johnmaconline

Ship it fast. Break it fast. Fix it fast.

In many situations, that’s my mantra.

But speed amplifies trajectory. If your trajectory is wrong, getting there faster may not help.

Automating tasks that don’t need doing doesn’t help. Optimizing a non-functional system doesn’t help. Parallelizing dependent work doesn’t help.

Solving the wrong problem faster doesn’t help.

As a leader, your fundamental job is to ensure your team is solving the right problems.

Ask better questions. Have better conversations. Solve better problems.

Life is our journey between inflection points.

You’re moseying along on a path. Bam! An inflection point happens, and that starts you on a new path.

You planned some of these inflections, foreseen some others, and were blindsided by several. But the journey continues.

Our journey, in hindsight, looks like a map of these paths strung together. When you look back at this map of your journey, what does it tell you?

What caused that new direction you took? The left turn. The dip into the canyon or the climb over the mountain. Maybe even the retracing of paths already taken.

Was it fear? Confidence? Excitement? Necessity? Vision? Providence? Dumb luck?

Your paths have led to you where you are right now. Maybe you’re happy with where you are. Maybe you’re not.

Regardless, this next inflection point will set you on a new path. What direction will you take?

Complexity causes chaos.

And chaos stalls progress. Yet, complexity is always conserved.

You can’t eliminate the complexity, but can you tame it? Can you bring some order to the chaos?

As a leader, your job is to figure that out.

Can you eliminate some variables? Can you keep the team focused on the most important requirements? Can you swat the flies and minimize distractions? Can you find some underlying structure on which to place your feet?

You’ll want less meetings, but more important discussions. You might need to encourage some wandering, but wandering with purpose. You’ll definitely want to protect the team from the outside noise, but you might need internal dissension.

Chaos doesn’t obey.

But good leadership can see through the complexity.

My co-founding team and I have been working together for almost 10 years. We’re high-functioning, very good at what we do, individually excellent, and our whole is greater than the sum of the parts. We have solved some very hard engineering problems. 

But bar none, the hardest thing we’ve ever done as a team is name our company. 

We named our company 4TLAS.

If the first thing you see is our logo (https://4tlas.io), you might intuitively know that we pronounce it “atlas.” If the first thing you see is the word typed out as above, you’ll be confused. Is it “four-tless” or maybe “four-atlas?”

At first, I disliked the name because of this. Nobody knows how to say it. It’s too hard. There are a million companies called “atlas.” I pass four companies named Atlas on my way from Berks County to center city Philly to see my daughter.

A funny thing, though, has happened along the way — conversation. The confusion or the foible leads to converation. People ask how to say it and how and why we came up with it. 

The name has become an opportunity for me to tell the story. To have conversation.

And more conversation is how we move forward.

P.S. I haven’t told the story above of how and why we came up with 4TLAS, but I’m happy to have that conversation with you. Reach out to me and I’m happy to tell it.

“We should do it this way, and here’s why.”

“No, we should do it this way, and here’s why.”

Then, it goes back and forth or round and round. 

The most underrated characteristic of a high-functioning, creative, A-player team is creative tension.

Useful creative tension includes several features:

• “Here’s why…”
• “Ok, I see that…”
• “Good point…”
• “I think the most important requirement is…”
• “If we do it that way, here’s the downside…”
• “Ok, we’ll try it this way…”

Reasons. Acknowledgment. Respect. Discussion of requirements and outcomes. Trade-offs.

High-functioning creative teams don’t always agree on the path to the solution. But they always agree on where they’re trying to get to and they respect each other as people and professionals.  

The horse has left the barn.
That ship has sailed.
The genie’s out of the bottle.
You can’t unring the bell.
The train has left the station.

Some decisions or actions are one-way. Once you’ve said it or done it, there’s no going back, or at least something has fundamentally changed.

When you recognize you’re in one of these situations, slow down. Measure twice. Cut once. Don’t hit send. Breathe. Take a walk.

But if it’s passed, remember that the question is not whether you can undo it, but what you will do next.

The gap between the test and the test results.
The flight status of “delayed.”
Waiting for the call.
After you submit the resume.
The 3 dots that dissappear in Messages.
Still under review.

Humans don’t like the unknown. Especially when you combine it with more unknowns.

Waiting is one thing, but waiting without knowing when you’ll get an answer is a special kind of agony.

Helping bridge the gap of the unknown wait is one of the most important, empathetic, and human jobs of leadership.

Nobody likes getting punched in the face.

It hurts. It’s embarrassing. It causes damage. But sometimes it’s the only way.

Do the video. Give the pitch. Sign up to stand in front of the room. Take the microphone. Answer the questions. Invite the conversations. Take the chance.

Let them punch you in the face, because you’ll learn where the real resistance is. Do you have something? What is it?

And once you see it, you can decide.

Push harder. Pivot. Or walk away.