"Video Lecture _ Lecture 14 How to Operate”
In this blog post, I'm going to talk about the fundamental concepts
mentioned in the lecture 'How to Operate' by Keith Rabois. Some information
about the lecturer: Keith Rabois is an American technology entrepreneur,
executive, and investor. He is widely known for his early-stage startup
investments and his executive roles at PayPal, LinkedIn, Slide and Square. In
the viewpoint of the speaker structure of a company is like building an engine,
and you are the architect. On paper, it looks pretty, but in reality, you are
tying it together with duck tape. The polished metal that completes it has not
been put into place yet.
After some time, you need to have
something that no one has to worry about every minute of the day. K. Rabios
brings such an example and jokes that if Martians were to ever take over 'eBay'
it would take the world six months to notice. This means that actually, you
want a system that can produce results without having employees monitoring it
around the clock. Therefore, it leads to the idea which Warren Buffett says,
build a company that idiots could run because ultimately, they will. So this is
what you want a performance machine that idiots can run. So at first, when you
start a company everything is going to feel like a mess. And it really
should. What should you do? One of the
several solutions might be constantly measuring your employees. Only measure
progress, focus on the output and not on the input. There exists 'Andy Groves
Mangers output equation' which is Output of organization + Output of
neighboring organizations. As I mentioned previously, the start of the company
may seem to be messy. That feeling will go away but just like the being in the
emergency room if diagnosed wrong, the feeling could be fatal. For that reason,
editing can be used as an editor is the best metaphor to use when describing
your job. You can view your employees as the writers. Like when you write any
paper, the first thing an editor does it strike up the paper with red ink
simplifying and eliminating anything to clarify what is being said. The more
you simplify the obvious it will be for your team to understand the framework
and structure to repeat the process. Do not admit the excuse of complexity.
Often people say something is too complicated and that's it. They are wrong.
You can always find a way to market and build ideas within a few simple words.
After this, as an editor, you should be able to clarify all the information.
Next, be sure to make a list of the top four things that actually matter to the
company as a lot of people will ask what the meaning behind your words. This
step will enable your team to focus on building up the company and not become
distracted by unimportant things. Later you should also consider your
resources. It would be useful to hire
editors from other places which will bring competition to your company. You can
always move or send them somewhere else but the goal over time is to use less
'red ink' every day. It is also important to ensure a consistent voice.
Everyone in the company should understand and be able to produce the voice
themselves. Thus, make it appear like everything your company says or does is
all by one person. Up next is delegating tasks: the more someone has achieved
the task the more you trust them and less you have to control making to easier
to focus on other tasks at hand. It was noticed that if employee's task
maturity level is low their task will be highly structured knowing what, when,
and how, the employee is doing with their tasks. In contrast, if their maturity
level is high you will naturally monitor them and set objectives. What to do in
a case to maximize the probability of success for a team? When you hire more
you find less work getting done [previously we talked about this issue]. This
is because most great people are 'ammunition'. However, the company needs
'barrels'. Barrels are stocked with ammunition. If you have one great barrel
then your company will continue to find more. We can call this 'The Barrel and
Ammunition' principal. When you find
employees who have the features of the 'barrel' keep them. The secret to
finding such employees is just giving them a small set of responsibilities and
rewards. Moreover, never forget to do scaling which will show you both the
growth and the decline of the company. Furthermore, be focused what you are
doing. Sometimes being focused on one task assists to overcome that task with
the best result and outcome that one never might expect. Finally be cautious on
metrics and transparency. Being short metrics build tools that enable people to
make a determination on the same level you would. After this comes transparency
which gives access to the materials and allows easily know what is going on.
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