Managing Employees In the
Start Up Pressure Cooker
Session 7
Guest Next Week
Ryan Disraeli
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USC alum - he studied business at Marshall.
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Co-founded his first company, Telesign in
2005, while he was a sophomore at USC.
The company pioneered mobile phone-based
two-factor authentication.
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In 2017, TeleSign was acquired for 230
million dollars by Belgacom. Disraeli was
named to Forbes 30 under 30 for enterprise
technology
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In 2022, he became the CEO if Inspectiv, a
leading vulnerability detection platform that
combines human insights & machine learning
Employee Burnout
“Creating a culture of burnout is
opposite to creating a culture of
sustainable creativity. This is something
that needs to be taught in business
schools. This mentality needs to be
introduced as a leadership and
performance-enhancing tool”
Arianna Huffington
Perceived reasons behind burnout in a start-up
● Constant state of emergency
● Work goes to waste / not being used
● Company/leadership constantly changes directions
● Team underperforming & constantly behind on the numbers
● Lack of recognition by management
● Work feels meaningless
● Teams under-resourced leading to overwork
● Lack of ownership on to-do list / decisions
Where solutions may come from: A Culture Of Meaning
Goal Setting
Communication
Prioritization
process
Managing
people with
meaning
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Setting meaningful goals for the company
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Giving each employee a “Personal Why”
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Communicating around goals and the impact of work
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Being radically transparent about company issues and objectives
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Avoiding meaningless work like the plague
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Allowing playground projects?
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Insisting on high expectations
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Actively coaching employees
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Cultivating ownership
Goal Setting
Setting meaningful company objectives
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Watch out when setting overly
ambitious objectives
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Remember that performance
against these numbers will impact
both employees and investors
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Think about using a separate
budget and operating plan, or
putting people in charge of going
after the upsides
Remember it is not enough to set goals, you need to
endlessly communicate these goals
Creating A Personal Why For Each Employee
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Everyone’s job needs to relate to the bigger mission, and go
from being something purely transactional to being strategic
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You need to not just say it, you need to show it, and measure it,
especially for jobs that do not have direct correlation to business
results, and for more junior jobs
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You need to make sure employees have means and resources to
act on their “personal why”, and to making their job matter
Exercise: develop objectives for your customer rep
What it may have looked like:
What it could have looked like
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Answer 95% of emails in less
than 24 hours
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Answer customer requests in a
timely manner
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Answer 85% of calls within 1
min, 95% within 3 min
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Offer styling tips as appropriate in
calls and emails
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Resolve logistics issues within
48 hours
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Collect and aggregate qualitative
feedback, and present to relevant
departments
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Maintain a 50 NPS
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Identify and develop relationships
with key customers
Prioritization Process
How to prioritize what to do and what not to do
The underlying principles
●
●
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Time is the most precious
resources all of us have
Respecting people means
respecting their opinion and
time, and not assuming
laziness
In a start-up, what you don’t
do is as important as what
you do
The best practices
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Alignment with business objectives
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Prioritize problems rather than
solutions
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Mandatory debate incl. analysis of
impact & feasibility of alternatives
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All functions involved in executing
the work participate in the debate
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Extreme thoughtfulness on data
analysis (will it change the answer)
Should you allow for playground projects?
Communication
Exercise: how do you communicate, and to who?
You are the CEO of start-up X. Your company is in a dire situation. Three months ago,
you made a business model change, and got rid of the membership model you were
offering customers, making it a pay-as -you-go model. the subscription optional. 50%
of your subscriber base churned, and conversion did not increase nearly enough to
compensate. You are out of cash, and have been given a 6-month bridge by the
board to get the company to a place where it can raise money. Your plan is to lay off
20% of the employee base, relaunch a new subscription program, make a deal with a
celebrity to become the new face of the brand, and hope this will be enough to
convince outside investors to put money in. If not, you are facing bankruptcy. You
have to communicate the news, how do you choose to proceed?
What do the Dalai Lama, Jack Welch and Howard Shultz
have in common?
The Power Of Radical Transparency
“I think the currency of leadership if transparency. You’ve got to be truthful. I
don’t think you should be vulnerable every day, but there are moments where
you’ve got to share your soul and conscience with people and show them who
you are and not be afraid of it” - Howard Schultz
“Business isn’t complicated. The complications arise when people are cut off
from information they need” - Jack Welch
“A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity” Dalai Lama
How To Operationalize Radical Transparency
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Do not lie about the target numbers
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Do not portray something as life or
death if it isn’t
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When it is life or death, you need to say
it, and need to be crystal clear on what
will make a difference
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Watch your energy and confidence
level when delivering these messages
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This applies in good and bad times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVxYOQ
S6ggk
Managing People With Meaning
The Power Of High Expectations
Key Rules of Expectations Setting
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Demand expertise
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Trust people
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Stretch them beyond their
current capabilities level
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Support them as they attempt to
grow
High expectations are everything!
People want to be seen and heard
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Pay attention to physical and emotional cues in meetings
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Call people out, and get them to express their thoughts. Do not rush
through meeting in the name of productivity
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Alternatively, take them aside after a meeting, or take them to coffee to
address lingering issues
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Ask questions, do not pontificate or judge
Communicating value and feedback
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You need to communicate the impact of the work, especially with more
junior employees that may not have access to all the numbers
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You need to acknowledge people’s contributions in front of others
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You need to consistently give feedback both positive and negative:
○
Annual reviews cannot be the only time you give feedback
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Complaining to someone else about a person’s performance is not feedback
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There are tools that can help 15Five
○
Remember that asking questions is a powerful tool
Coaching: why you need more of it, and why it is not happening
The Situation
100% of the start-ups I have been
involved in suffer from lack of coaching,
causing low performance, creating
burnout, and unnecessary turnover
The Complication
100% of the founders I work with are
either overwhelmed by coaching needs or
don’t think they should do it or both
Employee underperformance, and coaching triggers
Make sure you understand the reasons behind underperformance, or
feedback & coaching will be ineffective
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You have not been clear on expectations, and how you wanted the job
done
The employee did not have enough context or information
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The employee’s workload is too high
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The employee is too junior, or new and does not have the skills yet
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You need to have this automatic mental checklist when you are
assessing underperformance
Final thoughts on coaching
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If you are always coaching the same thing, go back to the coaching
checklist.
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Watch the balance between coaching & ownership
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When you hire, assess trade-offs between coaching needs, and level of
hiring
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Coaching sessions don’t have to be long, and remember - questioning
will go a long way
Back to quiet quitting…
Appendix
How burnout may affect different functions
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Give business context, but do not overload with meetings;
allow for some fluidity at the detriment of efficiency; support
with project managers; and do not hold the pen!
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Watch for analytical work that will not change the final answer /
decision; be mindful of how you approach heavy workload
moments (e.g., board meetings)
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Make sure they don’t ignore the business goals; make sure you
respect their time by watching the balance of power between
product & tech; push to understand tech debt and trade-off
Creative
Business /
Finance
Tech
Coaching Tips By Skills
Technical
skills
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Identify what is missing, show how you want to get it done, or
send to training
Email
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Communication
Teach clarity & brevity, and trade-off between in-person
discussion vs. long email chains
Presentation
Skills
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Give opportunities to practice to junior people; immediate
feedback is always better; also includes managing/reading room
Time
management
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Most correlated to burnout - watch especially for meeting
overload in people’s calendar, and amount of presentation
materials
Director-level
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Skills
(Management /
strategy)
Watch for balance of individual contribution vs. management
time; be clear on expectations and deliverables