Claire Lew: Doing More With Less

You’ve got the same goals and deadlines as last year but your team and your budget are more constrained than ever. If anything, the stakes are higher and targets even further away. Sound familiar? CEOs, Co-Founders, COOs, VPs of People and everyone leading functional teams need to do more with less.

Claire shares a framework she’s developed over a decade working with over 30,000 people that will enable you to consider and prioritize the actions you can take in a resource-constrained environment that get the most results.

You’ll walk away with proven, practical techniques you can apply before you even get back to the office.

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Transcript

Claire Lew 

Good morning. Day three, we made it.

It is such an honor to be opening up the last day of Business of Software. I’ve been learning so much from everyone here, all the speakers. And truly, I think one of the biggest things as we think about now slowly reintegrating back to our companies, back with our teams, is, well, how am I going to actually do all this stuff? Do I even want to do all this stuff. Yeah, we all want to work smarter, not harder, right? And the reality is, especially with this past year, I think for many of us, it’s been a bit of a weird year, maybe with layoffs and budget cuts and having to figure out, well, with our existing context, what can we actually really get done? And so I’m going to talk about how as leaders, we can really reconcile that.

But first, my name is Claire. I’m the CEO of a company called Know Your Team. We’re a leadership up skilling platform and just to share first, a little bit of background about myself. I really got my start in organizational consulting and leadership development for early stage growth startups, 30-40 people to companies that are pre and post IPO, like Doximity, Sprout Social and then doing executive one on one coaching for leaders at companies like Apple and Uber. And today and running Know Your Team, some of you actually may be familiar with the origin story behind our actual software platform.

So my very first organizational consulting client was a company called Basecamp, 37 signals. The founders have come and think spoken here at Bos a few times, and they had actually hired me to come in and really help them get to know their team better. They also had built their own feedback survey tool inside their organization, they ended up spinning it out, asking me to take over, and we’ve been off to the races ever since. And so we’ve produced a set of Manager Tools that I think some of you actually may even use that help run one on one meetings, help folks really participate in teams better. And then today, based off all of the learnings that we’ve had in working with tens of thousands of managers, really now have our leadership upskilling platform, which is serving tens of thousands of folks at companies and teams like this.

Now, what’s interesting, though, from all of these learnings and working with all these teams and leaders over the past decade, many of them, I think, are similar to all of us here in the room in which we get inspiration, we’re seeing ideas for things that we want to do better. That is, after all, hopefully why you came here.

You’ve got your notebook of things, or maybe iPad of all right, you know. So many new insights around thinking about demand side and supply side sales, thinking about positioning, right, so many things you want to try and for those of you, especially who have come here before, also likely acknowledge that you don’t want to come back to your organization, creating this reaction.

Idea. Whiplash. Oh, here they go again. Claire’s got all excited right about all the things she had, all these conversations. We’ve all been there. And this isn’t, by the way, to demonize the excitement by any means of all the things that we are truly looking forward to figuring out a way to integrate back into our work practices. And maybe thinking, you’re thinking yourself, oh no, no, I’m like, trust me, I know that I’m not just gonna, like, bring a bunch of new stuff and just throw it on my team, of course. However, you may also be thinking, but I’ll tell you what, right. Q4, just started. I’m thinking about 2024 I’m looking at all the things that we want to be doing, all of our ambitious goals, all of the things that I like for us to be getting done. And I want to be cognizant of the fact that we’re not really hiring this year. We’re not really maybe going to be hiring for q1 we had to maybe do layoffs in the past year, we maybe had to do some budget freezes.

And so there’s this sense that we are as ambitious as ever, as leaders, and yet somehow need to balance the equation of, well, how do I actually get these things done, and do all these things, even though we have fewer resources, even though my team is going to stay exactly the same, or, honestly, it’s they’re exhausted, so they’re kind of actually only operating at maybe 70 or maybe 60%. So that’s really what I’m going to describe today, from all of the high performing teams and leaders that we’ve been working with. And in doing this, there’s actually seven practices in particular that I want to focus on, and then hoping to leave a good amount of time for AMA and talking about how we actually reconcile this as leaders. And then also welcome to questions just in general, around high performing teams and leaders as well.

1. Question “More”

And so when we think about these seven practices, the first I would say, is probably a fairly obvious one on the surface, which is, well, what do we mean by more? All of us here want to do things right? Have more customers, make more money, find a way to do more. It’s obvious. But what do we exactly mean by that? And I think a lot of you would probably say, well, actually, I don’t want to just do more of anything like obvious. I want to make sure I’m doing more of the right thing. Let’s say that. And I think a lot of the talks, actually, in the past few days, have been talking a lot around this concept of, yes, I have to make trade offs. I need to find a way to understand that we can’t focus on all things. This is a pretty intuitive concept, and yet it is something that is also when we are truly honest with ourselves as leaders, something we actually don’t practice, always on a day to day basis.

And I think the best example of this is, I’d just like you to take a minute to think about for yourself. What do I think is actually the one right thing for my business? And usually, kind of falls into one of these three categories. Usually it’s okay. Well, you know, revenue. Sort of indirectly, that’s almost everything that we’re making choices around as leaders, again, obvious. Maybe it’s okay. Well, actually, given our context, just focusing on sort of top line growth and user growth, or having more customers is most important. Or you may be thinking, actually, it’s improving the product, which, of course, inherently then leads to revenue.

