Doing Stuff, With Others, To Grow
The Situation
The to-do list is growing by the day, with big projects and smaller tasks multiplying, from the mundane and repeatable to the big and audacious. Your team knows how to do some things, while other needs require new functions, more complicated applications, or may only happen once.
There are always more ideas than there is time to execute them – running a business is an exercise in prioritization. How do you figure out how to get the things that make your business go done? And how do you find the right partners, vendors, and providers to help you?
The Play
What’s the best way to do it?
Understand what has to get done – now and eventually – and what, realistically, doesn’t.
Figure out if it’s something you want to do in-house. Will having the capability to do the thing benefit your company?
Triangulate your need for speed, quality, and price to determine when to automate, hire, acquire, upsource, or outsource.
Specific to upsourcing and outsourcing, how do you find vendors that solve an issue, rather than add to the list of them?
Do your research and ask businesses that you admire who they’d recommend.
Run the Larry Bird play. Ask vendors you talk with who they’d recommend if you chose not to work with them.
Triangulate to figure out who really knows their stuff, and set reasonable relationship parameters.
Go Long
New Essay: How to Do Stuff
“Whether it’s manufacturing goods, creating a website, preparing taxes, writing copy for ad campaigns, or any of the other things that make your business go, there are also many different options for how you’re going to get it done. And, those options all come with tradeoffs and costs.”
New Essay: Mistaking Red Flags for Red Carpets: The Problem with Services for Smaller Businesses
“So, with rare exceptions, small businesses are choosing from a combination of new and subpar options, often without much guidance, and frequently based on dinner invitations and tickets to see their favorite team play. At first glance, it looks like a vendor is rolling out the red carpet. Look a little closer and that red carpet might actually be red flags. Most relationships are based on what’s easy and enjoyable, rather than what is effective… with underappreciated consequences for the company.”
Throwback: The Ceiling of Brute Force
“As a general rule, small businesses don’t stay small on purpose. Companies “top out” for good reason(s) and rarely because of the business model. Beyond a certain point, sheer effort no longer works to overcome critical challenges. This is the ceiling of brute force. Each company hits it at some point, but the size, specific issues, and level of complexity varies dramatically.”
Permanent Podcast
Mark Brooks walks through 8 ways to get stuff done.
(Be sure to subscribe to get the latest episodes in your feed!)
Go Deep
Curiosity sparked? We've put together a list of resources on setting priorities and getting things done.
Understanding Speed and Velocity: Saying “NO” to the Non-essential (Farnam Street)
+ On the beauty of “don’t do it” as an option for getting things done. “Velocity and speed are different things. Speed is the distance traveled over time. I can run around in circles with a lot of speed and cover several miles that way, but I’m not getting anywhere. Velocity measures displacement. It’s direction-aware.”
The Feedback Founders Need to Hear — How to Grow Yourself To Grow The Company (First Round Review)
+ You as a founder or leader can only stretch your individual ability so far. To really scale a business, you’ve got to create priorities, build your team, train, delegate, document, and create independent functions. But you can double down on feedback and self-reflection to grow your ability to do those things. “In the hazy days of changing business models, experimentation (and hopefully) hypergrowth, it's hard to know if something is working because of the leader’s behavior or in spite of it. At the same time, the faucet of upward feedback also slows to a trickle — as hierarchy takes hold, fewer and fewer feel comfortable challenging the founder’s big ideas, or pointing out their missteps. Furthermore, the parameters of your own role are constantly changing as the team grows and challenges stack up.
CEO/FounderPrioritization (Unusual Ventures)
+ Figuring out what needs your time and attention in the first place is half the battle, and this heatmap tool helps you triangulate what matters most and align your team to tackle the issues. “Each pillar includes a category, score (excellent, tolerable, or broken) with primary constraints and any must-do next step. The heatmap doesn’t have to be super detailed or perfect. The goal is to create a common resource for your team to work off of and discuss how to best prioritize as a team.”
Steal This CEO’s Obama-Inspired 4Ps Prioritization System to Keep Your Focus in a Chaotic World (Inc.)
+ The alternative to building slack into your schedule? The four priority levels of tasks and responsibilities: What comes to you directly, what you make decisions on (but is less urgent), what you stay informed about and advise on, and what you track progress on but stays off your day-to-day radar. Note, this only works if you allow yourself a fixed number of P1s and reshuffle when a task moves up or down the list. “Getting clear on what exactly you should be focusing on and getting real about how many priorities even the most accomplished human can handle should help chaos-proof just about anyone's life.”
“Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.”
