Jay Desai has FOMU. As a first-time founder and CEO of health technology startup PatientPing, he’s got a healthy fear of messing up. This anxiety especially bubbles to the surface when it has to do with his team — now over 100 employees — and particularly the seven who report directly to him. He’s seen too many immensely talented and productive teams stall because of a subtle misunderstanding on how to best work with each other. After consecutive year-long searches for his Head of Product and Head of Operations, he didn’t want to squander that investment because he couldn’t figure out how to work with them.
So what did Desai do? He penned a user guide — similar to the kind that’d accompany a rice cooker or bassinet — but this one deconstructed how he operated optimally, when he might malfunction, and how others could use him to their greatest success. To create and the compile the guide took an intense self-reflection, drawing both from his early management mistakes at leading PatientPing and a career in finance.
In this exclusive interview, Desai presents his user guide in full, complete with his defaults, directives and warnings across a dozen categories. The topics range from reporting to 1:1s and from an employee’s first 6 months to logistics. After each section, you’ll find Desai’s marginalia: his reflections on why these topics matter, and considerations should you author your own user guide.
Author: Jay Desai
Source: First Round Review
Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior
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