So again, fairly obvious things, and then we probably think to ourselves, OK, in terms of what the right thing is and the way to approach that. There’s also a few fairly easy sort of buckets to focus on. One is that – ok, It should be good. The quality of it should be good, we should be moving pretty quickly in order to do this and that we also need to find a way to keep costs low.

Now, if we’re really, truly, again looking to find a way within a context that’s not changing within the existing constraints we have to do more, we’ve got to pick. And again, from the past few days, a lot of different frameworks and strategies around thinking and deciding, well, how do I make those trade offs? We do have to pick and again, this is we’ve sort of likely, hopefully, intuited this as business owners is, oh yeah, no, I know, I just can’t do everything. So usually we need to say, Okay, right now, the one thing that matters is we’re going to focus on making the product really good. That’s eventually going to lead to making the revenue increase. And we got to do this fast. We have to increase the quality of it, or we have to figure out how to lower costs. But we really try to figure out and focus on, well, what is that most fundamental thing that’s really going to have ultimate leverage? I think again, for many of us as business owners, this is why we got into software, sort of the ultimate tool for creating leverage.

Now, what we often forget, though, is that when our constraints are what they are when we only have right the 2500 250 folks that we’ve got, and our competitors are two, three times as big as us, we forget that we actually have this to our advantage which is, which is speed. That more than anything, if we are going to focus on one right thing, if there’s going to be sort of a North Star that’s shining for us, that the way to sort of get there is, well, we have to move fast. And the reason, I think this is something that, again. You see it on the slide, and you’re like, Yeah, well, no, of course, right? And yet, for many of us as business owners, how often do we, if you just take a minute to think about, and I’m guilty of this as well, with our own team, right, when you think about your own projects, how many of them might, in fact, not fall into those categories.

So when you ask yourself this question, what is the quickest path to whether it’s revenue, customers, product does, what the activity, the projects that we’re working on, the things that our dev team, support team, sales team, are those working on, is that actually increasing the speed of that one right thing, revenue, we’re trying to achieve customers. Because when we start to think about all those projects, if you’re like me, you may go actually, you know, we have a few projects that are kind of things that I’m just excited about, which is cool. There’s nothing wrong with that. Or, you know, sometimes there’s just projects that I actually, personally like doing. Or, you know what? We’re kind of good at this, and we’ve always been good at this. We’ve always been good at it, sort of the craftsmanship piece and the quality piece. And, oh, we actually have a lot of momentum on this new, new, new, you know, channel that actually we’re starting to see some traction around now. It’s not part of maybe the original footholds, and we’re not moving as fast as we would like. But we’re sort of making that initial progress. So we have actually, in fact, a lot of projects that are going to span the spectrum of if they are, in fact, contributing to that one right thing. And that doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s inherently bad, but rather, here is an opportunity that if you want to, in fact, do “more right” and you define more however you would like, based on whatever frameworks you would like. But if you do, in fact, want to do more, whatever that definition is of more, and you acknowledge truly, the existing constraints that you have, your existing team, the existing market, right, the fact that you may not be hiring something does have to give the equation doesn’t balance. The physics of it just don’t work.

And so in doing this, we have to ask yourself, well, what are the projects. To cut, to pause, to say, Okay, we’re going to come back to that in Q3 in 2024 and I think it’s very simple, straightforward way to do this, maybe some of you have already done this, is to do a simple activities inventory, going through those projects, and honestly, you could even do this right now, right in your head of, okay, here are all the things again. I know, I know that the context that we have is limited. So what is it of each of those projects? To what degree are they actually helping us achieve that one right thing, quickly, revenue, customers, product. Rate that on a scale of one to five, or whatever kind of valency that you want to give it. But what it helps you see most clearly is you’re going to have that spectrum. Whether or not you choose to cut things right again is going to be, ultimately up to you. It’s going to be based off whatever context that you’re in, but being able to speak truth to yourself about that, if you do want to get more done and you have less resources to do it, are you being honest with yourself about well, what are those trade offs to be making? So that’s really the first piece of this is asking yourself to question, what more really means? Have I identified for myself what that one right thing is? And again, beauty, I think, of this conference, is you’ve got a variety of perspectives on what that is.

Another thing related to this, by the way, is even thinking, would my team agree with me actually, if I came back and said this is what the one right thing was? We’ll talk about that in a second. But another thing to ask yourself, too is, gosh, if I were to do this activities inventory, would the projects all sort of be in service, and most likely not again, that is OK. But what are the implications of that? How serious are we about moving fast? How serious are we about the amount of things we want to actually truly get done, and am I going to actually end up being surprised that we didn’t get certain things done because, you know, we didn’t cut certain things, or do I want to be proactive about making space to actually make progress? And then lastly, for anything new that I am going to take on? So for all the ideas that you’ve again, jotted down, all the things that you’re excited, you know, maybe you’ve got your leadership team here too, that you’ve been talking and riffing, going, Oh, this is right in line with what we’re going to do. Okay, that’s awesome. This isn’t to kill that joy or momentum, but rather to help distill it. To what degree is this, in fact, aligned with our one right thing? How clear have we been about that? Have you taken the time to make that, not only clear for ourselves, but also clear to our team?

