The importance of iteration speed

Someone asked me earlier this week how to get people to update their Clickup cards more frequently.

It was a very hard question to answer because it starts from the top.

When I run a team… there is no choice. I make it clear right from the outset that if you don’t maintain your cards in a disciplined way, you are out.

I don’t care how smart you are.

I don’t care about anything else.

You are out. And in a very short amount of time.

Period.

Because you will break the system.

And the system is bigger than any single individual.

It comes down to math

You see part of my theory is pure math.

If a team is running a daily standup as many tech teams do… then they basically get a single iteration per day.

And so each person gives an update on their tasks and states their plan for the day. Then then go and execute on it and come back the next day with the results.

If they went in the wrong direction then a lot of what they did that day will have been wasted.

I, however, ask my teams to make a comment update to their card everytime they work on a task.

Which ends up being 2-4x per day on many tasks.

And so i’m getting more frequent feedback to course correct and iterate.

Which means that the person doing the task doesn’t need to try to ‘read my mind’ correctly in order to do things in the correct way. They can simply ask on the card whenever they come to a decision point and know that i will revert quickly with input or a decision.

And when a person gets used to this it makes their life much easier. Because being a mind reader is very difficult.

Shitty managers rely on strong mind readers

Think about it… many shitty managers will not respond back to a team member that frequently.

Perhaps you’re not getting feedback from them for several days or even a week.

As a result you need to get good at making decisions yourself. But not only do you need to make the ‘correct decision’… but rather you also need to make the decision that you think he would have made.

And that, in my experience, is a very different and more difficult task. Because even two very smart people will often see a problem in two different ways.

So managers that operate like this need to find team members that think similar to them. It almost becomes the most important trait they are hiring for.

Because if the person thinks very differently and they only get feedback once a week or so, then that is a ton of time that will be thrown down the drain each week. Due to the person going in the wrong assumed direction.

My old consulting manager at BCG

Probably the stupidest I ever felt in my career was when i worked for this one English prick at BCG about twenty years ago. I’ll refrain from using his name.

He thought the world of himself.

And in his feedback sessions he would typically run through my slides and just spout out tons of verbal feedback. Some of it contradicting the things that he said just a slide or two earlier.

But the power of giving feedback in this way is that it was impossible for him to ever be wrong. Because it was never documented.

I’d sometimes come back to our next meeting a few days later having actioned what he’d said earlier and he would tell me that I understood him wrong. And that I should have asked him if i didn’t understand correctly.

This would frustrate the hell out of me because when i did ask him to clarify things during such meetings he was extremely terse and gave the attitude that i should be able to understand things without him further explaining.

Anyway…. the project was a bit of a shitshow and of course he blamed his team and me. Which is something i heard later he’d already developed a bit of a reputation for.

I had a peek at his Linkedin profile recently and surprise surprise!!! Almost 20 years later and he’s still a fucking useless consultant. Hahhaahhaaha

But now instead of it being at BCG it is at some no name joint that probably doesnt’ get much work.

Of course he’s never started an actual successful business and created something of value of his own.. because he would SUCK AT IT!

Closing thoughts

Each week I work with a bunch of relatively inexpensive freelancers on growing my business that is both profitable and growing quite nicely.

We never took a dime of VC money.

I do everything my way. According to my systems.

And unsurprisingly.. the folks that work with me on it are both happy and quite loyal.

Because I am very clear in what I ask of them and very timely in providing quick feedback.

I don’t expect any of them to read my mind. Rather I write out very explicit instructions in a Clickup task that I assign to them and then check each update they make to it. Course correcting if needed.

And now.. when i think back to some of the managers I had early in my career who expected their teams to become good mindreaders…. I see them for what they actually were.

Shitty. Ass. Managers.