Balance between support, challenge & trust
Dear friends,Every week, I’m sharing an essay that relates to what we are building and learning at Alan. Those essays are fed by the article I’m lucky enough to read and capitalise on. I’m going to try to be provocative in those essays to trigger a discussion with the community. Please answer, comment, and ping me! If you are not subscribed yet, it's right here! If you like it, please share it on social networks! Balance between support, challenge, accountability & trustAs committed Alaners, we want the company to progress, we want to help, we want to push people to excellence. It is normal and it is a good thing. A simple rule for the decision-maker is that intervention needs to prove its benefits and those benefits need to be orders of magnitude higher than the natural (that is non-interventionist) path. Sometimes, there is a risk that we spend time asking questions and discussing topics that improve the discussion and the direction, but that are not worth the time and de-focus spent. Bill Gates said: “Don't remove an opportunity to learn from someone even if they didn't do it the way you wanted. Don't do things for them”. It is sometimes hard, frustrating to see people making an obvious mistake, and it is also sometimes necessary. As a result, we have to learn how to manage our anxiety with the unknown while keeping the highest standards. We have to ‘trust the team—give them breathing room to be creative and opportunities to shine” as Tony Fadell says. But “you can’t let it slide into mediocrity because you’re worried about seeming overbearing.” One of the options that has been suggested is being either very prescriptive or completely hands-off for a period (e.g., three months). I don’t like this binary choice and I don’t think it is the one that leads to the best outcome. In order to achieve the right balance, I have a strategy which is “no middle ground”:
How to add valueThere are several ways to keep adding value while not de-focusing the team:
Working as a teamOf course, Senior Alaners would like not to have to step in, and if they do it is because they believe they can improve the direction. One of the things that is really important is to see those contributions not as “challenge of who I am” or “of my work”, but as “we are trying to work as one team to get the best possible outcome”. Defensiveness and justifying positions will not help to get to a better outcome. Trying to digest the comment, the why the Senior Alaner is doing it, is likely the best way to improve the direction. For example, I had signals that the team is sometimes apprehensive about me stepping in, fearing I might veto their decisions or directions. On the contrary, I always just want the team to work together for the best outcome and it's not about trusting or not the team but about collaboration to have the best product possible. It is the only thing I care about. Steve Jobs was part of the design process at Apple, not because he didn't trust Jony Ive, but because they worked together to achieve the best result. It's normal to review and challenge each other's work, when you are working as a team. It is not about having a validation, or doing what the most senior Alaners think is right, it is about engaging in intense debates as one team to find the best solution. All the good-to-great companies have a penchant for intense dialogue. Trust in the team does not exclude the necessity for collaboration and mutual challenges. Instead of being overly sensitive to feedback, let’s welcome it to have the most awesome product of all time. Some articles I have read this week👉 Tweet by Shreyas Doshi (X)
👉 The macro in the US with bankruptcies rising 30% in the last 12 months 👉Luck and the Entrepreneur: The four kinds of luck (Pmarchive)
👉 Microsoft execs on TikTok, Nintendo, Apple, and more (Internal Tech Emails)
👉 Healthcare Weekly Press Review (Alan)
It’s already over! Please share JC’s Newsletter with your friends, and subscribe 👇 Let’s talk about this together on LinkedIn or on Twitter. Have a good week! |
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