Overview

Confidence in one another is the foundation of a functional organization. We are a team, not a family and as with all high-performance teams, to have any hope of winning we have to be able to coordinate effectively and move in unison. Because of the interdependencies of our work, each team member must be able to have confidence that every other team member will follow through on their deliverables with clear, regular communication.

This confidence cannot be assumed. On the contrary, confidence must be earned and continually maintained.

Table of contents

The risks of lost confidence

Consider a (theoretical) large marketing partnership to announce the launch of a new Levels product line. The partnerships team has set in motion a costly ad run on a major podcast announcing the new launch and offering exclusive access to this valued partner’s audience.

Launch-eve arrives and the product DRI announces last minute that despite working night and day for weeks, the product is not ready due to significant scope creep and resources being pulled to other tasks. The partnership DRI scrambles to delay the spot but campaigns like this have a long spin-up period and high inertia, making them difficult to change. The ad goes live to hundreds of thousands of target listeners, costing us money, a valuable partnership, and (most importantly) our members’ trust. The partnership DRI will also experience a significant loss of confidence in the product DRI because of the predicament they were placed in.

Soon the behavior has spread as new people observe how projects are run and progress communicated. Short toes and assuming best intent fall by the wayside as individuals feel like they are subjected to an inquisition when they are just trying to get things done. DRIs rationalize the behavior as necessary to make sure nothing slips and to maintain velocity. The reality is that progress has ground to a halt because everyone is hedging against execution failures from everyone else. Schedules are sandbagged, people are spending more time responding to ad hoc status check-ins than pushing releases, and new hires just proliferate the problem.

Worst of all, the original product DRI was being honest; they were working 20hr shifts doing everything in their power to get the launch across the finish line but they just didn’t have the resources they needed. Unfortunately, it was not the launch delay but their lack of communication that led to the partnership failure and all of the downstream problems.

Confidence is earned

In an asynchronous and remote environment, confidence is a bit like physical fitness. It takes work to build and it deteriorates at a constant rate if not maintained actively and consistently.

It is also solely in your control.

Confidence is built through transparency and reliability. Each of us depends on many others at the company. For us to be confident that we can succeed with the tasks in our control, we have to be sure that the tasks out of our control are going to be ready in the time and form we expect. OR that new information that requires a change of plans is available as soon as it can be. The best way to enable this is for each member of the team to proactively share accessible information about their work.

Just like professional basketball players calling out repeatedly where they are on the court so the point guard can hit them with a blind pass, successful high velocity team coordination depends on a plan and constant, clear communication of how that plan is progressing and changing.

The absence of information leads to loss of confidence

Even if someone is eating and sleeping in healthy ways, they cannot build physical fitness without physical exercise - repetition under load. The absence of exercise means the loss of fitness; we cannot maintain a fitness level without inputting sustained effort. This is the reality of our biology.

Similarly, the absence of information leads to a loss of confidence, not the maintenance of it. Because of the ever-changing environment of a startup and the unpredictable external forces it operates within, no plan stays the same from start to finish. We are all constantly making dynamic updates and lateral moves to sidestep issues and keep the overall program moving forward. We’re acutely aware that no plan survives first contact so an absence of information flow means ambiguity and uncertainty. In other words, no news is the same as bad news.

Even if there is no new information being shared and everything is going exactly to plan, communication of that fact lets others proceed without breaking stride, confident that they don’t need to be changing course based on new facts.

This paradigm exists in all directions for dependency (any working relationship where someone relies on someone else). For example, to build confidence, an IC needs to communicate to project stakeholders and down to their manager what is and is not on track so the information can drive priorities and resource decisions. Equally important, leadership and managers must communicate through their direct reports as soon as they know of a company or individual priorities change. Without consistent discoverable communication in all directions, someone is operating in the absence of information and losing confidence.