THE LEAFLET

October 10 2024

name anti-values, avert data debt, rote work as prompt for imagination

NAME YOUR ANTI-VALUES

Over time, as your team grows and your culture evolves, you can find that the operating values you chose at the outset need refinement. It’s good to revisit the working definition you originally chose and edit that. Name specific behaviors that exemplify the value (some of those behaviors might not have been available when you started - did you even have a customer service dept back then, eg?). Consider deducing and defining your hidden nth value. 

In addition to revising the existing set and adding new values to it, you might find new clarity in identifying your “anti-values” as well. These are also values - wholesome, virtuous modes of being and acting that are reasonable to want. But they are ones you’re choosing not to optimize for. You’re doing that on purpose. 

This means anti-values aren’t vices, per se. They’re not the opposites of your values; they’re more like nearby distractions. To illustrate: If “integrity” was one of your original values, the anti-value could be something like a cousin to “integrity” - maybe “transparency” or “precision.” “Dishonesty” would not be the anti-value.

The point of this exercise, like the selection of operating values in the first place, is simplifying choices for your people and clarifying their path to excellence. Naming anti-values is a way of running an “even over” exercise -  you’re telling your folks that you care so much about [original value] you want them to prioritize it “even over” [anti-value].

Getting to a set of anti-values you’re confident about putting in front of the whole company might take more time and effort than you have. If so, do a hacky rough draft and share the results with the folks you directly manage - if nothing else, it gives that small group a clearer sense of your preferences and priorities.

-Eric

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AVERT DATA DEBT

It is a commonplace in management that teams, leaders, organizations should be “data-driven.” And yep, generally, I think it’s a good idea to have some numbers that tell you how things are going.

But a trap I have fallen into is losing loads of time building out would-be fancy pants dashboards - those dashes had too many numbers in them and the numbers were presented with too much styling. I paid a steep cost and I clouded the picture instead of clarifying it. An exceptional leader once swatted me for this. She asked a question I’ve now carried with me to each team since: “What are we going to do differently based on this number?” 

If the answer is “nothing” or “not sure but it seems nice to know” consider ignoring the data you were going to gather and package. Or, at the very least, lower the amount of time you spend gathering and packaging it. 

On the recommendation of one of the better system builders and analysts I’ve ever worked with, I recently read The Outsiders and felt affirmed, a bit, in this tempered take on data. The extraordinary CEOs profiled in that book were acquiring entire companies and making long-term bets on markets and sectors. They were whole teams of i bankers ready to offer them reams of data. But the elite group made better decisions than their peers in part because they shrank the number of measures they looked at, zeroing in on just a few that mattered most. 

The lesson for me was that profusion of data doesn’t win the day. Smart prioritization within the data you could collect just might.

-Eric

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ROTE WORK AS PROMPT FOR IMAGINATION

Your team will inevitably have stuff that has to get done that is not very much fun to do. Maybe it’s fulfilling some sort of compliance requirement. Maybe it’s delivering an unpopular message to a whole pile of people. Part of the un-fun in these projects is a rote dimension - the thing that is needed may not be complex, it might just be tedious or repetitive. It wears down will power without engaging a ton of brain power. 

These kinds of tasks can be backdoor leadership opportunities for ambitious folks on your team - the exact kind of folks you might shy away from giving stuff like this because it seems “beneath them” or something. 

Consider assigning them the scut work with a meta-assignment on top: they need to figure out how to make this unpleasant project faster, easier, or better. Maybe they discover a way to eliminate it altogether. In the first instance, you might need them to just do this unpleasant thing the old-fashioned way, so it gets done. But they get the opportunity to think, pitch, and reform something instead of just checking a box. 

And you, as their leader/manager, can congratulate them on getting this opportunity instead of apologizing to them for bearing this burden (maybe with a wink and a nudge depending on how earnest/cheesy your culture is).

-Eric

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COMPELLING QUOTES

Investor Keith Rabois on keeping your best people:

The way to retain people who are performing and who you really want to retain is to hire someone that they can learn from.

Poet Yehuda Amichai on love and time:

Look, just as time isn't inside clocks
love isn't inside bodies:
bodies only tell the love

Stripe CEO Patrick Collison on culture in organizations:

You do not want to preserve culture; you want to collectively steer the right evolution of the culture.

Keep going, keep growing,

Ben & Eric