As a potential investor into or employee of Splento – you want to know what you are getting into. You can stop by Camden Town and buy a crystal ball or you can invite me for a long run (once my rib heals) and ask away all you want, whilst we are pacing around Hyde Park at 7 min/mile.
Or you can read SPLENTO BLOG and my thoughts in CEO Letter Series.
I’m now opening one more card to help you make the right call. Below is my email to Splento team I sent yesterday. There isn’t anything particularly confidential there, but it will give you a good idea about how we roll.
So here it goes.
Dear team, further to our meeting today:
1) MEETINGS CADENCE:
Just to reiterate, for the foreseeable future we’ll have the following meeting cadence:
a) Daily standup: 12:00 (noon) – daily 5-minute stand-up to update everyone on what happened since last meeting and what are the plans until the next meeting. Detailed instructions HERE.
b) Monday weekly meeting at 4pm to discuss metrics, important updates and OKR aligned plans for the week. Detailed instructions HERE.
c) Friday “Wins” meeting – team lunch to celebrate little wins (if Roman around – Splento pays for it). Detailed instructions HERE.
d) Ad-hoc “mission/decision meetings” – never-ever attend a meeting without a clear purpose. Organiser is obliged to send a summary after the meeting saying:
– what has been decided,
– what are the next steps,
– who is responsible for what and
– by when.
Detailed instructions HERE.
e) Monthly Strategic Meeting – once a month to discuss 1-2 strategic ideas. No ideas, no meeting. Agenda, invitations, summary with course of actions after the meeting a-must. Detailed instructions HERE.
f) One-on-Ones Meetings with your manager. It’s your time with your manager! Your agenda. Detailed instructions HERE.
2) WEEKLY STATUS EMAIL:
Ideally on a Friday, but if you are used to Wednesdays – it’s fine too. So whichever day works for you – please send me the your weekly status update using the following format:
- Your OKRs and if your confidence level has changed
- Last weeks prioritised tasks
- Next week priorities
- Any risks or blockers?
- Notes (anything that doesn’t fall into above).
Detailed instructions HERE.
3) THE A-TEAM:
You are all amazing experts in your respective fields. This is why we hired you.
What we now need is to continue channelling your skills in the right direction and not get distracted by the next “shiny gold ball”.
To succeed, it’s not enough to have a boat full of A-Players, it’s also essential to have all these A-Players in the right seats and make sure everyone is rowing in the same direction.
We are getting there.
You don’t have to read all these amazing books to get yourself up to scratch with your seat number and the direction we are going, but please, please read the following books ASAP:
- Radical Focus by Christina Wodtke
- Measure What Matters by John Doerr
- Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street
- Getting Things Done (The Art of Stress-Free Productivity) by David Allen
- Why We Sleep (The New Science of Sleep and Dreams) by Matthew Walker
- High Output Management by Andrew Grove
In this particular order.
4) OKRs:
There is a lot of material on OKRs out there (two really good books are listed above). And we’ve been discussing them and trying to adopt for a while now.
However, the time has come! Yet, again….
To get you thinking about OKRs ASAP, please read this post: http://eleganthack.com/the-art-of-the-okr/
It explains in a lot of detail why we need it and what it is.
Our company-wide OKR for the next quarter is simple: close our round of financing that lets us kill it next year.
ENTIRE TEAM:
Key Result 1: Month-on-Month Growth of 20% and above
MOSTLY ROMAN:
Key Result 2: Reach out to 200 relevant angels and VCs
Key Result 3: Get at least 30 meetings or conference calls
Key Result 4: Get at least 3 competing term-sheets
Key Result 5: Close £1M
Please create your personal OKRs by Wednesday afternoon, when we’ll discuss them in your one-on-ones.
Here are a couple of links with lots of examples that will give you some ideas about how to phrase your personal OKRs:
- https://www.atiim.com/downloads/eBook-The-Ultimate-List-of-OKR-Goal-Examples-for-B2B-Companies.pdf
- http://okrexamples.co/
I will be listing all our OKRs in regular emails to our board and investors, so please take them seriously.
Kind regards
Contact Splento if you are in need of:
