Aneesh Sathe

There is a fetishism around management artifacts, handbooks, spreadsheets, memos and more. People who like the idea of being a leader but lack experience look at these artifacts and think that whatever goes into the artifacts is how the world will function. This micromanagement flavour of command and control forgets that there are people involved. Leaders must remember that the people who you are leading are just like you and, crucially, that they are closer to the problem. Strategies crumble when they leave out the team’s intelligence, insight, and input. Therefore, building a culture of mutual trust and an intuitive mode of operation is crucial for success. Winning hearts is not trivial.

The inner game: Respect your team as you respect yourself

Respecting your team’s intelligence is a starting point.[efn_note]It might sound strange that this has to be said, but I’ve seen it happen too many times.[/efn_note] When leading, I acknowledge that everyone is important for the team’s success, each person has their own role as I have mine. As a team member, I would like to understand the why of the task. Seeing the bigger picture helps everyone understand the critical nature of their work. To have a team that is brimming “with ambition, initiative and originality” [efn_note]“It is my great and constant hope that the Marine Corps will produce some outstanding man for the country. Such men are somewhere, and they may as well be in our classes as anywhere else. I do not want such a person to be hammered down by narrowness and dogmas: to have his mind cramped by compulsory details. It is my constant ambition to see the Marine officers filled with ambition, initiative, and originality; and they can get these attributes only by liberality of thought – broad thought – thought that differs from precedent and the compulsory imprint of others.”

Letter from BGen J. C. Breckinridge to Colonel J. C. Smith, dated 21 November 1934, J. C. Smith Papers, Marine Corps Historical Center.”
via “Maneuver Warfare Handbook” by Lind, William S[/efn_note] is a blessing that requires much penance. The first step is respect for everyone on the team.

Respecting your team’s insight is to accept everyone as a specialist. You build your team based on the myriad skills required for the project’s success. As a person spends more time doing the tasks they build an innate understanding of the problem. While you, as the leader, may be able to see “everything” what you are really seeing is the big picture. All the execution happens at the level of little things. How to do the little things well is insight, and you are no expert.

Respecting your team’s input is simply the final step of respecting their intelligence and insight. If you don’t allow your plans to be challenged and tuned based on what the team sees then you are driving blind. This is not to say that every input is to be accepted or that every input is right. Everyone is seeing a part of the puzzle, and what is right in the specific might damage in the broad. But it’s the leader’s job to discern and to communicate why.

Insight and input seem like the same thing but they aren’t. If the leader creates the wrong environment, insight is simply not given. Which leads us to the other part, building a healthy culture.

The outer game: Mutual trust and team intuition

There is never enough time, or really reason, to set aside time to “team build” and develop mutual trust. Teams are built on the job, they are built by working together. “Trust cannot be wished for or assumed, it must be earned.” Working together helps us understand each other and the leader grows to trust the team’s actions and the team grown to trust that their actions will be supported.[efn_note]Both leadership and monitoring are valueless without trust. The “contracts” … of intent and mission express that trust … that his subordinates will understand and carry out his desires and trust by his subordinates that they will be supported when exercising their initiative.” Maneuver Warfare Handbook by Bill Lind[/efn_note] If there is a failure, there was a failure of internal process or not correctly anticipating the environment, either way the responsibility is on your shoulders, the team did the best they could.

Team intuition is built through good training, building an understanding of each other’s capabilities and repetition.[efn_note]“You cannot, he admonishes, give in to the urge to check and control everybody. In the heat of battle, there isn’t time. You have to trust your soldiers and subordinate leaders to do the right thing under the stress of combat. But, and this is the key point, this trust cannot be wished for or assumed. It must be earned through training and working together, as the German Army did between the two world wars when it was reduced to a small core of career professionals (an “unintended consequence” of the surrender terms imposed by the Allies at Versailles.)” Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business by Chet Richards [/efn_note] Task relevant maturity is a useful rubric to know how much training is needed. If an engineer has never made a customer call before, then they need a detailed explanation. I have done mock versions of important calls with people of all seniorities if it was their first time. Over-training has diminishing returns and it’s best to just go and do the thing.

Clear communication of the goals helps people do the right thing by default. Understanding what has to be achieved and know what is in the realm of possible actions enables the team to act effortlessly. The effortlessness comes after years of working together and after difficult trials. Once it’s there, however, that team is unstoppable. [efn_note]“Zen and other oriental philosophies talk at great length about intuitive knowledge, but they also stress that it comes through years of experience and self-discipline. In medieval Japan, samurai warriors practiced with the long sword until it became as an extension of their arm. When the fight starts, you don’t have time to stop and think about the fundamentals. In fact, one of the goals of Japanese samurai strategy was to cause this very “stopping” of the mind in their opponents.” Certain to Win: The Strategy of John Boyd, Applied to Business Chet Richards”[/efn_note]

A lot of my understanding of how to build a good team is based on experience and from reading military strategy. In military strategy there is a focus on “winning” and “opponents”, they are terms I shy away from. In a business environment, especially in a startup, there is much that isn’t in your hands. You simply must do the best with whatever you have. Win the hearts of your team and they will do the best and give more than you imagined.