Driving for Speed with Finesse
Speed is one of the great advantages of small, talented, focused startup teams – and the driver of the racing startup vehicle is the CEO. Yet like racing, it is essential to drive with finesse to maximize speed while not spinning out of control.
Driving is one of the essential roles of a startup CEO. Defining the destination, mapping out the route, supplying the fuel, and managing the accelerator must be handled with finesse. I like the metaphor of driving a sports car for driving a startup because it is an image that I often refer to when I am thinking about some of the art of startup leadership, particularly the art of driving your team to success. So, let’s explore for a moment some of the challenges of driving a startup.
Since speed is one of a startup’s significant advantages, we should not squander our advantage or speed and agility against established large corporate organizations as startup leaders. The advantage exists because big companies inevitably have more invested in existing product lines, customer bases, and other elements that make it harder for them to react quickly.
As a startup leader striving to maximize speed to win the race, you must be mindful of the “physics” of your work and your startup’s capabilities and capacity. You cannot run out of fuel or focus, even as you try to go as fast as possible. Your team has “physical limits” on its capabilities, and so, as a leader, you have to determine where you are going, when and how to hit the accelerator, when to floor it, and when you have to bleed off speed to make it around a sharp turn successfully.
Defining the Destination
The first key to going fast is having a very clearly defined destination in mind. Knowing where you are headed helps the whole team avoid missed turns and indirect routes. For example, as our startup begins its commercial launch phase, we are excited to make a positive change in medicine. To help that happen, it is crucial for me as the CEO to concretely define what success looks like: successfully deployed in X hospitals for Y revenue in our launch year. That gives our team a sense of scale to develop plans around and a sense of what we need to do to achieve success. As another example, when creating a new product, be clear on who the target customer/user is and who it isn’t. That optimizes the scope and makes it easier for the team to differentiate what should be included and what should not, which simultaneously increases your chances of creating a product that delights your target customer while not investing precious resources in extraneous or muddying features.
Mapping the Route
The process of defining the destination happens at different levels. Think of it like driving from Detroit to Chicago. You may choose to define the ultimate destination as Chicago (aka the next fundable milestone goal for the startup). Still, you also need to define some waypoints such as passing through Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, and Kalamazoo that indicate progress along the way (aka the intermediate milestones that add up to the startup’s fundable milestone). By breaking down the bigger goals into smaller ones, you can create a sense of progress, momentum, and get an early indicator of whether you are on track or need to evaluate a potential change. Picking the right waypoints along the journey helps keep the uncertainty down to a manageable level. It enables the team to see the light at the end of the tunnel, making the goal feel achievable even when it is aggressive.
Supplying the Fuel
As a startup CEO, you need to be proactive about raising money and building your team to make sure you have the capacity to navigate the road ahead. This requires constant estimation about what resources will be needed when to accomplish the tasks ahead while simultaneously not getting ahead of yourself such that you burn too quickly for the rate of value creation. There is a lot of finesse and planning expertise required to keep the vehicle on the narrow road of having the resources you need when you need them while not overcommitting and overspending.
Managing the Accelerator
Driving your team requires constant attention, just like driving a race car. You have to push the accelerator while being mindful of not overheating the engine. For me, this means continually monitoring where the team is at, if people can handle a hard push to accomplish a tightly defined objective at this point, while periodically easing off to allow for some recovery and cool down in preparation for the next push. I find that when you build a team of A-players who are engaged and committed to the startup’s success, oft times the key to driving forward is keeping the targets and priorities clear, being explicit about what you can live with not doing, and being willing to set aggressive yet achievable goals intermixed with interludes of quieter, less structured time. It really does feel like pushing on the accelerator and then easing back off temporarily to make it around a winding road before pressing hard on the next straightaway.
Driving a startup requires skill, subtlety, motivation, and goal-orientation. Good luck on your journey! May the road be fast and straight!
