
Keys to Scaling Yourself as a Technology Leader - zt
http://firstround.com/review/the-keys-to-scaling-yourself-as-a-technology-leader/
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simonswords82
Excellent timing. I'm just coming out of one start up that is now up and
running successfully and about to launch another. I wish I'd had some of this
advice with my previous company.

When we were first setting out I tried to micro-manage everything and while I
got things done I nearly burnt out in the process. Assigning roles and
responsibilities and holding people accountable to them is an infinitely more
sensible approach to management!

It's also very easy to be busy when you're running a company. Too easy in
fact, and equally easy to work on the wrong things. So to combat this I now
follow these steps:

1\. Identify a goal that contributes directly to useful output (e.g. shipping
a product to actual users, making a sale, etc)

2\. List the steps necessary to reach this goal. Make sure the steps are
listed sequentially and that each step is actually necessary to achieve the
next one. Eliminate "nice-to-have" steps or "targets of opportunity."

3\. Do those steps, and postpone everything else. If some other tasks starts
nagging on you, just put it off and tell yourself that you can do that after
you finish the sequence of steps. Don't ignore it, just postpone it. Tell
yourself that you are going to do it later.

As a result I now find myself less distracted by work that doesn't contribute
to our big goals.

* Steps are from [https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-ways-to-work-smart-rathe...](https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-ways-to-work-smart-rather-than-just-working-hard)

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tonystubblebine
Two things stuck out to me.

A lot of the roles/responsibilities stuff is very similar to Holocracy. Like a
lot of methodologies, Holocracy may be better taken loosely. And flexible, but
clear roles is one of the nicer things from that world.

And the bit about having teams work on only one project at a time has a lot of
backing in the book Principles of Development Flow. A lot of things done in
the name of efficiency actually slow things down. And packing in your spare
cycles with extra projects is definitely one of them.

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ausjke
the truth is, this lesson does not fit those who are bootstrapping their first
startup or product, when you have no choice but to work in the trench and do
the heavy lift _yourself_, once your first product hits, then come back and
read this story for improvements.

99% fails before passing the first product ship.

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angelbob
I love the idea of honestly acknowledging the tensions in a company, making it
clear that they're there and talking openly about them.

Companies basically never do that, I assume because if you then _don 't_ do
anything about the tension, employees get the attitude, "oh, management
already knows about the problems and doesn't care. Guess I won't worry about
doing better."

Of course, the proposed solution here is to just make the tensions public,
which seems like it would fall instantly into that trap.

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1812Overture
Anyone in any leadership position really should read The Logic of Failure by
Dietrich Dorner. It covers the most common things that cause smart people who
are experts on their subject matter to fail in complex situations. Overly
broad focus, overly narrow focus, ignoring big slow changes and over reacting
to small quick changes, making too many changes too rapidly to see their
individual effects, etc. I think it's a great compliment to the tips in this
article.

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Terr_
I work in a company which provides service/access to a certain kind of data,
and I always roll my eyes when executives trot out the "We're a technology
company" line.

No, if we were a technology company, we'd actually care about reinvesting in
things like build-systems, rather than ignoring the technology until they want
quick hacks to help salesmen make quota in the last month of the year.

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kdamken
Not related to the article, but can we talk about how fun those little bars at
the top of articles are that tell you how far down you've read? I love those.
Such a nifty idea.

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vas123
It is pretty nifty indeed. I tend to use the scroll bar to gauge how far I've
read usually.

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kdamken
Ha the scroll bar is also a very effective means of doing that, though not as
cool at the bar at the top.

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escherize
"Laser focused" just triggered my buzzword detector for the first time, and I
couldn't continue.

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dang
Discussions are better when we concentrate on the most interesting or
substantive things in an article, instead of the most annoying ones.

You could think of this as the Principle of Charity for articles:
[http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html](http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html)

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clock_tower
On the other hand, treating things too generously is a good way to find
yourself down a rabbit-hole. Some ideas really are worthless (note that if no
other ideas are worthless, the idea I'm expounding here is worthless, by
definition), and it's good to be able to recognize them before you waste too
much mental energy.

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dang
> treating things too generously

That's a risk I don't think HN is in much danger of, but the Principle of
Charity addresses this case as well as the other.