Now, once you’ve gotten to some clarity on what that one right thing is, on what sort of that overarching strategy is going to be, so that you can find leverage in your existing context, We’ll then move to well, can’t just be you doing it. You need to get your team on board. And I know many of you are likely thinking this too, as you know you’re if you’re like me. You’re taking pictures of slides. You’re probably sending them to your team in slide here, you know, they say, Hey, you know, you buy this book. We all do this, but there’s a big step we often miss between deciding that there is one right thing and telling our team that that’s the thing that we’re going to do, which is this – is simply understanding right now, what do people actually think about where we’re? 

2. On-the-Ground Pulse Check

Because what’s interesting about fast moving, resource constrained environments and the teams that we’ve worked with and the leaders that we’ve worked with is that people aren’t usually just, oh, everything is just lovely and dandy and beautiful if they are on your team, I want to talk to you after. But most of the time there’s sort of an ominous era of, yeah, we did a big reduction in force. You know, over the summer, there’s kind of rumblings of, like, ooh, the engineer for this company. Q3, numbers were not good. Or maybe you’re like, you know, no, we had a great year actually. Claire, you know, it’s kind of the exception. And the team, it’s not as though that they are, you know, it’s not like their morale is down, but they are overworked. They’re tired. Everyone’s dying. Thanksgiving and the holidays, and so it’s critical to unpack this, understand how are they feeling right now? Because if you just come in with the notebook of ideas. If you come in saying, This is the flag for the one right thing and people are exhausted. They feel disillusioned. They feel burdened. There’s no amount of wordsmithing or messaging that you can do for people to get excited about that. You’re going to get the eye rolls. You’re going to get the again reaction.

And so really resisting the temptation to just rush into the things you’re excited about, the new focus, the new change, all these ideas from BoS is an important discipline for us as leaders, in order to make sure that it’s actually going to be received in the way that we want.

And so a few critical questions, very tactical here that you can ask all levels in your organization, whether you are a five person startup or you’ve got 500 people.

To your Leadership Team

Ask them about the level of confidence that they have and that you are actually focused on the right things as an organization.

Because what this is actually going to reveal to you is what’s their openness to the fact that I’m going to ask them to listen to a podcast from one of the speakers here. I’m going to ask them to learn a new framework. They’re going to do it, right. But is any of it going to stick? Are they actually going to be supportive? Are they going to want to somehow truly internalize that and integrate that into their own teams? They might say, Yeah, of course. Great idea. Yeah, no, thumbs up. But unless you actually understand their level of confidence right now, then it’s going to be impossible to really bridge that gap.

To your Front Line Leaders

Is there anything that you’ve actually been worried about that you think is starting to become true of our team?

And what this question is going to show is, what are they seeing about how people are afraid or reluctant to change or take on new projects or change direction, because you’re going to want to know what that level of resistance is before you go in and announce whatever it is that you want to announce.

To your Employees

You’re going to ask this uncomfortable question. Looks nice and friendly up here on the slide. But if you actually find yourself being like, Oh, I’m gonna ask, you know, all 70 people, what’s felt most uncertain about the company to you lately?

This is a hard one, because you almost don’t even want to admit that things have been feeling uncertain. Understandable. I’m right there with you.

But it is so important to signal to your team, Hey, I know there’s been a lot of change. I’m not oblivious. I know that we’ve been kind of moving in a lot of different directions. I know I’ve been asking a lot of people. Otherwise, you’re tone deaf. Otherwise, and we’ve all seen this and been in organizations where this has happened. The team that’s tired and exhausted and overworked and just a bit flat has to deal with the executive who’s like, oh, yeah, now in 10 more things. It’s like a Dilbert cartoon we’ve all seen them. So this is how you begin to avoid that situation. So then you’re going to want to actually move to, of course, then telling your team.

3. Describing the Change in the Wind

Now the way to do this is, I think, actually, one of the most deceptively difficult things to do as a leader, to describe change. And the way that we often teach here at Know Your Team how to do this is something called Describing the Change in the Wind. In other words, when things change, when you decide that there’s going to be a new one right thing, when you decide that, oh, we’re going to institute some new frameworks and change some of our projects, it’s chilly.

I spent 11 years in Chicago and when the wind starts to change. Okay, you tell people, so you might say, Okay, we’re going to focus only now on this channel acquisition strategy. We’re going to actually now focus on a new, ideal customer profile. We’re going to just go all in on a new methodology around how we actually want to do product development. We’re only going to focus on this now. And the natural thing for you know, for many of us, myself included, is then you say, Okay, and here’s why. Well, it’s because we have this new strategy. It’s because we want to focus on this one right thing.

What’s fascinating amongst the tens of thousands of teams that we work with is that communicating only this is rarely enough. It’s like, the equivalent of a meteorologist talking about the wind and saying, yeah, the wind’s changing, and here’s why, and here’s what the molecules are doing. It’s like, yeah, and it’s cold, got it. Like, does it make me feel any better? Like, why? Okay, cool. Yeah, no, I understand wind is it’s the weather. Great. But it’s not telling me anything about, well, where is it coming from? Where are we going because of this, how is this actually affecting me on a day to day basis? And so as leaders, we actually have to take one step deeper, all right? And actually really unpack a lot of things that are quite obvious to us, because, you know, you’re like, this is, you know, this is where it’s coming. This is where it’s going. This is what the implications are going to be. But we have to be explicit. We have to say, here’s ultimately how this is contributing to our long term vision. This is what it’s going to look like, maybe this time next year.

