Just Thoughts #32: Thoughts on performance
What is your performance management philosophy and do you understand how to account for systemic issues in individual performance? We discuss this and cover reflection on two weeks worth of content.
Welcome! You’re either inspired or you are not when reading these thoughts. The first rule of Just thoughts is, “Why should I think that way?”. The content is “handwritten” and co-piloted with Grammarly for spelling checking and tone of voice. AI-generated output is highlighted.
Headlines this week:
Thoughts on Performance
Reflections and Summary of Just Content since #31
Thoughts on Performance
In the previous Just Thoughts #31, we discussed a performance framework and noted it’s a topic to get back to. Additionally, The Startup Ministers covered multiple times in Just Thoughts and did an episode on how to fire people. It is a taboo subject to speak publicly on, especially since most will want to consult a lawyer in these cases. The episode makes for a good summary, especially starting clear that misconduct, harassment, or direct breach of the company Code of Conduct (if you don’t have one, make one) should immediately terminate the employment contract (a.k.a. fire the person).
If you find yourself at a moral disposition where it’s not clear if the conduct has been breached or if someone did the wrong thing for the right reasons, my suggestion would be to approach it the following way: If you break the rules, that’s ok it means you're trying, but you’ll receive feedback on how to act differently. If you make the same mistake twice, you’re an idiot; if you do it three times, it’s unforgivable. Something one of my first basketball coaches told me, and I have followed since. This “formula” is rooted in the mathematical science of game theory regarding breeding trust in a human system. I suggest playing the Nick Cases game “The Evolution of Trust” to grasp this notion.
Returning to the minister's podcast episode, the only thing that could be minded in their suggestive actions is founder and CEO bias, in that following the advice will make it difficult for those in a people function. Something I end up pointing out to Timo and Jyri here is that you can’t tell everyone in the office why someone got fired.
The better way to go about things is to ensure everyone knows where they stand at any given time—creating a culture where it’s not only the founder who gives people feedback but also your peers and where people organically seek feedback on their work. What tends to happen is that the leadership, especially in early-stage companies, is so busy solving other problems and driving the business forward that they spend no time on this activity. That is why blunt actions such as firing people on the spot for being hungover at work or telling everyone exactly why you fired someone have an outsized impact on the workforce. It gives a point of reference for desired behavior (or behavior that is not tolerated) when otherwise it is not provided.
Another perspective that would be good to add to performance discussions is that at any given time, people have 100% total capacity to perform in “life.” If a significant portion of that capacity is spent on personal matters, say 60%, there will only be 40% to spend on work issues. You can increase what fits the “total capacity” by encouraging healthy habits, but there will always be only 100%. The division will never stay the same, so being mindful of this fact and trying to get to a place where the one feeds the other in energy, as opposed to the one sucking it out from the other, is something to work towards. For example, having time to deal with personal matters will give individuals energy to commit to their tasks at work, and having meaningful work gives them energy to deal with personal affairs.
It is not the employer's duty to make sure the employee can perform in life holistically, but showing empathy towards the fact life is a holistic experience helps breed a healthy work experience. This may also give these so-called “PIPs” (performance improvement plans), which the startup ministers say “never work,” a different perspective. If PIPs are used as a tool for the employee to own their own performance experience by first defining their goals instead of the employer setting impossible ones to meet, there may be a chance for success.
Additionally, high performers are not born; they are made. On this note, I remember reading engagement tools reports that individuals with a high satisfaction rate on their onboarding experience are significantly more likely to be reviewed as high performers later in the company’s tenure. I couldn’t find the report itself, but here's a perplexity search on the subject that validates the first statement;
High performers are not born. They are made
Hence, ensuring a stellar onboarding experience for all new employees breeds a better-performing workforce overall. This includes teaching them how to live the company values, navigate the company's written and unwritten rules, and have exceptionally well-documented working practices. It also helps to make an outsized effort to include newcomers in different social activities and meetings, such as eating lunch together. Combine these with checkpoints to discuss onboarding performance and a checklist for things to read and complete; you’re well on your way to having a robust onboarding practice.
Furthermore, the perplexity search highlights that a growth mindset is about continued learning;
Research from various fields shows that effective leaders and high performers are often continuous learners. They adapt their strategies based on experiences, demonstrating that leadership qualities can be cultivated through practice and reflection.
