The Limits of Perseverance My Dad has a great saying, which is that It’s ok to chip away at a brick wall, but not if you’re using a toothpick Entrepreneurs are famous for persevering in the face of adversity, a trait more commonly known as stubbornness. And generally, that’s a good thing. Breakthrough ideas aren’t easy to come by, nor is leading the market. If those things were common, they wouldn’t be breakthrough. But perseverance doesn’t go anywhere without amassing the proper resources to do the job at hand. Just as you’d never chip away at a brick wall with a toothpick, you’d never willingly go up against a fierce competitor without a great product or sales effort, or you’d…
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People First
People First I do not think it’s telling that my fourth post in this series of posts on Return Path’s core values (kickoff post, tag cloud) is something called People First. Ok, it probably should have been the first post in the series. To be fair, it is the first value on our list, but for whatever reason, the value about Ownership was top of mind when I decided to create this series. Anyway, at Return Path, We believe that people come first And we aren’t shy about saying it publicly, either. This came up in a lengthy interview I did with Inc. Magazine last year when we were profiled for winning an award as one of the top 20…
Peter Principle, Applied to Management
Peter Principle, Applied to Management My Management by Chameleon Post from a couple weeks ago generated more comments than usual, and an entertaining email thread among my friends and former staff from MovieFone. One comment that came off-blog is worth summarizing and addressing: There are those of us who should not manage, whose personalities don’t work in a management context, and there is nothing wrong with not managing. Also, there promotion to management by merit has always been a curiosity to me. If I am good at my job, why does it mean that I would be good at managing people who do my job? In other words, a good ‘line worker’ doth not a good manager make. I’d prefer…
Keeping Commitments
Keeping Commitments Today’s post is another in the series about our 13 core values at Return Path, about making commitments. The language of our value specifically is: We believe in keeping the commitments we make, and we communicate obsessively when we can’t Making and keeping commitments is not a new value – it’s one of Covey’s core principles if nothing else. I’m sure it has deeper roots throughout the history of mankind. But for us, this is one of those things that is hard wired into the social contract of working here. The value is more complicated than some of the other ones we have, and although it is short, it has three components that worth breaking down: Making commitments: …
Management by Chameleon
Management by Chameleon When I first became a manager, back in the MovieFone days, I had the good fortune to have an extreme case of “first time manager”– I went from managing nobody to managing 1 person to managing something like 20 people inside 6 months. As a result, I feel like I learned a couple lessons more quickly than I might otherwise have learned them. One was around micromanagement and delegation. When I went from 0 to 1 direct report, I micromanaged (I still feel bad about that, Alissa). But when I went from 1 to 20, I just couldn’t micromanage any more, and I couldn’t do it all myself. I had to learn how to delegate, though I’m…
Solving Problems Together
Solving Problems Together Last week, I started a series of new posts about our core values (a new tag in the tag cloud for this series) at Return Path. Read the first one on Ownership here. Another one of our core values is around problem solving, and ownership is intrinsically related. We believe that all employees are responsible for owning solutions, not just surfacing problems. The second core value I’ll write about in this series is written specifically as: We solve problems together and always present problems with potential solutions or paths to solutions In terms of how this value manifests itself in our daily existence, for one thing, I see people working across teams and departments regularly, at their…
Book Short: I Wish This Existed 12 Years Ago
Book Short: I Wish This Existed 12 Years Ago Brad Feld has been on my board for over a decade now, and when he and his partner Jason Mendelson told me about a new book they were writing a bunch of months ago called Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist, I took note. I thought, “Hmmm. I’d like to be smarter than my lawyer or venture capitalist.” Then I read an advanced copy. I loved it. At first, I thought, I would really have benefited from this when I started Return Path way back when. Then as I finished reading it, I realized it’s just a great reference book even now, all these years and financings…
Retail, No Longer
Retail, No Longer I’ve evolved my operating system as a CEO many times over the years as our business at Return Path has changed and as the company has scaled up. I’ve changed my meeting routines, I’ve delegated more things, and I’ve gotten less in the details of the business. But there’s one specific thing where I’ve remained very “retail,” or on the front lines, and that is the interview process. I still interview every new hire, usually on the phone or Skype and in most cases only for 15-30 minutes, and then I also do an in-person 15-30 minute check-in when someone is around the 90-day mark as an employee. For me, these have both been great mechanisms for…
The Value of Ownership
The Value of Ownership We believe in ownership at Return Path. One of our 13 core values, as I noted in my prior post, which kicks off a series of 13 posts, is: We are all owners in the business and think of our employment at the company as a two-way street We give stock options to every employee, and we regularly give additional grants to employees as well, as their initial grants vest, as they get promoted into more senior roles, and as they earn them through outstanding performance. But beyond giving those grants out, we regularly remind people that they are part owners of the business, and we encourage them to act that way. Among other mechanisms for…
Return Path Core Values
Return Path Core Values At Return Path, we have a list of 13 core values that was carefully cultivated and written by a committee of the whole (literally, every employee was involved) about 3 years ago. I love our values, and I think they serve us incredibly well — both for what they are, and for documenting them and discussing them publicly. So I’ve decided to publish a blog post about each one (not in order, and not to the exclusion of other blog posts) over the next few months. I’ll probably do one every other week through the end of the year. The first one will come in a few minutes. To whet your appetite, here’s the full list…
The Value of Constraints
The Value of Constraints The beauty of Twitter is that a tweet can only be 140 characters long. With that as a constraint, you end up seeing some amazingly creative messages on Twitter that manage to convey both a specific tone and a lot of content — in close quarters! The same logic can apply to business more generally. If you give your team two hours to solve a complex problem, you’ll be amazed at how far they can get with it, even if they don’t have enough time to do thorough research If you have to balance your budget every year, you’ll be amazed at the clarity of decision-making you find yourself with (Wonder why Congress can’t figure out…