We have to say, Well, originally, it’s coming from the fact that this has worked at these different companies that we’ve actually analyzed and done this research right again, things that are pretty clear to you, just not clear to your team. And then day to day, week to week, here’s, in fact, how this is going to feel for you. Your workload isn’t going to become heavier, actually. The meetings that you’re running, we’re actually going to take a few away, in fact. This actually means it simplifies your sort of operational flow. Got it. Now you’re not just telling me that the wind is changing, now you are describing to me truly how I can, in fact, get on board.

Because again, after all, we cannot be the only ones as leaders, just in this room with the ideas, excited about the things that we want to change, if we don’t have our teams on board.

And so here’s a very wordy slide, so please bear with me.

But here’s an example how you might talk about this, how you might originally say, well, here’s where we’re going, here’s what’s most important, here’s what stayed true for us. It’s not like we’re just willy nilly, you know, following our nose wherever we want. And now you know, shiny object syndrome, actually, this is core to who we are as a company, to what we’ve always cared about from the beginning, and what we’ve learned. We’ve learned something new. We have new information. That what we actually need to focus on is the one right thing, revenue, customers, product. And to do this now we’re only going to here’s what that change is, here’s the customer the channel acquisition strategy, here’s the new customer segment we’re focused on. Here’s the new product development cycle, whatever that is. And here’s, in fact, how it might feel in your day to day role. Here’s what that impact will look like. Here’s how this is going to affect who’s reporting to you. Here’s how it’s going to affect your meetings, your communication, etc. It’s kind of a lot. It’s not as simple as, oh, I’m just going to do like the five whys which is not a bad framework by any means, but it does take effort. It does take intentionality.

And so I would love to challenge each of you today in thinking about, Oh yeah, no, it is kind of a lot of work, you know, honestly communicating things. Seeing these things has never been my strong suit, and that is 100% okay, understand, though, too. That then there’s a trade off of, are you going to be the solo person. Trying to get everyone in the same direction, or can you, in fact, in describing the change of one, have everyone coming along with you.

And so one way to do this is definitely narrativizing it. And we had an amazing talk, you know, earlier this week on that. And just to make sure you’re asking yourself, Am I just saying that the wind has changed, and here’s a why? or in fact, am I giving a broader picture of where it’s come from, where it’s going and what the actual impact is day to day.

4. On-the-Ground Pulse Check Part 2

So then here’s something interesting – to be truly effective in ensuring that your team is on board with these new changes, and that you’re able to find leverage and do more with your existing context. We have to do actually another circle back around. And of all the steps, this is actually the one that I would say most leaders miss. Some folks actually go, oh no, I do the on the pulse check. Of course, before I make a big announcement, I want to understand what people are thinking. But we often forget to do this, which is after, after we have told people that this is the one right thing, that we’re actually going to be really focused now on this new channel acquisition strategy, on product development in a different way that we’re going to make a change. We’re introducing new ideas. We often forget to go back to our team and say, so what do you think? How did this land? How are you feeling about this. And so we call this an on the ground pulse check, which is to re establish and recalibrate, why chilly is the wind, actually, though. We told you that it’s going to be cold. We told you why this is happening and where this is going and what the impact is. But really, actually, how is chilly? Is it? I want to know.

And so the best way to do this is in simple conversations. Conversations that hopefully you are already having. But this ends up being three questions again to different parts of your organization on what you can ask to uncover this.

First, to your leadership team. Well, what else is it that I’m not seeing that we can, in fact, eliminate and cut based off this new focus?

Because, yes, you’ve done the activities inventory. What is your team saying? Your leadership team saying about, well, actually, my team’s working on this stuff, and honestly, I don’t think it’s actually going to get us faster to the revenue growth that we want to see. It’s nice. Our team’s good at it. We’re making great progress, there’s momentum. But this way you can create that greater discipline throughout your organization again, rather than it just being you.

The second thing that you’re going to want to then ask is to your front line managers, and I love this question. You’re essentially trying to figure out, what is it that your managers are anticipating is going to be blockers for you to be able to make progress?

Because if you only have your existing team. If they are tired, if they’re overworked, they’ve gone through a lot this year. They probably have a good sense of where their own team is going to feel begrudgingly, sort of held up. You want to have that information? You want to figure out? Oh, okay, well, I guess I need to go talk to them. I guess I guess I need to rearrange priorities. I guess I should change some of the projects. I guess, actually, maybe we need to reconsider whether or not we’re able to hire because they’re so overworked. There’s so many implications of getting these new inputs, but you only get them if you can ask this question to your frontline leaders.

And then lastly, to your direct employees. You can ask, what is, in fact, truly changing?

Because you want to update your model. As a leader, you have assumptions for how things are going to change in the organization once you start rolling out new things, once you have your new focus, once you’re focused on new customers. But what, again, what we forget as leaders is that unless we are updating the model, unless we have the information we need to make future decisions, unless we’re going back to checking, well, did that work? Did people hear that? Or are people’s rules changing anyway? Am I? Was I underestimating or overestimating? Actually, the way that our team was was going to handle some of these changes? We have no idea, unless we ask.

