The Weekly: Edition #83 - February 5th, 2021
Right People, Right Seats, Right Direction
Gino Wickman, author of Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business, produced a wonderful framework for ensuring that every person in an organization is maximizing their talents for the good of the company. There are two pieces to the framework: right people, right seats.
By right people, Wickman means people who share your organization's core values as an owner, better known as a 'cultural fit'. This looks different for each organization as every company has its own combination of core values, written (and unwritten) policies, and standard operating procedures. For example, there are companies where all employees are remote, asynchronous, and use Slack as the only means of communication. There are others that expect butts in seats at 8 AM until 5 PM - no more and no less. There is no right or wrong set of core values for your business. There are only people who fit or don't.
By right seats, Wickman means that each person is employed in a role that they are capable of fulfilling and have the capacity to perform. Capacity can be defined as intellect, energy, time, and skillset. Wickman's framework for defining an employee's ability relative to the role is simplified to 'GWC': – Gets It, Wants it, and has the Capacity for it. When you have the wrong person in the right seat, often the company culture and customer experience suffers because they are not living up to your company values and are not communicating your brand's values to the market. This should be easy feedback to give. The harder situation arises when you have the right person in the wrong seat. Letting someone go who is a company fit, but can't perform a role to minimum expectations is difficult for any leader. But it is better for the company and for the employee's career in the long-term. Action must be swift but respectful, and with their long-term interests in mind. As we've written before, empathy is an extremely valuable skill for any leader.
This two part framework simplifies the process of utilizing the talent in your organization most efficiently, but it doesn't address retaining that talent. To that end, we would suggest adding one more piece to the framework - ensuring you have the right people in the right seats going in the right direction.
By right direction, we simply mean that every employee is crystal clear what their role is, and why it is important to the organization's performance as a whole. This gives their role clear boundaries and a sense of purpose within the larger mission. Compensation, feedback, and a path to promotion all matter immensely in retaining employees, but the importance of having clarity about one's role and purpose within an organization cannot be understated. As a leader, it isn't enough to hire the right people and put them in the right roles - you must provide a clear direction for their role, the resources to complete the job, and then get out of the way. As Wickman says, the way to grow your business is to constantly 'delegate, then elevate'. Put the right people in the right seats going in the right direction.
Sounds simple, but if it were, business wouldn't be so messy.
The outsider: how CEO-for-hire Frank Slootman turned Snowflake into Software’s biggest-ever IPO (Forbes)
+ "Slootman likes to say that he doesn’t have a formula, even after having pulled off similar magic at both Data Domain and ServiceNow. Talk to him at length, though, and watch the patterns, and you can see that’s not true. The former sailor runs pre-IPO companies like a tightly rigged high-performance watercraft, a captain with extreme confidence who will throw overboard anyone who shows the mildest mutinous inclination. “When I was a younger man, I was more tolerant; I always thought I could coach people to a place where they would be great,” Slootman says. “And 99 times out of 100, you’re wrong on that, which is the reason I [now] pull triggers much faster. I still don’t think I’ve ever taken anybody out of a job too soon. It’s [always] been too late.""
How Tesla’s charging stations left other manufacturers in the dust (Harvard Business Review)
+ "Over the past five years, the major auto companies have invested massively in electric vehicles (EVs). The Volkswagen Group in 2017 announced that they would offer 80 new electric vehicles across their brands by 2025 and electric versions of every one of its models by 2030. In the same year GM went public with plans to put at least 20 new electric models on the road by 2023. They are not alone; Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts that 500 different EV models will be available globally by 2022. Yet, despite investments that add up to many billions of dollars, none of the major incumbent automakers seems to pose much of a threat to market leader Tesla, which has become nearly synonymous with EVs."
An introduction to intermodal rail (CSX)
+ "As over-the-road capacity tightens in specific markets, use of intermodal rail can help shippers diversify modal options and gain access to additional capacity. By double stacking containers, an intermodal train can transport the equivalent of 280 truckloads. The efficiencies of double-stacked rail transportation provide shippers a scalable shipping solution that can flex to meet seasonal surges as well as changes in demand."
