsletter.
If you're looking to solicit or give feedback, try asking for a score from 1-10. It has the magic effect of turning conversations into coaching.
The problem with a lot of conversations about performance is that we tend to use words. Words are lovely, but what different people understand words to mean can be very different.
A "good" performance to me may represent 6/10. To you it may be 8/10. That's a big difference.
How about an "okay" performance? Or a "great" one?
Using scaling questions opens up much more possibility for proper discussion and stimulates creative thinking.
So next time you're discussing a performance with a team member, maybe ask them to score themselves. Almost no one scores themselves a 10.
Then ask them what a 10 would look like?
If they do score themselves a 10, maybe they can explain why. And tell you what an 11 would look like?
Learned.
Let Up
This week we were debating an aphorism that one of us bought to the table: Great vision, without great people, is irrelevant.
So you can have it all: the idea, the vision, the strategy. But without great people, none of it really matters.
However, what does "great people" mean? Our experience has been that most people can be great, in the right environment. We've seen founders put too much reliance on "great people", and forget their responsibility to create an environment in which people can be great.
People's engagement in their jobs, generally starts at 100% on day one. Then it only goes one way. Most companies are really good at demolishing people's engagement.
So yes, vision depends on great people. But allowing people to be great rests with founders.
Maybe it's worth asking our people how we stop them being great, before we start complaining that we don't have great people.
And finally.
Adam Smith said there are only three in economics: labour, land and capital.
We like to think there are only three things in business: people, stuff, and money.
Money is like oxygen. It has to be there, but doesn't do much on it's own.
Stuff is like food. We need it, and like food, the right stuff will probably lead to a fit, healthy business.
Pretty much anyone can get the same stuff these days, if they have the money to do so. And innovation means stuff keeps getting cheaper. What was once a supercomputer that cost millions you can now hire by the microsecond from Google.
This means everything unique about a business comes down to people. Your ideas, your IP, what your customers experience, your processes - will all need to be conceived, operated and improved by people.
So what should you spend most of your time thinking about?
Don’t forget to check out the accompanying podcast version of #founderhacks for a tantalising live experience of team atomex!