And depending, by the way, on the size of your organization, obviously. It doesn’t have to be you necessarily asking your employees. You could, of course, equip your front line managers to do this. But the idea here is the same, which is, you’re trying to get an on the ground pulse after you’ve introduced the new change. So now you. Let’s move into execution mode. So this is when you’ve made the announcement, and now you’re just doing more. You’re trying to you’re trying to have this focus on revenue or customers and product. You’re trying to make sure that you’re able to hit these ambitious goals that you’ve set for yourself with the constraints that you have.

5. F&F

And the most critical elements for doing this is something that I like to call F&F, really simple – this idea of Feedback and Frameworks. And so we all know if frameworks are in many ways, it’s it’s how we make sense of anything repeatable, systems and a process for organizing thought that can then be scaled or helps us make more clarity and progress.

Now, what we do, though, oftentimes, when we are trying to roll out something new, when we are trying to double down on a focus. Is that we just tell people. All right, so our new priority is that we’re going to focus on this new channel acquisition strategy. So we should just do this. We should just focus on looking at, you know, LinkedIn. We’re moving away from SEO. We’re actually going to focus more on inbound and and content marketing. And this is we should just do this. I’ve done this a lot. You just say the directive, it’s obvious, you’ve shared the strategy, you’ve shared, you’ve shared the change in direction and the wind, okay. There’s a problem. Which is the person that has to go do it? So they go, okay, cool, let me, let me try doing that. It doesn’t work unless they actually have a broader sense and understanding of, well, is there a methodology behind this? Is there underlying principles? I was actually talking with with another founder the other day. You know, in their company, they call it first principles. We have language for this in our own organizations. But when things are moving so fast, when we feel the pressure of seeing those goals that we want to hit, when we know that, you know, or a lot of our employees are maybe on the last leg, when we’re feeling tight, when we are trying to do more with less. It is so much easier to do the former than the latter, because the latter takes time, and honestly, it’s kind of annoying. Because you’re like, I thought, I thought everyone kind of knew this. I thought I’d been spending time on this.

But we have to remember is, again, in these contexts, when there is so much change, when we are trying to go as fast as we’re trying to go, that the frameworks matter even more. It is the only way that your team is going to be able to operate without you. It’s the only way that they can actually go independently. Figure out, well, how are we going to actually move off, you know, SEO and actually focus more on, you know, different channels around, you know, around customer acquisition, and we just tell them to do it. It’s not going to quite get there.

And then the other part that’s so critical in execution, and we all know this, is, of course, you you know, giving feedback. We do this all the time as leaders. Ah, not that. No, no, no, too much, nope. That’s the wrong thing to focus on. This isn’t good enough. We got to move faster. We’re in a positive case. This is good. This is on the right track. Unfortunately, still not enough. Because again, if we are looking to increase velocity, if we are looking to actually accomplish what we want to accomplish with fewer people less resources, it’s just not going to happen by simply just saying, Not this, not that.

We in fact, have to actually enhance and deepen our feedback by sharing the context behind it. Again, seemingly obvious, yeah, I’m giving you this feedback. Because we missed some details here, because being detail oriented is important, okay. But really, how does that fit into the bigger picture of the business? You know? And it’s so funny. It’s something that we work with a lot of organizations on where they say, Oh yeah, you know, we really struggle with giving feedback to each other. I have a lot of teams who kind of make the same mistakes, you know, over and over because, you know, I’ve even though I’ve told them. And the main thing I’ll ask is, well, do they have context for understanding why things needed to change? or are they just reacting to you, saying no and yes, and I like this, and I don’t like this.

To what degree as leaders are when we’re actually making those corrective choices in the moment, taking the time to really explain the back thinking behind why we’re actually going to be changing these things. And so when you can do both of these things well, when you’re able to avoid just simply giving directives and focusing more on sharing and teaching frameworks, when you can, in fact, enable greater context around your feedback, things do start to move faster. You do enable scale because you let and enable people to be less reliant on you. Something to think about. How can I actually enable this more in my organization?

6. Scale the Mindset

Speaking of enabling. How do we scale this mindset overall? Because hopefully, this is my hope. For some of you, maybe thinking totally on board with this Claire. I understand that I need to be describing the change in the win. Got the on the pulse, you know, check ins. I’ve been doing one, but, OK, cool, got it? I need to do the other one. All right? I am looking to give more context and feedback. I’m doing an ok job there. I understand that I need to do these things, but here’s the real problem, which is I’m the only person, or it’s just my leadership team, and I’ve got first time managers, or I’ve got folks who’ve been with the company for a really long time, but they’re not thinking about this stuff. What do I do? How do I really level folks up around these things? Because again, in existing contexts where you’re tight, can’t just be you make things harder for ourselves. And so the obvious answer is, of course, leveling our folks up. And there’s really five areas of focus in particular.

In other words, if you are a company with, you know, say, 20 or so folks, you probably have a handful of managers. Maybe, if you’ve got 100 or so folks, maybe you’ve got 10 to 20 right. And bigger than that, you’ve got a couple 10s of managers right.

5 Areas of Focus for your Leaders

1. Manager Mindset Shift

First and foremost, a shift in mindset. We call this simply the manager mindset shift.

Which is that the actual degree of success for what it means for a manager to be successful isn’t I got the work done. I’m doing the work, success is I enabled my team to. Total displacement of what is actually valuable. Me, my work. No, no, no. Doesn’t really matter. Where’d your team get done? That shift in mindset, maybe many of us here are like, yes, I’ve actually gone. Or maybe some of us are like, Oh, I’m still working on that one. Hear You. That’s the first thing though you want to find a way to teach your leaders.