The great unbundling (Benedict Evans)
+ "20 trillion dollars of retail, brands, TV and advertising is being overturned, and software is remaking everything from cars to pharma. Meanwhile, China has more smartphone users than Europe and the USA combined, and India is close behind - technology and innovation will be much more widely spread. For that and lots of other reasons, tech is becoming a regulated industry, but if we step over the slogans, what does that actually mean?"
Running a successful membership / subscription program (Craig Duncan)
+ "If you’re membership-curious — that is, a masochist, thinking about starting a paid newsletter (2020: the year “Substack” entered the realm of “Kleenex”) or launching a Patreon community or GitHub Sponsorship or, like me, rolling your own Memberful-driven jumble of offerings — then read on. I’ll try to relay my experience with the hope of demystifying the work and stresses of setting off on your own through the creative wilds of the world."
No one knows how much the government can borrow (Noahpinion)
+ "You might think that with the U.S. federal debt having surged to over 125% of GDP as a result of COVID relief spending — up from around 60% of GDP before the 2008 financial crisis, it might be time to think about borrowing constraints. And you might think that with Biden planning far more deficit spending in the coming years, it might be time to think about borrowing constraints. But in fact, we don’t actually know if it’s time to think about borrowing constraints! It might be that we’re heading into the danger zone, or it might be that the danger zone is still so far away that we could do a CARES Act every month and not run into trouble for decades."
What to know about music’s copyright gold rush (Pitchfork)
+ "Last month, news broke that Bob Dylan sold his songwriting catalog to Universal’s publishing arm in a deal reportedly worth more than $300 million. Although the singer-songwriter has been a renowned harbinger of epochal shifts for nearly 50 years, the move was merely the most illustrious in an ongoing frenzy of music copyright acquisitions. In the weeks since Dylan’s announcement, the likes of Neil Young, Lindsey Buckingham, and Shakira have sold the rights to their songs to a relatively new buyer on the scene: Hipgnosis Songs Fund, an investment company founded in 2018 by former artist manager and label head Merck Mercuriadis."
The secrets of Sovereign: how Richard and Christopher Chandler's transformed a $10 million family fortune into a cool $5 billion (Institutional Investor)
+ "By going into uncharted territory where most investors don't dare to tread, the Chandler brothers have, in the space of 20 years, grown a family fortune of $10 million into a cool $5 billion -- and they're still in their mid-40s. Along the way they have made waves by being among the first and biggest investors in such emerging markets as Brazil, the Czech Republic and Russia and playing an instrumental -- and controversial -- role in advocating economic reform and better corporate governance. They have waged, directly and by proxy, several bruising governance battles, most notably in Russia, where their militancy helped get the first independent director appointed at state-controlled gas giant Gazprom, and in South Korea, where their two-year campaign at refiner SK Corp. to oust chairman and CEO Chey Tae Won, who had been convicted of fraud, ended in failure last year."
He was facing life in prison. Now, he’s the CEO of the ‘Instagram for the Incarcerated.’ (The Hustle)
+ "In 2012, Bullock came up with the idea of a platform where families could easily communicate with their imprisoned loved ones by sending postcards and messages. He called it Flikshop.
The premise was simple:
Loved ones would download the app and choose a photo
They’d “send” it to an inmate
Flikshop would deliver their message on a postcard for $0.99
The venture was self-funded. In fact, Bullock says he didn’t even know what an angel investor was up until a few years ago."
Bowlus’s newest luxury trailer comes with built-in pet food bowls and a custom bed for pets (Robb Report)
+ "The California-based luxury travel trailer manufacturer has just unveiled its latest model, the limited-edition Terra Firma, which understands Fido’s important place in the family. The trailer comes with built-in food bowls, a personalized pet bed and a remote temperature control and monitoring system. That last feature may prove to be the most essential for pet owners, as it helps ensure the trailer is at a comfortable and safe temperature no matter how punishing the conditions may be outside."
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