people, culture and everything in between
the hard part about running leap.club for me has been letting some things fall apart. there is never enough time to do everything well. no matter how hard you try, how many hours you put in, how much you rally people to do their job. getting comfortable with that takes a long time. and it’s been hard, very hard.
in the last two years i’ve learnt (and unlearnt) more about people and culture than i have in the first 9 years of my career. while my foundation on culture stays, there have been lots of additional learnings that have gotten added to it. a lot of which i also see and hear fellow founders going through/ struggle with. here’s my attempt at penning some of it down in the hope it helps atleast one other person:
- you can’t focus on strategy all the time. you have to focus on people. one of the better decisions we made in the last year was bringing in solid vertical leads. and while getting someone to do the job for you is a great idea, not going in to the meetings anymore may not be. i learnt this the hard way. ensure that 10–15–20 percent of your weekly calendar is carved out in a way where you’re helping them get upto speed and perform at the pace you need them to. deep sea etc is great but not always the best way to make a skilled sailor. also in general, remember that you need to enjoy spending time with them, value their opinions — you’re gonna be with them in the trenches.
- the biggest challenge about the above is that at some point your job will become hiring people and working with them to get the job done > doing it yourself. and this transition is hard, specially if you’re a generalist/ operator yourself. some of the best investments i made in my early years at leap.club was in a few people, who i trusted blindly to execute — and that gave me mad leverage on my time. in an early stage start up people come and go, so it also becomes tough to identify who all you can individually invest the time in. but i can tell you, that even if it’s 1/10 who end up staying for the long term — it’ll be worth it.
- while looking for senior leaders (or even general hires tbh) — a quick hack i read from brian chesky comes to mind. whenever you’re hiring for a specific role, and don’t know what to look for/ it’s not your forte — spend time having coffee with the top 5 people you know who do the job in the ecosystem. and just chat. you’ll form the ability to distinguish between who is an a+ and who is a b+ and small things beyond the experience that you’ll understand that someone in the role will need. earlier this year, we had lots of tech + product roles open, and for someone who has only done business hiring in the past, i realized i didn’t have much to contribute or train the team on. what really helped was getting them to spend time with ex colleagues who are top product designers and lead tech recruitment at large scale companies. safe to say, we saved a lot of time, the team got a chance to learn from the best in the biz and we eventually got more skilled in what to look out for.
- for some roles, and i can’t stress on this enough — the best way to assess candidates is to get them to work on a work product as a part of the interview. eg. get an engineer to do a coding exercise, a UX designer to work on an app feature, a social media person to work on a monthly plan. most people aren’t comfortable with this, but it truly shows intent, attention to detail, whether you’ll enjoy working/ debating with them. way better than finding out if there’s a mismatch later on.
- cutting losses sooner is always a good idea. if you’re spending most of your brain space thinking/ worrying about a colleague not performing / someone who is a not culture fit — it is a red flag. don’t fall for the sunk cost, the short term pain / friction now isn’t as big as long term loss in the future. years later, you both will be better off.
- the way to retain people who are performing and who you really want to invest in is to hire someone that they can learn from. you can humanly not be that person for everyone. no matter how much you want to. also never assume people don’t care. they will if you do.
- people with whom the culture is strong, you trust them to do the right thing. these people can be independent, entrepreneurial and take calls. with whom the culture is weak, you need an abundance of heavy rules and processes/ follow ups. it’s not ideal, but it is what it is - pay enough importance to where you spend your time. we often take our culture caps for granted and think they’ll run the ship, are always going to stay motivated. wrong — invest in your culture captains. the most.
there are days when it’s easy to feel the pressure of our own growth expectations. days we need to ship features. days we gotta firefight on burning member issues. days where we are dealing with production problems. and it’s easy to get consumed by these, very easy. and while they are all very important, compared to culture, they are relatively short-term. these problems will come and go. but culture is forever. don’t mess it up.