2. Effective 1:1s

The second thing is simply having effective one on one conversations.

All those questions that I listed. It’s awesome if you’re asking them to your team, but gosh, wouldn’t it be so much better if your front line managers were asking similar questions to their team too? Absolutely. So, teaching your team how to do this, the value of this.

3. Giving + Receiving Feedback

The third thing is fairly obvious. The importance of giving and receiving feedback, but again, with context.

Not just, Hey, I didn’t like this. This wasn’t good enough. This wasn’t fast enough. But really being able to tie that to the strategy, being able to tie that to the company goals, being able to explain the broader picture for here’s why this even matters in line, even bothering to tell you the time right of why I think things should be different.

4. Communicating Vision

If we’re going to talk about a change in the wind, I have to talk about where we’re going. Can your leaders talk about that? Do they know what that is? My giving them language around that? Am I giving them even permission to think about the bigger picture? I always sort of been like, oh, well, these are the three people you manage, and this is where you should be focused. And it’s like, okay, it may work for some time, but again, if you are feeling tight, right, you’ve got to find a way to increase and raise that ceiling, somehow. It cannot just be you waving the flag of the vision all around. You have to somehow give your way a team to be able to communicate that.

5. Coaching

And then, of course, enable your team to learn how to coach.

Now you can 100% right in your own organization, as a leader, take the time to do this individually with folks, absolutely right. Of course, you may be partnering with folks you know elsewhere to do this, and also know that, of course, this is actually you know what we do as a living and happy to talk about this more as well during the AMA if you have specific questions and situations that you’re facing.

But the big takeaway here right is that we all are thinking about leverage. We’re all thinking about, how do we go faster? How do we do more? How do I figure out to do you know what is necessary with what I have? But it only happens. It moves beyond us. We cannot be the only unit of action.

7. Self Check

So the last piece here is, I’ll admit, right. These are things that I think if you talk to every CEO or senior business leader, they inherently understand. Broad strokes around yeah. I need to focus on the right things. I need to figure out what that right thing is. I need to communicate this more beyond just a superficial why, and we all know that in the flurry of going about our weeks, right, if you’re like me during this conference, right, you probably tried super hard to be as present as possible, inevitably also got pulled in certain directions. It’s natural.

But I also think in many ways, actually, BoS teaches us something really beautiful, which is that there is real power in pausing. That when we are feeling this pressure to move faster, to do more, to hit our goals, that that pressure only increases. It only increases. And so our sort of frenetic, hey, I need you this to happen. Hey, we’re going to change some stuff. It’s related to your managers. And then your managers are like, Okay, well, hey, we got to do this. We got to do this. And it’s just this entire frenzy. We know that this happens. And so as leaders, I mean again, the past few days have been a reflection of this. What happens when we actually pause though, when we take a minute to say, can I give space to see the full picture here to make sure that this is the one right thing to actually figure out what is the pace that we need to set. Is it realistic to try to do this with all these projects, or actually, do I need to start doing an activities, inventory and cutting some things, and do I need to start finding a way to equip my leaders to actually be helping me. It is admittedly impossible to do this unless you pause. You just can’t do it right.

And so the Navy Seals have a well known quote which you may be familiar with, right, that sort of encapsulates this idea, slow is smooth. Smooth as fast. Others, when you take this moment as witnessed here, right, which I feel so, so privileged to get you know the time and attention you take this moment here to go. Okay, am I just describing and saying why the wind changed, or am I actually describing the real change in the wind? Have I gone and done that second pulse check to really understand how well these changes have been integrated. Am I finding a way to actually level up my team rather than just thinking that it’s just going to be me as the lone soldier charging ahead? When we slow down to ask ourselves, these things all of a sudden, things start to get a bit smoother. Things start to move faster.

And so if there’s any one thing that I hope we can actually leave here today with Boston actually to take advantage. That you’re not on a zoom call right now. You know you’re not in Slack, you actually have some breathing room. Relish to that. Take the time to actually think, well, what is it that will give us true leverage? Can I question my own assumptions here, and rather than just thinking about piling more, can I be more strategic about the things that will help us truly get to where we want to be, and not just me, but the rest of my team?

And so with that right, as we take this pause, question, what it is that is really more? What is our one right thing? Can I do an activities inventory? Do that on the ground, pulse, check figure out how chilly are things. Describe that change in the wind so people aren’t just hit in the face with it. Make sure then you circle back around and find a way to see, ok. How do people take that? What do I need to readjust? How should I update my model, rather than just charging forward ahead? Am I implementing feedback and frameworks and the actual execution of how we’re actually moving forward? Am I actually thinking about scaling this mindset proactively? Am I just thinking, if I just give people the books, you know, and just cross my fingers, it’s enough. Oh, well, okay, maybe there’s some deeper learning and training and lunch and learns and different things. And again, happy to talk more about different strategies later.

And then are you actually giving yourself regular time to self check? Take inspiration from this moment, and on these three days. Maybe it’s not three days, right, every quarter or anything. Maybe it’s 30 minutes. Dare I suggest you try it once a week, because it’s the only way, when we don’t have a lot of chips on the table, when we don’t have a lot of moves to make, but we still need to get the things done that we want to get done. It’s the only way we make space to do it, to take the time figure it out.