So, whatever your recruitment process is, you should factor this into it and gauge whether individuals are demonstrating this behavior. This could be performing tasks, assessing them, and having the candidate self-reflect on their performance before giving feedback. Does the candidate have the same conclusions about their performance? What did they learn? You can even do a collaborative exercise to include how good they are at giving feedback to you.
The point is that hiring individuals with the right mindset and moral values reduces the risk of gross performance issues. Ensuring you create onboarding experiences designed to help people succeed furthers this point. Getting this wrong will result in resentful experiences for all parties involved.
Another aspect to consider in performance issues within your workforce is that you need to mind the system and life as a whole, not something that happens in isolation. Business is not a “closed system” the way sport is, as highlighted in our discussion with
in Just Thoughts Podcast #1. What this looks like in practice within the organization is extremely well described in the book Build: Elements of an Effective Software Organization.
Here are a few quotes that summarize things I desire to highlight from the book, including some concepts I’ve discussed in this chapter;
“Aim for four hours of focused work for four days each week.”
In knowledge work, performance requires time for collaboration, deep work, and rest. We only have so many hours a week to handle our responsibilities in “life”. When you insert team meetings, interruptions, and life, aiming for everyone to have four hours of focused work four days a week is optimal. Even sales that are based on activity can follow this rule of thumb. Consulting is the only “knowledge-work trade” that conflicts with this rule if projects are wrongly scoped and priced.
“Documents become a central part of asynchronous work.”
A company with zero documentation cannot operate in hybrid or remote modes. Any company working across multiple time zones from numerous locations needs to zero in on ensuring diligent documentation.
“One common cause of increased demand for internal support is the absence of self-serve solutions.”
As the organization grows, and when it grows fast, constant demand for “internal support” may slow down progress significantly. Call it “organizational debt” that includes all kinds of “technical debt”. Creating automated self-served solutions are problems Realm and Runway are aiming to address, as explained in Just Thoughts #24. Adopting such tools would be a way to tackle this issue in your organization.
“OKR’s rarely captures KTLO work.”
OKRs are a goal-setting framework that inherently tends to disregard work that Keeps The Lights On (KTLO), meaning maintenance and interruptions. Things that don’t push things forward are necessary to keep the existing business alive. If this work falls to one person, they might be essential for the company, even if they never meet their OKRs. This dilemma is common within software platform teams and companies’ back office functions such as finance and HR. They significantly impact the perception of the “performance” of singular individuals.
Before moving on to the final point of this headline, it’s worth mentioning that along with being a must-read for anyone building a software organization, it lists all books to read for each chapter, which further explains the concepts in the book that demonstrates Build has truly synthesized the key learnings from most of all other relevant books in the field. Albiet
was not listed, but maybe in future editions? :)Furthermore, it’s a different doctrine to software development, but Linear’s approach (described in Just Thoughts #27) is somewhat different from how Build suggests you should be running your organization. Suppose you’re faced with the dilemma of how to start. In that case, you can always differ from The Heart Beat Motion as described in Just Thoughts #2, as you can map both doctrines in that framework, but more importantly, you start with who you are, as what Karri & Co, and Rebecca & Otto & Co. are doing are straightforward extensions of who they are.
Caring about the development of your people cannot be substituted by any tool.
Finally, when it comes to managing performance of people you’re responsible for, nothing can substitute to loyalty that breeds out an understanding that those who manage you truly care about you. You can bring all sorts of personal development tools, performance frameworks and AI, to support the endeavor of breeding better performance, but if the people around you, and especially the people you report to, don’t care about you personally nothing is going to make up for that.
Caring for your people means you help them grow so that they can leave, but you treat them so they don’t want to. Creating an organization where individuals flourish is extremely hard, sometimes getting to it requires counter intuitive actions, but if you do it’s extremely rewarding. What these organizations look like have been described in classics such as An Every One Organization and Reinventing Organizations. However, in the age of AI, these concepts, ideas and designs need to be revisited with new types of thinking, but we will get to that in hopefully in Future writing.
What did you think about these thoughts on performance did it resonate?
Just Thoughts Podcast:
I released three recordings in the past two weeks. Two are in the podcast thread, and the third is under Just Products.
