Who > What, and How > You
Principles for winning, when winning is a team sport.
When “history repeats itself” on the People-front, it’s often on the themes of:
First who, then what
It’s (almost) never personal
Winning starts from within (and solves most problems!)
Said differently: it’s always about the people, but it’s not always about you.
And when the company is successful, most of the other stuff tends to matter a lot less.
“First who, then what”1 is the premise that the best strategy for building a successful company is to focus first on getting the right people on the ship.
The point is: it’s the people who pick what’s pursued, how to go after it, and what to do when the plan goes sideways.
Or, as the FWTW coiner Jim Collins says, “Great vision without great people is irrelevant.”2
Sam Altman boils “great people” down to a few key qualities: “Drive, smarts, curiosity, self-motivation, team orientation, and alignment with company’s mission and vision.”3
Because the friction and emotional overhead in the workplace tends to be interpersonal; not about the work.
But when smart, motivated, and curious group of individuals are committed to working as a team, and driven to solve the same problem together, they can accomplish great things.
In prioritizing people, the focus cannot be on the singular, but rather on the aggregate: because to try to make everybody happy is impossible, but deploying the right people, in the right roles, in service of the company’s goals, is how everybody wins.
As an employee, it's obviously ideal to:
get to do what you most enjoy doing,
see the exposure and challenges you most want to take on, and
feel progress toward your own personal goals.
But, as I like to tell my kids, “life’s not fair” and, in business, the company’s collective strategy is going to take precedence and priority over you and your preferences. And when you don’t get what you want, it’s probably not personal – but rather a matter of the JTBD.
Now certainly, when you're consistently NOT getting to do what you want to do, or you're placed in areas outside your zone of genius, you are fully entitled to find another environment you think you'll thrive in better…
But before hastily jumping ship, it's worth seeking to understand:
What was the business optimizing for by addressing the problem the way they chose to?
What are the perceived benefits of the selected strategy?
What were the selection criteria for the people chosen for the roles you were interested in?
What went into the decision around your assignment?
And then, instead of resisting, rolling with the punches:
What does success look amidst these current challenges?
How does your work contribute to the overall strategy?
What experiences will you gain from your new assignments?
How can your unique skills and strengths bring outsized contributions?
What new experiences will you gain, and how might those opportunities benefit you, or help to advance your broader career goals/aspirations?
Preoccupation with your own role, a certain growth path, and the specific assignments you take on, narrows the definition of success and satisfaction. Instead, learning to see opportunity in every assignment, especially the challenging or disappointing ones, can dramatically increase your probabilities of both success and enjoyment of the journey.
Consider, again, the three circle venn diagram: what you like to do, what you're great at, and what the company needs.
So when you don’t get what you want, odds are the decision is optimizing for what the company needs most, and what you're uniquely great at. Which means you have the potential to add significant value.
Most career trajectories only make sense in hindsight, and even when goals are clear, paths are rarely totally linear. Most everyone faces some disappointment, or lateral steps along the way.
When facing a setback, try to figure out: what the company is trying to achieve and how will your strengths and skills contribute to those goals?
Dig into what success looks like in the what you've been assigned, and how you can knock that what out of the park. When you consistently rise to the occasion of what the company needs (especially when you’re able to perform agnostic to your own preferences), the arcs of opportunity will undoubtedly bend in your favor.
The unexpected benefit from unsavory assignments: they offer exposure to challenges, jargon, business partners, and tooling you might not have encountered otherwise. And you never know how those might serve you down the line!
So, focus on finding the right “whos” to work with, and find “whos” to work for that have chosen a “what” you're excited to pursue. Once the who and the what are aligned, remember that the business’s "how" is more important than you. Check your ego at the door, stay curious about the strategy, ace every opportunity assigned, and show up for the team.
This is how winning starts from within: when everyone does this collectively, the team will generate the best possible results.
And when the company’s winning, there are more opportunities for all.
See you next week!
“The Chinese have a proverb… ‘He who travels softly goes far.’”4
Coined by Jim Collins and elaborated on in his books Good to Great and Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0
Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0, Jim Collins
HTWFAIP, pg. 149