So with that, I’d love to move. Looks like we’ve got about 10 or so minutes for questions to move into questions ask me anything, yeah, related to the talk around your team, high performing teams in general. And then, of course, would love for you to check out. Know your team, and we have so many resources, actually, many of them free. Here’s one that is super helpful. It’s actually a leadership skills assessment, if you’re curious, if your own managers have any of these skills right, or to what degree you do need the upscaling, so definitely check this out. This is 100% free something we give away to our audience, and then we have a ton more free resources on our site as well. And so feel free to definitely check that out. And then I actually have one gift that I want to give to the BoS community. We’ve been coming here for years. We have a really special discount here. It’s 30% off for those of you who’ve been wanting to dive in, so something to definitely take advantage of. So with that, thank you all so much.

Q&A

Mark Littlewood 

Amazing. Thank you. If you haven’t watched it, what was the name of the talk that you gave in Europe?

Claire Lew 

In Cambridge? The accidental bad manager?

Mark Littlewood 

Yeah, I think it. I always think of it. That’s why I asked is I always think of it as the So You Think You Know How to manage people. It’s a brilliant, brilliant talk, and that was too. Thank you. You should meditate for 20 minutes a day, unless you’re too busy, in which case you should meditate for an hour.

Claire Lew 

It’s gonna give me my talk for me.

Mark Littlewood 

Questions. Joseph, can you do a mic? Thank you. Stick your hands up. Okay, so we’re gonna start with Randy, who else has got a question? Because yes, here.

Audience Member 

Hey, Claire, thank you. So a lot of the stuff you spoke about is you’re not supposed to lead a lot of the vision, and you need to kind of help empower the teams to lead it. And so you talked about coaching and developing some of your team members. Is there some behavior where, you know, there might be somebody’s not getting it, you’re coaching they’re not getting they’re not you’re coaching them. What red flags would you have where you think, Ah, this person’s not getting it, and we have to think differently. Are there things that you’ve seen where the things that you notice where someone’s not getting it? What are those red flags? And could you let us know?

Claire Lew 

Oh, brilliant question. Thanks. Randeep. Absolutely. So I think the ultimate test of internalization is actually in action. So you watch someone make the mistake, right, or choose something that’s not aligned right with the organization, and then in that, I think a lot of times right, you take a moment and begin just, okay, unpacking right. Why is that? What has happened. And then, I think the critical, you know, sort of tipping point to your point of like, okay, well, they’ve done this a few times. Is it the first time right? Will they never get it. Is it never going to be internalized. I think really comes down to, at least, from what we’ve seen, is being able to simply, I think, measure the tolerance, right, in which that repeated mistake can be made ultimately. And so I think when you see folks who “aren’t on board” right with the vision, I think just asking, you know, the simple question of, okay, is this something that is going to derail and affect and sort of permeate to other folks? Is this something that you know is actually rather contained and won’t come come at a cost?

Yeah, so I think it’s, I think it’s not a I think oftentimes when we think about trying to coach folks to a better way of thinking, we kind of want a checklist. Like, is it three times? Like, is it? Is it? Like there’s an automatic path, but I think the reality is, like, just the true, the true happenings of what we need is that you probably can’t just let this person go, because they’re not getting it immediately. And so it’s more of, really. Measuring the tolerance in the organization. I hope that’s helpful. Thanks for the question.

Mark Littlewood 

Does anybody have any more questions? Because put your hands up. So I’ll make sure that mics get to you, because that’s the way I roll. Yeah.

Audience Member 

So one of the great things about this topic is that it’s an important and not urgent topic for many, and it has a lot of upside, but it’s also not urgent to think about your team’s development. So what have you found as a business owner that motivates people to make this an actionable thing, though it’s in spite of its lack of urgency.

Claire Lew 

Absolutely. Well, I think the urgency, I so deeply appreciate that, appreciate that question. I think the urgency is often disguised, right in the sense that we miss attribute it to other things. We go, oh, people aren’t performing. Oh, we have too many people in the company leaving, right? So there are these second, third order effects. So I think the strongest way for those of you who are leaders in the room going, Yeah, I’ve been kind of trying to get people on board with this, but that urgency isn’t really there, is just to point to the problems that are actually the thorn in the side causing the bleeding, whether that’s retention, whether that’s top line performance numbers and say, Hey, whether it’s studies, you know that, I mean, so many that you can find out there right around well, if you had better managers, or if we communicated some things more, hey, we talked to the people who left, things would be better. And so I think at the end of the day, it’s, a really, it’s never about the urgency of, oh, we just want people to be better. I mean, I hope, of course, intrinsically right? It’s like, oh, yeah, of course, want our teams to be better. But ultimately, it’s re looking at what are our most urgent problems, and are we solving for sort of the surface level of, oh, we need to keep people and so, like, is it more money? Is it, you know? Again, popular statistic number one, people using people leave. Actually, Bob had a slide on this right where it was like, my manager is overbearing and it’s grading on me. It’s a huge reason why people leave. So focusing, I think, on what those urgent problems are. Thanks for the question.

Mark Littlewood 

Yes, over here.

Audience Member 

So my question is about managing up. Do you have any resources suggestions? My team loves me. My team is terrified of my CEO, yes, and I’m not scared of him, but I do fight with him a lot. So how do I, how do I take some of these concepts up to him?

