462 Posts found for Source: First Round Review

Stepping back to understand deeper context and underlying motivation is important because people are notoriously bad at predicting what they want.

Content: Quotation | Author: Sunita Mohanty | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Market Research, Marketing / Sales

What we’re taught when we grow up is that our outcome is 100% correlated to our effort. If I study hard for a test or work hard on a project, I’m going to get a better grade than if I don’t try. So I’ve always just assumed that when things aren’t going well, I just need to work harder. It’s ingrained a lot of habits, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Ayo Omojola | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Personal Development

When assessing a low performer, the most important set of exercises to run through are: What is this person’s job? What is expected of them? Do they know that? And then once they do, do they have the desire and the energy to fix it? Then you can go to them and clearly explain, “Here’s what’s expected of you. Here’s what you’re delivering. And here’s … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

Most people can be exceptional and perform way better than they are today, under the right set of circumstances. And so the question for managers is whether those circumstances can exist in the role that that person is currently in, elsewhere in the company, or if it’s just not a fit at all.

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

When I was managing a team I didn’t have tons of expertise in […] I first started with: Do people’s roles make sense? Do they know how they fit in? How they align to the business? Then the second piece is, do they know what’s expected of them? Do they know what success looks like? 80% of the time when I go into a team … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior, Teamwork

As a manager, one of the best things you can do is to take your high-performers and make bets on them, stretching them and seeing what they’re made of. Sometimes people are capable of 10X of what you have them working on today. You just have to help them get there.

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management

I push people to focus on, “What is this person responsible for?” not, “How are they doing it?” As a manager, you can give feedback on the “how,” particularly if it’s potentially destructive to the people around them, problematic in terms of draining too many resources, or when the folks you’re managing are more junior. But goals and expectations have to be set around the … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

True management is the act of making the people around you better. Management is about investing in people, figuring out who they are, what they’re good at, what motivates them, and then aligning the work a company has to do with their role and their growth areas.

Content: Quotation | Author: Molly Graham | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

Tracking the difference between ‘actual’ and ‘target’ is a really important part of your dashboarding process. My team jokingly calls this delta ‘the shame,’ because that’s what drives them to reflect and iterate.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jaleh Rezaei | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Project Management

If speed is the yin, the yang is prioritization. You can’t be fast if you don’t know what’s important.

Content: Quotation | Author: Jaleh Rezaei | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Personal Development

Last year, First Round Review started a podcast. What started as an experiment has turned into 30 episodes (and counting!) with incredible startup leaders all across the org chart at companies like Notion, Lambda School, Plaid, Segment and many more. To celebrate this milestone, they listened back to each episode and plucked out our favorite tidbits of advice from this collection of interviews.

Content: Article | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Management

Too many people believe that speed is the enemy of quality. To an extent they’re right — you can’t force innovation and sometimes genius needs time and freedom to bloom. But in my experience, that’s the rare case. There’s not always a stark tradeoff between something done fast and done well. Don’t let you or your organization use that as a false shield or excuse … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Dave Girouard | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Innovation, Management, Organizational Behavior

The untrained mind has a weird way of defaulting to serial activities — i.e. I’ll do this after you do that after X, Y, Z happens. You want people working in parallel instead.

Content: Quotation | Author: Dave Girouard | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior

The art of good decision making requires that you gather input and perspective from your team, and then push toward a final decision in a way that makes it clear that all voices were heard. […] I wouldn’t call it consensus building — you don’t want consensus to hold you hostage — but input from others will help you get to the right decision faster, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Dave Girouard | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Decision Making, Management, Organizational Behavior

Specific people operate with details and sequences. They cannot see the overview. They say “exactly,” “specifically,” and supply details and chronology. General people focus on the overview or big picture. If they handle details, it’s for short periods. The language they use includes “essentially,” “the important thing is,” and “in general.” Every great team needs a mix of more specific-minded people and big-picture folks. But … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Khalid Halim | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Organizational Behavior

“Toward” people are motivated to achieve and attain goals. They have trouble recognizing problems, and are adept at managing priorities. They frequently use words such as “gain,” “obtain,” and “achieve.” “Away from” people are motivated to solve problems. They focus on what may be going wrong. They frequently use words such as “avoid,” “steer clear of,” or “exclude.” To decode ‘toward’ versus ‘away from’ people, … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Khalid Halim | Source: First Round Review | Subject: Organizational Behavior

Communication is not just about what you say, it’s about the reaction it causes in the listener. Often we think delivering a message is enough without checking to see if it was actually received.

Content: Quotation | Author: Khalid Halim | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Communication, Management, Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Integral theory encourages you to look at the world through the lenses of the “It,” the “We,” and the “I.” The It refers to your tasks and your role at work: Your goals, achievements and the stuff you’re getting done. The We is about your relationships, the quality of your interactions — which too few people think about. And the I is about the attitudes … [ Read more ]

Content: Quotation | Author: Chris Holmberg | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Organizational Behavior, Personal Development

Coaching is about looking beyond solving short-term problems and instead training people to uncover their own self-limiting mental habits, because only then is true, long-term transformation possible.

Content: Quotation | Author: Chris Holmberg | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Human Resources, Management, Organizational Behavior

We underestimate our teams when we assume that they will demand all the facts or an ironclad plan. People are often just looking for signs of a caring culture — that we’ll be here for them and that, if something’s wrong, we’ll create an avenue for them to share that.

Content: Quotation | Source: First Round Review | Subjects: Management, Organizational Behavior