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- How To Use The Modern Work Method
Each week, we interview real experts about topics you need to know about.
Today, we have Adam Nathan, the Founder and CEO of Almanac, who have built the fastest wiki and workflow tool and raised over $40m.
We’re covering How To Use The Modern Work Method.
Next 3 weeks:
Wei Lien Dang (General Partner at Unusual Ventures) - How To Scale An Open Source Startup - And Should You?
Tania Luna (Co-Founder and Co-CEO of LifeLabs Learning) - How To Scale By Sharing Your Power
Aaron Dinin (Professor of Entrepreneurship at Duke University) - How To Leverage Social Media To Build A Company That Lasts
How To Use The Modern Work Method
Here are some of the key takeaways from the episode if you’re in a rush!
Definitions over deadlines
It needs to be less management, less less overhead, less chaos because everybody is aligned and moving.
Most of the time deadlines are poorly thought out which either puts the team under too much stress or not enough.
Adam teaches us to focus on defining success in terms of the bigger picture rather than when a task is finished.
Structure over improvisation
The structure means being intentional at the start around what you're trying to achieve in a project, in a meeting and a workflow, making sure everyone understands that role.
Improvisation leads to confusion and confusion doesn’t help your business to scale.
So much time can be wasted because people are unsure of what’s happening!
Transparency over need-to-know
We often find what we heard with the best teams is that transparency was the norm and those teams. Over shared information.
Information gatekeepers are often insecure. They need to know more than others to justify their position.
Yet when everyone knows what’s happening, they can make better-informed decisions!
Documents over meetings
If you start with the document versus starting with a meeting, you end up saving a lot of people's time because you can get their input.
I’ve had so many meetings where at the end, I realise we talked a lot but nothing actually got done.
Documents can be far more useful in many cases.
Short feedback cycles over extended deliberation
The more you iterate, the more you get feedback, the more you learn, more you can make it better.
You’re probably going to be wrong the first time. And the second. And maybe even the third.
You might as well speed up the part where you’re wrong.
Insights over outcomes
The best way to achieve outcomes is actually to focus on not your rate of progress towards outcome, but your rate of learning. The more you learn, the more you can change, the more you can grow.
Goals can and should change as your information base improves.
If you’re too outcome-focused, you might miss the fact you learned that what you’re chasing isn’t even what’s best for your mission!
Want to appear on the podcast?
Our bar is high because we want our audience to get their advice from the best.
Meet one of these criteria?
For venture-backed businesses, we want valuations of $100m+.
For LinkedIn/X creators, we want 100k+ followers.
For VCs, we want partners with $1bn AUM.
For bootstrapped founders, we want $1m MRR.
If you want us to get someone else on, tell us and we’ll try our best!