I often wonder why people do things.
It’s a maddening exercise, but an important one (to me) in trying to make sense of the tiny existence we have.
Growing up in Cupertino, one of my absolutely favourite things to do was drive up and down 280 (a major roadway in the Bay Area). In particular there are two places where it’s the best: a short bridge by the famous Flinstone house and a small stretch of the highway that takes you right over SLAC (Stanford’s Linear Accelerator). If you time it just right you can look down one side of the accelerator shooting straight into a valley. It’s our best science and nature embedded together. Incredible.
Particle colliders are interesting machines. Scientists use them to learn and test a bunch of things, such as understanding our world shortly after it arrived into existence. They take two particles and fire them into one another to see what happens. Sophisticated imagers capture the outputs of these collisions as well as the interactions amongst the different particles (generated or exposed) hoping to answer a bunch of questions that mostly start with “why.”
Humans, too, are outcomes of collisions. Watching how we work and why we do the things we do is an exercise similar to see what comes out particle collisions. When a person is administered great stress, what happens to them? Why? Is it replicable — and if so, can I foresee the conditions such that I can now guess the outcome?
When we do things (especially to one another) do we pay attention to what we get for it, or do we pay attention to what we become because of it?
The divide between directly building product and developing sets of philosophies and policies that lead to product outcomes has been an interesting bridge to watch and navigate.
“Pure Builders,” such as individual contributors or early founders eventually must contend with this transition as their products (and aspirations) grow.
My first quarter and change on the job has been filled with talking to people from all over the company. This is done as both a learning experience with my Office Hours, or as part of something I’m working on (Punit assigns me areas he’s trying to lever up to push the organization forward faster).
As result, I’ve had wide exposure to the company and in many regards a short history of how groups, programs, and functional areas came into existence. A number of the people I talk to, especially, are leaving the company. Attrition is natural, and it’s a great opportunity to get real “I don’t give a shit what you think” feedback from people who worked really hard here at Flipkart. Along with those experiences and many of my own, I’ve been thinking a lot about how
Steve Jobs is famously quoted (I’m paraphrasing) that B players hire C players. In my opinion, he’s not so much condemning B and C (and D,E,F…) people so much as he’s commenting on how difficult it is to reach and maintain a plateau of excellence. The moment you are great, the system is designed to pull you out of greatness (analogous, perhaps, to the law of large numbers and convergence to the mean or a simple spring).
As companies grow (“scaling” if you’re hip) there’s tremendous pressure put on existing processes and foundational constructs like culture and hiring bar. In an effort to not lose steam and grow as quickly as possible (as part of strategy or simply in response to demand) these constructs can be (and often are) compromised.
Perverse conditions arise from such compromises.
I’ve been trying to rationalize what I’ve been seeing in a, still incomplete, framework I’ve coined Productivity-Reliability Matrix.Yuck. Just reading that title makes me feel like I went to “Business” School or something traumatic like that. I’ll think of a better name later. The framework is inspired by Peter Thiel’s ever popular two-by-two matrix evaluations.
(I’ve already assumed this thought exists in a magical business management book somewhere, such as Andy Grove’s High Output Management. As I don’t read such books, allow me some joy in believing I was able to describe this phenomenon all on my own.)
On one axis we’ll look at Productivity. I choose this word for lack of a better term that captures the desired effort as an actual output. Working hard is fantastic, but without meaningful output is disheartening (and catastrophic in workplaces). It is the difference between kindling and a deeply burning coal.
One the other axis we’ll look at Reliability. I define Reliability loosely as the probability that work will be done within a reasonable time and fashion at or (ideally) above the standards within the group.
The quadrants are as follows:
The primary levers we have to help people navigate this matrix are development and charter. That is, the ability to up level someone in their skills and provide strong direction for people to work. (This again is oversimplifying the many other factors that make a workplace or work itself palatable.)
When a person is deemed unproductive, they require development at a pure skill or mentorship level to make a leap. (To be clear This is true of people who are already labeled as productive.)
When a person is deemed unreliable, they require prioritization both immediately and a framework of future prioritization to help them understand their role and expectation. Ideally they will be able to articulate that moving forward and efficiently route (or dodge) incoming requests.
I often talk to other Chief of Staff’s at the company (we’re multiplying faster than rabbits in Wonderland) to remind them that our role is not a career. We’re a large rounding error of inefficiency in the organization. As such our roles are both fluid and high-stress, meaning we often reside in the Flare (or worse) category of workers.
I quite admire Netflix. I don’t use the service, or its new add-on service called “Chill” that much. But I pay attention to their unbarring efforts into developing their culture and A players while setting incentives to phase out all other quadrants (through training or heft separation packages). I reach their Culture Deck about twice a year and always stumble upon a new nugget of brilliance. It is, by far, one of the best things I’ve read on business (company & culture) building.
When new leadership enters a company (or any employee for that matter), I suspect we overtly or not carry out an assessment of this Productivity-Reliability matrix. Even in my own mind, I keep lists of people and their quadrants which informs how I navigate the organization (or specifically whom I avoid). Ideally, of course, everyone entering the organization will begin in the top-right quadrant. Making a hire without a clear role or knowing that person is exceptional is a fatal error.
A natural consequence is that work will almost all flow towards A players putting downward pressure on them to become Flares. The B players receive “secondary” work and without development have no opportunity to push themselves (and may even extinguish any motivation to do so). The forgotten, well, remain forgotten.
If all of this ends up being true, we can distill our most important efforts in organization building as: hiring, development (broad), and strategic clarification (which informs charters and roles).
An old friend, the great MA, once explained Google’s composition to Reed, Xander, and me prior to our acquisition. “2% of the people at Google are absolutely critical. 40% of the people at Google are super important and do the work of the 2%. The remaining 58% of the pick up a check.”
I used to use this anecdote negatively. To bring Google down from the stratosphere from which they seemingly operate.
Years later I still think about it. Google invested most heavily into hiring (culture) and development and almost from the start. The point is not that 58% of people there probably don’t cause outcomes — it’s that they’ve done such a good job (aggregate) using their levers of development and charters to improve their people it’s obfuscated who’s entirely responsible for their world-changing success.
What a thing to strive for.