Don’t Go with the Flow

Copy-and-paste leadership in tech organizations is everywhere. Often, leaders cannot explain the reasoning behind their choices and processes. In reality, when you’re following the herd and mindlessly repeating what you read on Medium that others have done, you’re not leading much, right? To break the mold, here are some ideas on how you can cut the monkey see, monkey do mentality. You don’t have to embrace all of these, but even one or two can make a profound difference.

Don’t Hire Automatically

It’s so easy to jump on the bandwagon and start growing your team automatically once your startup has raised some funds. Several times, CEOs showed me sheets with their hiring plans. The headcount growth wasn’t grounded in what they wanted to achieve-it was all about “deploying” the money they raised fast enough to appease the investors. I’m not making that up! They ended up with bloated teams.

That cost them dearly when they eventually needed to become agile again and pivot. Don’t make your startup too big to succeed. Once you get that ball rolling, you get stuck in a game of keeping up with the Joneses. Instead, hire when you see the value. Avoid hiring “titles,” but staff positions based on the changes and results you’d like to achieve.

Don’t Fake It, Make It

Yes, there’s definitely a lot of impact in being able to deliver POCs to potential customers and see what they think about something before going through the hassle of implementing a feature in its entirety. The issue is when we get addicted to “hustling” like this, and instead of eventually creating a genuine product, we keep piling smokeware. There comes a point when you need to do things properly instead of digging a deeper hole.

When an experiment has proved itself enough, and you see that it has demand and start adding more capabilities to it, it’s better to ensure you have a path to turn it into a viable product. I’ve seen companies that operated for years boasted “AI” or “ML” solutions that relied on an ever-increasing number of analysts and data entry sweatshops. If those are growing linearly with the business, you’re not creating a genuine tech company.

Add Constraints, Strategically

One of the most important factors for creativity and ingenuity in small startups is the fact that they are heavily constrained and, therefore, have to come up with innovative approaches. These are often not needed by incumbents who have more resources in order to tackle a problem in the “accepted” manner. When startups grow too fast and try to copycat more established companies, they are effectively throwing that advantage out of the window.

Some constraints can do wonders for your innovation, as I used to demonstrate to hundreds of eager engineers during code retreats. As a leader, you can find some strategic constraints to help you create a better product and company. For example, I know a startup taking on a well-established unicorn by deciding right off the bat that they will never have manual processes. While the incumbent has “white glove onboarding,” the new upstart has decided to turn that into their edge-they will find a way to make it automatic and AI-based, or they will die trying (or pivot, you know what I mean).

Stop Copying, Strip Off

Being an advisor to tech executives, I often get approached by leaders worried about not having in place something that they feel “everyone else has.” That can be everything, like some sort of process, a tool, an overly complex tech stack, or extremely detailed career ladders. My default choice is to opt out of these more complex options until proven otherwise.

When you create small teams just so you can promote people to directors or introduce an X methodology, you’re making things harder and adding overhead. When you decide to use Kubernetes to manage a couple of services before you have any real load, you just might be deciding to waste 10% of your engineers’ time on futzing with all of the issues it’s going to introduce-whereas you’ll only start enjoying the benefits, if any, months down the line.

I prefer a minimalistic approach that tries to strip away any unnecessary vanity processes, tools, and structure. With an organization that’s as simple as you could reduce it to be without getting ridiculous, you’re a lot less likely to waste time.

© Aviv Ben-Yosef 2024 — Originally published on the best newsletter for tech executives