Founder Panic. Shaping Chaos Issue 1.
Shaping Chaos
Shaping Chaos is a newsletter based on issues and insights that have shown up recently during my work coaching startup founders and leaders in SF and worldwide.
I hope it will provide some perspective into what others are going through, and what's worked in shaping chaos: crafting the vibrant, creative energy of a startup into a successful, living thing.
You're getting this because you've worked with me, or you previously subscribed to Tech People Leadership. Feel free to stick with me for a few issues, or to unsubscribe at any time of course!
(More about my practice and background at cloudbreak.com)
Founder Panic
2022 is not 2021. That next round of funding has disappeared over the horizon. The valuation that seemed so certain has begun to look like a fantasy. Quarterly goals have been missed, reworked and missed again. Board meetings, once full of pleasant, congratulatory chit chat are no fun at all.
Inside the company, the language has escalated. There is talk of “wartime”, “intense productivity”, “wolf packs” and “rediscovering who we are”. The Founders start attending standups, ask “how did we get so many engineers?”, want updates on Project X one week and Issue Y the next. They ask for more reviews, more speed, more something.
For those working in the company, it feels like it came out of nowhere. The processes you spent a year (or more) getting in place are now suddenly "bureaucracy". The hiring, of which you are (justifiably) proud has “diluted the culture”. The careful, professional relationship you had with your boss has become ragged, unshapely, fraying at the edges.
There's a lot of it about right now. We can give it a name: Founder Panic.
Loss = Fear
The shift from 2020 to 2022 is about loss. A loss of imagined futures—of the next round, a successful exit, a bigger job (we get attached to our imagined futures). In some cases there's a real possibility of loss of the whole thing. A fire sale. A shutdown.
We all feel these losses at some level, but for a Founder, the losses are existential, in a way it can never be for the rest of us.
They remember the company when it was just an idea. A thing that persisted, wouldn’t leave them alone. They remember when the stubborn idea-gremlin pushed them out of a steady job and onto their own wits and determination. They knew it when it was three people jamming in a rented room. They remember the intense thrill of that first meeting when a customer said “yes, that’ll work".
They still have a picture of the first investment check.
For them, this organization, this economic unit, is a creation, something they forced, coerced and nurtured into being, a thing that, rightly or wrongly, defines them.a
And right now, in late 2022, they feel they may lose it. And it’s terrifying.
We know a lot about fear. We know it causes terrific focus, a narrowing of view, a high intensity and a burning desire to be safe at all costs. It dials down our slow, expensive cognitive functions in favor of instinctive, reactive action (our reactive systems are cheap, in terms of calories, compared to our "thinking" systems).
It’s great for running away from large animals. It's exactly wrong for navigating complexity and nuance. It pushes us to find simple, understandable solutions, but now, right now!
It can feel right. It's not.
Founders
Can you bend with this, manage your fear? Can you see the places where your actions, your words are communicating not effectiveness, but anxiety? Where your deep-down need for safety is making you kick out at your team? Where you are confusing action and a frantic busyness for solid forward motion?
This is a time for cold assessment of risk and warm communication of possibilities, even if (especially if) the possibilities are limited and no fun to look at.
It’s a time for real courage, by which I mean the acknowledgement of fear, a recognition of your internal state, and a skillful management of your response to it.
It’s a time for a wisdom which projects steadfast strength and determination. A wild, "war time" howl is not that.
Working for Founders
If you’re working for a Founder, can you have some empathy for where they are? Understand that for you, this is a job (maybe a great job, but a job) but for them it is a matter of personal existence? Hard to do. There is status involved, and power and, yes, economics. Unfair to ask. But here we are.
What do they need? Not to be forgiven for acting poorly, let's get that out of the way. The best leaders treat people with respect and care in the most difficult circumstances. "War time" doesn't mean they can act like a jerk. The opposite, in fact.
Can you be curious about what your founder/CEO/exec really needs? Probably more communication than before—reassurance that, yes, the team does know what it's doing and yes, maybe the thing is late, but it's still going to ship. Almost certainly they would welcome clarity: about the real risks, about the real successes and a transparent view of the state of things.
And boundaries—places where their skill would be welcomed, places where they can really help. Founders know things about the product, the customers, the technology that other people just don't. They have energy, passion. Use it. Put them to work.
There Will Be Another Chapter
The world will move along. The Tech Industry in all its creativity, power and craziness will continue. For the last few years, we had the fun and fantasies of endless cheap money. That'll happen again, but not today. This year, and for a while, reality will be having its say.
We're all writing a new chapter. Let's write it with all the care, skill and grace we can summon.
Links and Notes: Twitter Madness Edition
Hard Problems in Soft Cultures
“a host of organizations today are falling short of their potential not because their cultures are too hard, but because they're too soft--and the latter can be as dysfunctional as the former”
A good companion read to Founder Panic, above, and perspective on the Great Continuing Twitter Mess.
Super helpful thread on how building vision, then stories, then strategy can structure and motivate an organization (in the context of Musk not doing that, at least not so far).
The Important of Shared Narrative
A longer piece on creating and communicating a meaningful, therefore motivating, narrative.
“I went to the office for the first time today. Oh God it was great” — VP Eng, Decacorn.
A lot of discovery happening this year that people working in the same location is life-affirming, efficient and gets a lot of stuff done quickly. Companies experimenting with different models, tending towards distributed teams with regular onsites.
"My next startup is old school, in person all the way" — Unicorn Founder
Yeah. We tried "fully remote", and we're glad we're did, but humans need to see each other.
“It Got Bigger Than It Should Have” (A Slack Disaster) — Unicorn Founder, CTO
Yeah, it did. If you're digging into a hole in Slack, for the sake of everything that's holy, just stop. You will lose exactly nothing by stopping and you may lose an executive, hours of work and your sanity by not stopping.
“What are the outcomes we want to create and what are the structures we need to produce it?” — VP Eng, Decacorn
Probably the best summary of management/leadership I've ever seen, containing more wisdom than an entire airport bookstore.