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Team

Every Project has Three Things: Revenue, Support, Ledger

GroupDescription
LedgerPeople and Finance.
GrowthSales, Marketing and Partnerships.
SupportCustomer Support and Technology.

The goal is to optimize these three parts continuously with Deming’s Statistical Process Control.

The best way to judge people is to have them do problems right off the bat and see how they work with your team. Unfortunately, I do think algorithmic problems have a place for companies like Google and Amazon which are triaging through thousands of candidates. However, startups doing this seems like a bad call. Most of the time as a startup you are trying to figure out not if someone can do a bureaucratic task like pulling an algorithm out of their ass, but do they know the context of the code they are building. Can they understand the library ecosystem and use existing tooling.

One effective process I’ve found in weeding out ineffective people is hire them fast and put them on simple problems in the codebase that shouldn’t take more than an hour to accomplish. If they solve it in that time or find additional problems. Wonderful, we can start working more together and I just continue assigning tasks. If they can’t get anything done within the first hour or two when they said they will. I will cut them.

To remove my bias on people and different backgrounds I do not have video calls. I only chat with them and write the issues they need in GitHub Issues. Sometimes I send a Loom video if there is something that can be explained better.

Seems like it is working thus far.

I’ve wondered why small teams work. What is it about them that drive results? I think the answer is that they empower people to make changes giving them ownership over the outcome. People have pride when they see their work actualized. They like to point and say I did that. It is a good feeling.

I'm looking to see how to setup Notion in such a way that it is easy to manage multiple teams as individual units. I don’t want them to really interact and as a secondary they should be provided value.

  • Roles, Responsibilities, and Ownership
    • Job Information

All jobs are created with the following information:

Job Description​

A clear and concise description of the role.

Responsibilities​

  • Define what this position has ultimate responsibility and decision authority over.
  • Clearly outline the products, services, assets, activities, and subordinates assigned to the position.

Expectations​

  • Specify the results required of the position to achieve the firm's objectives.
  • Expectations should be:
    • Clear, specific, and measurable.
    • Focused on desired outcomes rather than activities.
    • Open-ended and challenging to encourage experimentation and innovation.

Access​

  • Define what resources or systems the person is given access to and how they are expected to use them.
  • Ensure each person is given the least amount of access needed to accomplish their job.

Training​

  • Provide the information needed to be most effective at their job.
  • Include any specific principles or guidelines related to their role.

Routine​

  • If the job involves singular tasks, list them here.
  • Link to recurring tasks that the role is responsible for accomplishing.

Manager​

  • Specify the manager responsible for overseeing this position.

Growth​

• Sales collateral should include proposal, privacy, terms of service

Sales​

Sales Commissions​

Marketing​

Hiring​

Books​

  • Have a weekly training call
  • Weekly routines also include finding and updating issues with current processes.
  • Add a list of common books that need to be read by the team
  • Institute training so everyone comes to the same level of performance.
  • Stocks should be looked at in terms of power
  • Figure out which kinds of tasks are commonly asked and create a pareto chart that can then be used to automate those processes

Books

  • 7 Powers
  • Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs
  • Leaders Eat Last
  • Cable Cowboy
  • Outsiders
  • High Output Management
  • E-myth
  • Working Backwards
  • Thinking in Bets
  • Good Profit
  • Kochland
  • Never Split the Difference
  • 80/20 Principle
  • The Goal
  • Science, Steategy, and War
  • Antifragile