Mental models for growth leaders 🤯
Make smart choices every time, without getting lucky.
Welcome to the 45th edition of the GrowthX Newsletter. Every Tuesday & Thursday I write a piece on startups & business growth. Today’s piece is going to 94,400+ operators & leaders from startups like Google, Stripe, Swiggy, Razorpay, CRED & more
This is 120-sec issue.
It will give you 3 mental models.
It will impact your next Monday morning.
You will spend your energy, time & resources effectively.
Before we jump in, I want you to go back to your work problems & list top 3.
The GrowthX team did a bit of research from over 200+ leaders in the GrowthX community & found out top 3 themes of problems these leaders face.
1. Getting the growth teams aligned on a single metric.
2. Defining the right cadences within the team.
3. Going macro to micro back to macro issues on growth.Too much jargon?
Don’t stress, we will debunk this now.
1. Getting the reporting teams aligned. 👥
List down your growth teams single important north-star metric. It could be revenue or the number of customers. Just make sure it’s the single important metric. This should be the OKR the whole team signs-up for.
Humans, typically the ambitious ones love chasing goals. If there is an incentive attached to the goal, they absolutely crave to achieve the goal & signal. Use this as your advantage while giving this OKR metric. Make sure each of the team members who helps improve the north-star metric gets the incentive.
This is a typical incentivised good behaviour model.
2. Define the right cadences within teams. 👷♀️👷
If you are spending an hour everyday on call with the whole team, you are doing it wrong. Think about the outcome you want from the team. Now divide the monthly outcome into smaller achievable milestones. Now, create a weekly cadence to get updates on those milestones through slack / Microsoft teams.
Cut the noise of daily standup calls that drain energy. Power packed updates about outcomes don’t need a call but a platform where information is available for anyone to consume.
Self pull platforms over status update meetings.
3. Going macro to micro back to macro issues on growth.
Most leaders become micromanagers. They don’t do it on purpose but because anxiety about a metric eats them. Use the following model to solve for it. But first, let’s understand macro vs micro differences.
For example,
Macro → We need to scale revenue from $1 mil to $1.2 mil this quarter.
Micro → Top of the funnel & especially referral program is the key.
When a metric impacts less than 5% of the macro goal, you should not be getting into the micro details, period. Let the specialist on the team prioritise & solve.
When a metric impacts more than 5% of the macro goal on an immediate basis, get involved into the project → identify the core levers → align the team on the solutioning → take async updates about milestones → if everything is green → get out of that project → find the next more than 5% issue → repeat.
That’s all for now. Go execute.
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