Claire Lew 

100%. Oh my gosh, we, we have a whole plethora of materials on, on managing up so, like anything. And, you know, there’s always so many dissatisfying answers in leadership, because it’s like, I’d be like, Okay, well, I need to understand, you know, who your CEOs and what are the big obstacles, all those pieces. But I think most fundamentally, when you think about what managing up is, it means merely creating a container for having a positive working relationship with this person. And typically in a CEO role. Usually, the kind of biggest thing that makes it really hard is CEO sort of in their chamber, dismissive of ideas, kind of like, everything’s good, I you know, yeah, I want your feedback, not really, don’t really care. It’s demotivating to the team. You have people who are like, Yeah, I can’t speak truth to power. All those things.

So ultimately, the number one thing that helps diffuse that, right is for the CEO, above all, to understand well, what is the intention of what’s actually trying to be communicated to me? Because the reason that anyone has a defensive mechanism right, the reason that people raise their walls and even when they tell you they want the truth, which has been talked about earlier this week. But even when they want the truth, they don’t want it right is because they’re questioning your underlying intention behind it, especially when it’s bottom up. So the number one thing, actually, I think, to focus on, and we talk a lot about this in our teachings, is, how clear are you making it about what your intent is in starting their initial starting point. Be happy to chat after, to understand your context better and share more. Thanks for asking. Cool.

Mark Littlewood 

Lauren, this is the pro speaker tip, by the way, because Lauren’s speaking after this break, so I reckon this is to get her vocal cords going. But I’m also expecting a great question. You should just be talking, is it just working? Yeah, it just works.

Audience Member 

So, I’m a founder of a company, and I’m scaling that company to exist beyond me or and building out my management team to take the company to the next level, and having talked to a number of people over the last couple of days here, there’s a lot of founder led companies here. And when you’re a founder of a tech company, you typically have some abilities on the tech side and on the business side and on the vision side, and you sort of see the whole picture. And as you hire people who are really good at different functional areas, you get frustrated, because it’s like, well, why? You know, as you’re trying to coach them, you think, Well, why doesn’t the marketing person understand the pro, you know, the technology or the or the data in the depth that they should because anything I can do, anybody can do. And so I’m sure that you have some really good best practices in that process of helping to coach the leadership team, you know, to step up in a in a founder led situation and make that transition.

Claire Lew 

Absolutely. Thank you so much for that question. This is the eternal struggle. It’s shared brain.

How do I have people who not only see the organization from a more holistic perspective, they’re actually even excited about that. And so those are actually two different problems.

So first, on just the operational side of well, how do I get people to actually understand our overarching purpose and sort of strategic vision, and how all the parts interact. So that it’s not just always me of all, what should we do? It’s like, okay, please. You know, I’d love for people to think for themselves. This is, this is always the eternal struggle. So in a word, it’s vision.

Such a common right businessy, like fluffy word, we have done so much research, right though around, in fact, the ultimate sort of precise definition of it, which is simply that it’s a picture of a better place. In other words, oftentimes, when we think about what the unifying force is is in our organization, we talk about what we do. We talk about how we build products that help with customer success, or we’re building a product that helps with traffic optimization. We talk about what we do, and the most effective visions describe, in fact, what we call a picture of a better place. So just actually, what is what? What would be true about the world if we were successful. A picture of an ideal world.

And so the most critical thing for that first part is really centering the leadership team as much as possible. Of, do we have the same vision? Is it? You know, are we kind of on the same page? They could probably tell you what you do, but do they clearly see what the world would look like if we were all successful? How consistent and shared is that? So that’s the first piece.

The second thing is, well, how do I get people the excite, the sort of buy in piece, the people energized to actually go do the work to figure out what the other departments are doing to start having this more of a founder mindset. And the number one way for doing that is simply, I shouldn’t say simply. It’s not simple. It’s very complex and hard to do. But the sort of most important piece to focus on there is being able to unpack and connect with well, what is it that that person personally wants for themselves. You can call it motivation. All these words, right, that we kind of toss around. But ultimately, what it is is, can I understand, what is it that this person gets excited about in a work context, maybe in a life context, and how does that actually connect to all the divisions of what we’re doing?

So if a marketing person, for example, ultimately cares about some people, for example, care about career progression. Some people have monetary care. Some people care about making progress. Some people are goal oriented. Some people want care about impact. Say they’re impact focused. Okay, how do I really communicate and draw out impact as a part of their role in sort of thinking about how that connects to the entire organization and not just their department. Hope that’s helpful. Thank you so much. Great question.

Mark Littlewood 

We are out of time, but sadly, but you are going to be here for the break for the rest of your event. So Claire, thank you.

Claire Lew

CEO, Know Your Team

Claire’s mission in life is to help people become happier at work. She’s adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at her alma mater, Northwestern University and CEO & Founder of Know Your Team, a software tool that helps managers become better leaders. She’s worked with over 30,000 people in 55 countries at companies including Airbnb, Medium and Kickstarter and is often cited as an expert on the topic of creating more open, honest workplace environments. She’s been published in Harvard Business Review, CNBC, Inc, Fortune.

BoS folk love Claire as she’s a brilliant communicator who leaves you with incredibly clear, actionable advice. She’s attended BoS regularly and given two talks: Don’t Be the Last to Know, on why leaders are often the last to discover something and what to do about it; The Accidental Bad Manager on the biggest mistakes managers make and how to avoid them. You can watch them and more here

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