Dear Founder,
I’m sure that you’re finding it hard to accept that people are not delivering on their commitments. Personally, I find this behavior to be the one that causes me the most angst. People are either gaining credibility or losing credibility every day. The absolute best way to increase your credibility is to deliver what you say you are going to do.
One of my mentors and my manager at IBM, John Frandsen, used to say, “You can’t expect what you don’t inspect.” I took this advice to heart and spent a lot of time ensuring that I knew where everything was and made sure that we surfaced any issues early and fixed them fast. I was relentless at this and became known for demanding high expectations that resulted in delivering quality on tough deadlines. It was good for people’s career growth, but it wasn’t for the faint of heart. I was so driven and on top of things that often I was also accused of being a micromanager.
As my career evolved and the organizations that I was involved with grew, I realized that I needed to implement practices and a culture that ensured execution happened without my direct involvement on every piece. I needed to ensure things got done without me being a micromanager.
Over time, I learned how to do that and I saw the results. I took pride when my teams delivered things that others found impossible and when they did it in stride. When I was at eBay, I saw a tech team achieve greatness against the odds when we had issues with getting search to scale to keep up with the incredible rate at which we were adding new listings to the site. Typically, it took 24 hours to index description listings before they went live, angering sellers who were paying for the service. In addition, the infrastructure updates cost the company millions. Solving this technology puzzle was not eBay’s core competency, so the management team looked to buy a solution rather than build it. We approached Google and Yahoo, but ultimately, given the uniqueness of our needs and the urgency of the situation, we decided to build it ourselves. The development team knew its mission and didn’t have to be driven hard. They were self-motivated, inspired, and engaged to create change. What should have been a 12 to 18-month project was achieved in six months. The newly built solution allowed us to get listings up in minutes and saved us millions of dollars.
I’ve also experienced first-hand how much can get done when you aren’t in normal times—when you’re in crisis. And I’ve come to realize how in normal circumstances we set goals that are just average and uninspiring. It was far from normal circumstances in the aftermath of 9/11. That afternoon, then-Governor Pataki called and asked if we could auction items that were given to the state of New York and then send the proceeds to charities. What about doing something more compelling, we asked? What about firing up our community of sellers to help set up an auction and raise money for victims of the disaster? We had never done a project like this, which we soon named Auction for America. We needed to get toll-free 800 numbers and create the capability for people to answer the calls. (Previously we had relied on emails.) There were also tax considerations and government regulatory issues and approvals we needed. And on top of that, the coding itself was massively complex. In the past, this would have taken us six months, but we didn’t have that kind of time. And as it turned out—as the team showed us—we didn’t need it. We worked night and day, literally, for four nights. Maybe that sounds hellacious, but it wasn’t. In that time we built a fully functioning auction site. Jay Leno donated his motorcycles, and Bo Derek donated her bathing suits. By focusing relentlessly on execution and unleashing the potential of the team and the community, we raised $25 million.
Here are tools that I use to help drive an execution culture:
- Clearly set cultural norms and standards about what you’re trying to achieve. I always made it clear we were after excellent performance and that we wanted to set aggressive goals. I didn’t expect us to meet every goal, so I would give 100% credit for 80% of key goals made. It is also crucial to clearly articulate the definition of success for any given goal, and to achieve alignment on these definitions with your team.
- Calibrate teams on what great looks like. This is not what you think great looks like, but what the world thinks is great. Maybe it’s graded as an “A,” but you have to ask, is it an A in elementary school or an A in grad school? Too often we celebrate greatness as getting better instead of being great on the world stage. If you aren’t vectored toward how the world sees greatness, it will just be okay—but not friggin’ phenomenal. (You want friggin’ phenomenal!)
- Make sure everyone knows that identifying problems is a good thing, and that issues get resolved quickly. I always set a standard that any big issue had to get owned and on a path to resolution quickly, ideally within 24 hours. I set high standards for myself on responding and trouble-shooting, as I never want to be a blocker on critical path items.
- Articulate clear ownership for every major task. Ensure that the biggest tasks are appropriately resourced. You always have to know whose back to pat and whose butt to kick.
- Implement forcing functions (1:1s, project reviews, and weekly status updates) to ensure that things stay on track. These are agreements on what you’re going to do by when. Also schedule “deep dives” to ensure that work is on track and meets or exceeds the quality your company expects.
- Keep teams as nimble and small as possible. Even in big companies, keep the actual teams doing the work small. Build mechanisms to ensure that when problems arise, they get escalated quickly. Pay attention to the whole team and stop by to see how they’re doing. In addition to making sure they know the importance of what they’re doing, make sure they know you believe they will do it.
- Have teams and leaders grade project and outcomes in a transparent fashion. One of the best ways to set a culture of excellence is to have your own teams become tougher graders on themselves than you are. If every significant effort is realistically graded against the original goals with full transparency, good things happen. When things don’t go well, explore why with an air of wonder and a commitment to improve.
Once a team has learned how to be a high performing execution machine, you will have created an amazing asset. Now all you have to do is ensure you deploy it on the right strategies!
All the best,
Maynard