Little ways an organizational leader can show her team she cares about them as people

Pay them a competitive salary. Protect against mission and role creep. Give something clear to work toward and a strategy to employ to get there.

As an organizational leader, these are the foundations of developing a healthy relationship with your workforce. I’ve found there are other signs of an empathetic organizational culture that you can develop, without excessive budget needs.

These are examples of ways to show your team that you actually care about them as people. It goes a long way to develop the relationships you need to take on a big challenge, particularly without a pile of money.

Continue reading Little ways an organizational leader can show her team she cares about them as people

I changed a lot at my company. Here’s why beating a big Q1 revenue goal meant so much

version of this essay was published as part of my monthly newsletter a couple weeks back. Find other archives and join here to get updates like this first.

Nobody wants to follow someone who made General in peacetime.

I’ve been thinking about that concept a lot lately (Ben Horowitz calls its Peace/War Time CEO). In 2017, after eight years of informally leading the tiny community journalism organization I cofounded, I named myself CEO. Up until that point, my cofounder Brian and I had survived together. We’d always find a way to last a bit longer, growing slowly and thoughtfully as we navigated treacherous waters.

That survival approach was rational for growing a local news company in the early 21st century,  a time in which consumers maintain very high expectations for free and independent journalism but have not yet been fully trained to actually pay or otherwise support its work in a post-advertising world.

But in early 2018, as I was finally feeling the great responsibility of the CEO title, I took stock of where my company was.

Continue reading I changed a lot at my company. Here’s why beating a big Q1 revenue goal meant so much

How to fund small projects as a CEO

One unexpected result of becoming CEO of my own company is that I found myself without a traditional budget line I could pull from.

As we grew our company, we created a budget aligned with core functions. I stepped into a role in which I was overseeing them all, but I didn’t set aside budget for me in last year’s budget for myself. That sparked me to wonder how other CEOs approached giving themselves budgetary space to experiment, explore and trial.

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Notes from ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things’ by Ben Horowitz

Prominent investor Ben Horowitz’s 2014 book ‘The Hard Thing about Hard Things’ is among the seminal business philosophy books from this era of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.

Horowitz is half of the founding team of Andresson-Horowitz, an iconic Sand Hill Road software-focused venture capital firm. His work and perspective has influenced today’s funding and startup climate, and so I finally dug into the book.

I enjoyed it and took away several insights. As per my habit, find some of my notes below.

Continue reading Notes from ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things’ by Ben Horowitz

How to show growth for employees at a small organization

  • If you are a small company without a lot of turnover or new positions how do you make people feel that there is room for growth at your company?: We built out structured levels with half-steps and (over time) relatively clear definitions, and I’ve found our employees have appreciated that transparency and clarity. We have a Coordinator, Manager and Director structure, with just two C-levels and one VP, all of whom are senior and been with the company for a while. I’ve been mindful to avoid bloat (which I don’t think we always got right and made some mistakes there) but we do have clear ways for folks to grow. ie. Our more junior Coordinators first strive to oversee a department’s intern; our Managers tend to oversee a full-time Coordinator or at least a meaningful budget; and our few Directors lead a small team (2-3 people). (We have used the “Senior” title as a half-step, like Senior Manager or Senior Director ,to show growth)
  • How do you give promotions? Is it based on time (you’ve been here a year), responsibilities (you’ve taken on a new project) or something else (your boss is leaving)? One of the early successes that has really helped was that, with rare exception, only do promotions/salary growth two-times a year: aligned with twice-annual performance reviews. This has given structure and over time our staff really latch on to that cadence. One of the performance review questions includes a chance for teammates to call out what kind of growth they want
  • Do you wait until someone asks for a promotion, or are you clear upfront about what the next move is and when it could happen? For teammates I really want to retain, I often talk openly in their performance review check points about ways they might grow; projects and positions. Other teammates themselves voice, having seen how this works over time.
  • Do they have to add value (revenue) to warrant a promotion? Yes, most usually, we do discuss how their growth impacts the business, even for editorial. For example, we recently did a big internal promotion to a relatively junior editor of ours who worked on a smaller project exactly because she had been clever and very supportive of a newsletter subscriber growth strategy (which if not directly does indirectly tie to business goals). Our staff has grown pretty savvy in articulating how their work supports business goals. The performance reviews are good tools here: each six months a staff member is given a set of high-level priorities. Many excel at working toward them.
  • Do you give raises with promotions? Which do you find more motivating for people–promotions or raises? We always give raises with promotions. As a small local journalism org, for non-editorial roles, we haven’t always been competitive (though we’re getting better). Showing steady (if modest) salary growth year-over-year (even without promotions, we’ve usually outpaced COLA, which is easier in these low inflation years) has been important but the pathway for career growth has definitely meant a lot to many of our (best) teammates. I never judge teammates who really value salary growth, I’ve just tried to be upfront that I might not be able to meet those expectations longterm. This has been healthy.
  • Do you work with employees to create their growth plans? How does that process work? Yes, very tied to performance reviews. The aforementioned junior editor early in her time with us (four year employee) identified that she wanted a pathway to be a newsroom leader, more as editor than reporter. She is an excellent teammate so we kept finding opportunities for her professional development, which helped when the internal promotion opportunity came. She was less experienced than our external candidates but since it was part of a longterm conversation, we had de-risked so much with her that it proved an easy decision for me. That only happened because we had an open dialogue about her wants. Other staff members haven’t had as clear a personal journey (which is OK), but then I’ve likely not hit all their longterm plans.

Lessons on “The Messy Middle” of business from Scott Belsky

You know startups. You know exits.

Most of the work of business takes place somewhere in between the very start and the very end. Yet a lot of media attention focuses on those two iconic poles. So you might know a lot less about the space between the two poles.

We need more guidance on the work stage. That’s the approach in The Messy Middle, a new book published late last year from Scott Belsky. He founded Behance, which sold in 2012 to Adobe for $150 million, and has been an active  investor.

Continue reading Lessons on “The Messy Middle” of business from Scott Belsky

Leadership is something you do before you have a title

It’s common to wait to be tapped to be a leader. You’re doing it wrong.

You demonstrate it, you’re doing it before anyone gives you the job.

Don’t say My Idea. Say you worked on an idea. Cause ideas are easy, execution is hard. Don’t obsess over credit, work toward consensus

Demand only as much credit for a success as you would accept blame for its failure