Sink or Swim
As I sat sheepishly across from my boss Ray, it was clear that neither of us really wanted to be here, but it was protocol. After all, every employee ought to get a 3 month review right?
Ray stared hard at the 2 pieces of paper in front of him. He cleared his throat. Then he paused and grimaced:
“Has your job followed the expectations laid out in the initial job description?”
We both laughed. You see, as Program Manager of Launch Academy, I have no job description. Although I have spent my entire career working with startups in ambiguous roles, I’ve never had a job like this. They had known internally in their heads what they had wanted before they hired me, but never bothered to write it down. I’m exaggerating a little bit, but essentially, all I had to work with was my title. Program. Manager.
I didn’t put much weight on the word ‘manager’, since our team was five people strong at the time and four of them also had manager in their title so I focused on the other word: programs.
To give you a bit of background, Launch has two major arms of programs — memberships for entrepreneurs wanting to work and grow in our space, and a lecture based education program.
I had experience in neither so I spent most of my time being a fly on the wall. I made mental notes of how our members responded to everything, and started building my own profile of the types of members and students we liked working with. I watched my teammates like a hawk, observing how they acted and reacted to different tasks and different people. It wasn’t before long that I was conducting my own interviews and accepting members into our facilities. By the time we had this three month review, half the members had been hand picked by me.
As I reflected on this, suddenly it was my turn to pause. Finally, I blurted out:
“You know, I could have accepted some real weirdos into our space. How did you know I wouldn’t turn this place into a mess?”
Ray gave me a look I’ve only ever seen on two people — Ray Walia and Kanye West.
“I didn’t. You did as we had hoped, but it was a risk we were willing to take.”
He went on, but if I’m being honest (sorry Ray) I had stopped listening. As a risk-adverse person, this was mind boggling to me. I came from a background where responsibility and freedom were earned, not given.
I came from a background where responsibility and freedom were earned, not given.
But startups don’t work that way. Or at least, they shouldn’t. Risk failure, or your biggest risk will become complacency. Push what you have, whether it’s your team, your product, or your target market. If you’ve decided to hire someone for a job, let them do their job. If they sink, then the faster you find out, the better it is for everyone. If they swim, well — maybe you’ve got something.
It wasn’t that there was anything special about me (it’s still somewhat of mystery to me as to why I was a fit) — our Events Coordinator’s first day included hosting a 150 person fireside chat with Uber’s Travis Kalanick. Our co-founder Alex was mentoring entrepreneurs twice his age from day one. I could go on.
It’s a lesson that I’ve been trying to practice myself. Here’s three reminders that have helped me be less risk-adverse:
1. Nothing you do is that important.
It’s a classic lego issue. As a kid, I often hesitated to take down what I had built in order to build bigger and better things. But in hindsight, it didn’t matter and I would have had more fun tearing things apart and rebuilding.
2. Your projects, programs, and products will be around long after you’re gone.
Eventually, what you do will be passed on. If it only functions while under your protection, it’s not something scalable, and probably isn’t worth doing.
3. You don’t know what you don’t know.
This is Ray’s golden quote. Entrepreneurial people are often blinded by our chase for perfectionism, but whether it’s a new product or maintaining an existing one, nothing is beyond improvement. If Steve Jobs and Bill Gates needed teams and input from others, so do you.
If you’re a micro-manager or dare I say it, control-freak, then you must hate me right now. It’s ok, part of me hates me too.
But seriously, learn to let go.