Are you a maker or a manager?

I’m a maker. Moment is a maker company with 40 people of which 39 are making.

In a maker culture the biggest leadership challenges are…

1. Deciding what to work on.
2. Mentally switching between multiple topics.

In the early days, what a team works on is relatively simple…what is going to work to bring a new customer?

Everything a team is working on is in support of getting a new customer. If you spend a $1 in engineering it’s because you believe that $1 will turn into new customers through what you ship. If you spend $1 on new computers it’s because you believe those computers will turn out work faster which gets you another customer. A dollar is a dollar and you are trying to guess at which dollar spent will result in another customer.

Sometimes those customers are investors who fund your business and sometimes those customers are people paying for what you offer. Regardless, getting good at deciding what to work on just takes practice. Every team learns to solve this in their own way.

Learning how to mentally switch topics is much harder. Not everyone is wired for it, especially if you are a maker. Managers don’t really go deep enough into any topics to have this issue. But if you are trying to make, then covering a broad range of topics can be debilitating.

Here is what helps me.

Why Covering Multiple Topics Is Hard

It’s important to briefly understand why this is hard.

First, people are not taught how to cover multiple topics. Traditionally companies are organized functionally and therefore like minded, skill specific people are grouped together. People are taught the functional responsibilities of their role. Over time people get comfortable with this definition and therefore learning new domains becomes less interesting.

Second, speed compounds the issue. Small teams need to move quickly. Which means people can get overwhelmed if they are trying to both learn new subjects and execute the domains they already know. They end up gravitating to what they know and ignoring the stuff they don’t.

Third, you have to be vulnerable. Admitting what you don’t know, asking for help, and getting better takes more self reflection. Not everyone is interested in this.

Fourth, it takes discipline. Consistency in your personal approach and team process matters in learning how to master this skill. Not everyone thinks about the discipline of their work.

Deciding On Team Structure

Team structure is the first way to define the problem.

If you structure the company functionally…sales, marketing, engineering, etc then covering multiple topics comes down to one person. Functional teams are highly dependent on what the other teams do, therefore you need at least one person who is exceptional at switching topics and making sure the separate groups are connected.

If you structure the company with cross functional teams then you have to teach breadth to a larger group of people. You will go slower in the short term in developing these skills. In the long term you will go faster as you have multiple leaders who can take groups of people into whole new markets.

At Moment we organized into cross functional teams. Each team has a lead, 3-7 people, and the resources they need to deliver their own goals. This means we have to teach multiple people how to cover multiple topics effectively. Personally I believe in coaching as the long term gains outweigh the short term ones.

If you don’t have time to coach people, then being functionally organized reduces the problem to a single person inside the company.

Define Your Feedback Process

How do you prefer to review work and give feedback?

If you can see work, understand the issue immediately, and provide succinct feedback then you can build your schedule around a series of short feedback sessions. What you say has to be correct and you can’t come back later and change it. Otherwise your team will get fed up.

The number of people in the world who can do this is very small. In my fifteen years I’ve met one.

If you see work and your first answer isn’t right, then you need a schedule that gives you time to think, reply, and correct your own reply. You’ll want to create a schedule that groups similar subjects and creates as much thinking time as possible. The weekly schedule at the back of 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People is one way of doing this.

Personally I have to think before responding. I need time to look at the whole context before providing feedback. Therefore to give myself time to think and still run a company I group my schedule.

• Team meetings and 1:1 sessions are the same 2 hours every day.
• Phone call availability is the two hours around my team sessions.
• Email is only at the beginning or end of the day.

This gives me at least half of a day, every day to really think about 2-3 topics. If the topic is big then i get one per day. If the topics are smaller, then can get in 5-6 topics in a day.

What has helped the most is working off-hours from the team. That means early mornings or weekends. I can’t resist Slack so not being online helps me to better concentrate.

Set A Communication Style

How you communicate further dictates your schedule and ability to switch topics effectively.

If you prefer to provide verbal feedback you need to be online when your team can talk. You have to develop how your team does phone calls or you will quickly get a meeting culture. And lastly, you have to learn how to be very succinct.

The mistake people make is to assume that a long conversation is an effective conversation. The reality is people can only remember a few things that you say. It may make you feel good to say a lot but the ratio of what you said to what is executed on can be way off.

If you prefer to provide written feedback then you need to develop a consistent method that everyone can use. You have to teach that method to your team so everyone creates a habit in using the same process when giving feedback on the work.

Personally I prefer written feedback. I use briefs to create, commenting on briefs to edit, and then Slack to give real time feedback. I try to focus on information hierarchy so that written docs are both easy to skim and organized for finding information you need. I also find written feedback lets you go deeper on topics and gives you a chance to write and re-write that feedback.

Where this breaks down is Slack. My need to reply quickly trumps quality and it takes away valuable thinking time as I get hooked on the feedback loop of reply, wait, and reply again. I send way too many messages and it’s not good for anyone, me included.

Finish And Take Short Breaks

When working on multiple subjects I focus on two micro habits.

1. Finish the subject.
2. Take mental breaks.

When focusing on a topic I have to finish it. this means taking the work to either a spot where I can re-start quickly OR to the point that I can publish my feedback.

When focused on a single topic you can get in the flow so starting or stopping isn’t as big of a deal. But when working on multiple topics you have to artificially create your flow by learning how to stop and re-start at the right point. It takes at least 15 minutes just to mentally catch up to where you left off on a subject so these start and stop points are critical.

The second habit is taking a mental break in between topics. If the work is along the same thread, lets say a product, then I can turn that on and off in the same day. But if I am switching topics, lets say looking at finances, I have to start fresh as if I was starting my day over.

Generally this means…

• Closing my browser and all the tabs.
• Getting up and walking around.
• Getting something to eat or drink.

These are sub 5 minute breaks but what when I sit back down and open my computer to a blank screen it gives me a fresh approach on the next topic. If I sit back down and the last project is open and half done I can’t clearly think about what’s next.

Proactively Communicating

A word of caution is learning to switch between topics can be overwhelming, especially as the work stacks up. I don’t have any feedback for how to tackle this feeling other than working through the list.

But I can say the best way to manage this is to pro-actively communicate. A simple, I got your message and will get back to you by blah, really helps. This gives people confidence that you heard them and are working on it.

If you have questions email me or dm me @marcbarros.