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…
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Management
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…
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…
Keeping It All In Sync?
Keeping It All In Sync? I just read a great quote in a non-business book, Richard Dawkins’ River out of Eden, Dawkins himself quoting Darwinian psychologist Nicholas Humphrey’s revolting of a likely apocryphal story about Henry Ford. The full “double” quote is: It is said that Ford, the patron saint of manufacturing efficiency, once commissioned a survey of the car scrapyards in America to find out if there were parts of the Model T Fird which never failed. His inspectors came back with reports of almost every kind of breakdown: axles, brakes, pistons — all were liable to go wrong. But they drew attention to one notable exception, the kingpins of the scrapped cars invariably had years of life left…
Sometimes, Things Are Messy
Sometimes, Things Are Messy Many people who run companies have highly organized and methodical personality types – in lots of cases, that’s probably how they got where they got in life. And if you work long enough to espouse the virtues of fairness and equality with the way you manage and treat people, it become second nature to want things to be somewhat consistent across an organization. But the longer we’re in business at Return Path and the larger the organization gets, the more I realize that some things aren’t meant to fit in a neat box, and sometimes inconsistency is not only healthy but critical for a business to flourish. Let me give a few examples that I’ve observed…
Try It On For Size
Try It On For Size I’ve always been a big fan of taking a decision or a change in direction I’m contemplating and trying it on for size. Just as you never know how a pair of pants is really going to fit until you slip them on in a dressing room, I think you need to see how decisions feel once you’re closing in on them. Here’s why: decisions have consequences. No matter how prescient leaders are, no matter if they’ve been trained in chess-like (three-moves-ahead) thinking, they can almost never perfectly foresee all the downstream reactions and effects of decisions. Figuring out how to create “mental fittings” is a skill that I think is critical for CEOs and…
You Have to Throw a Stone to Get the Pond to Ripple
You Have to Throw a Stone to Get the Pond to Ripple This is a post about productive disruption. The title comes from one of my favorite lines from a song by Squeeze, Slap & Tickle. But the concept is an important one for leaders at all levels, especially as businesses mature. Founders and CEOs of early stage companies don’t disrupt the flow of the business. Most of the time, they ARE the flow of the business. They dominate the way everything works by definition — product development, major prospect calls, client dialog, strategy, and changes in strategy. But as businesses get out of the startup phase and into the “growth” phase (I’m still trying to figure out what to…
Be Ruthless With Your Time
Be Ruthless With Your Time I have historically been very open with my calendar. For most of my career, people who want to meet with me, both internally or externally (with the exception of random vendor solicitation), generally have gotten to meet with me. Some of this is generosity, but I’m also a compulsive networker and have always made time proactively to meet with people just to meet them, learn more about different pockets of the industry or finance, meet other entrepreneurs and find out what they’re up to or help them, and connect more broadly from there. I’ve also routinely been on multiple boards at the same time, as I’ve found that’s a very helpful part of my management…
Pret a Manager
Pret a Manager My friend James is the GM of the Pret a Manger (a chain of about 250 “everyday luxury” quick service restaurants in the UK and US) at 36th and 5th in Manhattan. James recently won the President’s Award at Pret for doing an outstanding job opening up a new restaurant. As part of my ongoing effort to learn and grow as a manager, I thought it would be interesting to spend a day shadowing James and seeing what his operation and management style looked like for a team of two dozen colleagues in a completely different environment than Return Path. That day was today. I’ll try to write up the day as combination of observations and learnings…