Just Thoughts Podcast #2 - The Story of An Entrepreneur on Break w/ Rudi Skogman
Rudi knew everything about Slush before 2016. He is now an AI startup entrepreneur, taking a break before deciding on his next endeavor. He shares what he learned from the real estate startup Blok, which was sold on the verge of bankruptcy. As proud Swedish-speaking Finns, we discussed this in Swedish and what the language means to us.
Just Thoughts Podcast #3 - Creating Your Entrepreneurial Journey
Taina Perenniemi is the world-leading Notion consultant. She helps teams consolidate and structure their internal documentation with Notion. She left a successful career in strategic work in corporations and startups to find her niche as an entrepreneur. We discuss entrepreneurship, parenting, and the insights she’s gained from being an entrepreneur.
Just About Life
Just About Life #1—Parenting. In the first Just Thoughts About Life, I cover parenting, referencing some previously featured content with the Soh family and parenting advice for entrepreneurs pick-up at Slush.
Additionally, this sparked the thought that any entrepreneur complaining about having to pay taxes during an “exit” event to the Finnish government is complaining about it because “who did the work?” I want to point out that if your workforce consists of people with families residing in Finland or who have been educated by the Finnish educational system, you should think twice about “who’s doing the work” for your company to be successful. A previous employer showed emotional intelligence by always remembering to thank the employees and their families for making the company a success. It would be good to add the teachers who care for their kids while the employees are at work.
This said, if you plan to provide the type of social security, infrastructure, and education the country does for individuals and people on your company’s behalf or your recruitment strategy doesn’t support people with families, you may consider setting up your LLC in the most favorable place for your business domain however, as described in Just Thoughts #14, which points to this asset by deidei, consisting of consolidation of how a diverse workforce (in multiple aspects of dei), drives business performance.
That said, you should be selective based on company values and ability to perform at the job, inclusive where possible, and not outspoken about who doesn’t fit.
Just Poems
My original goal was to start pushing poems daily to drive engagement, but that has been harder than anticipated, mainly because poetry, as an art form, requires a particular state of mind to be good. Additionally, I’ve just created an extended format of content to have enough to publish something every day.
Just Poems #4 - Just Be vs Just A Bee
I got some feedback that my poems have actual “thought” in them, not just words that rhyme like when AI does it. I’ve also come to realize more often than not; AI has an easier time conveying “thought” in an extended format than in a short one.
Just Poems #5 - The Favorite Part of Me vs. Love is Compassion
Two previously featured love poems, one next to the other. If you know the backstory, does it give one more meaning than the other? Read to make your own opinion.
Just Culture
Just Culture #2 - Civil War Movie in Review
We are reusing old content to get everything adequately indexed and producing new angles and daily activity on Just Thoughts. The likelihood that everyone has seen everything is small, and even I go back a few months to see what I’ve written, and I’m like, “That’s good” or “That was bad.” This review was “decent,” even if the movie was entertaining.
Just Culture #3 - The Biggest Titan in Finnish History.
The type of attitude employed by the banks and the Ahlström company at the time is what Finland currently needs. Ideas have been presented recently (by Ilkka Kivimäki, in Talous elämä, and Alex af Heurlin in HS) for the Finnish government to copy the Norwegian model and create one enormous wealth fund instead of trying to cut costs here and there, quarreling about policies that won’t pull this country out of the death spiral we’re creating for ourselves.
Just Culture #4.- The Greatest Night in Pop (feat. Macklemore) in review
Reviewing the Netflix documentary The Greatest Night in Pop in Review with parallels drawn with Macklemores recent release. Artist can make a difference in this world through their art. What does it take for them to use their voices to make a difference? What’s your favorite “Making a Difference” song?
Just Culture #5 - What did Picasso say?
I did an exercise to check if a lifetime of experiences can indeed yield science-like insight. Here’s a thought: When you ask the computer the right questions, combining the question and the answer makes intelligence more significant than the sum of its parts. What do you think?
Just Products
Just Products #3: Where do good ideas come from? w/ Jarno Saarinen
Serial inventor Jarno Saarinen shares his insights on finding ideas worth solving and making it as a Finnish entrepreneur out in the world while being someone who doesn’t know English well. I called out for help in tech that could translate recorded content (the interview is in Finnish), but currently, it seems easier to skip the recording and use HeyGen like
did here. Might it just be how people could consume the content of this publication in audio format?Until next time, remember to subscribe for more thoughts and to ensure you don't miss a fresh dose of weekly Just Content!
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