Early in the Pardot days, it was clear things were going well and we had something special. Only, we were inexperienced and didn’t know what we were doing (does anyone, really?). My concern was ensuring we grow faster than the market, and to do that we had to ensure our employees’ personal growth was even faster than our company growth. For me, my needed personal growth was around communications and company alignment.

To facilitate communications and company alignment, I focused on things like simple strategic plans, daily check-ins, weekly team update, weekly all-hands meetings, and monthly strategy dinners.

Recently, I was introduced to a new idea: the Startup State of the Union. Generally, the idea is to map out all parts of the business in a slide deck that is updated monthly and available to the team.

As an entrepreneur, you are a cartographer making the map, not following someone else’s map. The Startup State of the Union is your internal map.

Let’s take a look at what slides would go into the Startup State of the Union

• Purpose / Vision
• Simple Strategic Plan
• Why Now, Why Us
• Customer Testimonials
• Product Screenshot
• Technical Platform
• Leadership Team
• Board / Investors
• Departments
  • Customer Service
    • Consider team, renewal processes, etc.
  • People Operations
    • Consider team, recruiting process, employee development process, etc.
  • Marketing
    • Consider team, definitions of qualified leads/accounts, ideal customer profile, tech stack, etc.
  • Sales
    • Consider team, AE + SDR + CSM alignment, territories, etc.
  • Finance
    • Consider team, financial forecasting process, etc.
  • Product
    • Consider team, product planning process, pricing/packaging, etc.
  • Technology
    • Consider team, development process, etc.

Overall, the big idea is to have an internal slide deck, updated regularly, that captures where the business is today, where it is going, and how it is run to get there.

Organizational alignment is hard, and only gets harder as the company grows. Consider a Startup State of the Union internal slide deck to capture the most important details and re-evaluate them regularly.

A few weeks ago I was going through a series of simple strategic plans with a group of entrepreneurs. When we arrived at the section on core values, the average plan had 10 values with highly detailed explanations. After seeing this pattern, I offered up the Hallway Values Test:

• Independently stop 10 employees in the hallway
• Ask each employee to write down the company values
• Compare the answers to the actual core values
• Assess the percent right and grade it on a typical letter scale

What’s the chance your company gets an ‘A’?

After going through this exercise with a dozen entrepreneurs, it’s clear that every company would get an ‘F’.

In today’s pandemic environment, the Hallway Values Test isn’t doable. Instead, run it as a Zoombomb Values Test. Drop in on a Zoom call and ask each person to type up the values in a local notes app — no cheating. Then, when everyone is ready, copy and paste the answers into the Zoom chat window. Now, see how many were right and assess the results.

Of course, the next question is how to improve the grade on the Hallway Values Test.

A few ideas to improve on the Hallway Values Test:

• Have 3 – 5 Values – As much as we want to capture an extensive list of values as part of the constitution of our company, try limiting it to three, and no more than five values. Less is more when it comes to people remembering, and upholding, core values.
• Incorporate Values in Regular Communication – Repetition, repetition, repetition. Put the core values in the Weekly Update Email, talk about a different value at each Daily Check-in, and give out a lawn gnome to the employee that most embodies a value each month
• Require Culture Anecdotes at Quarterly Reviews – Update the quarterly check-in process with the question “how are you following the values?” and require an anecdote for each value.

The Hallway Test is a great way to assess the strength of values in a culture. Personally, I believe culture, including values, is one of the most important things an entrepreneur can instill in a business, and when done well, becomes one of the most powerful and sustainable advantages.

Ready to assess the strength of your values? Run the Hallway Values Test.

Last week I was asked about my personal goals, what keeps me going at this point in life. My answer was simple: I don’t have any goals. Instead, I have systems that I believe will lead to positive outcomes. I want to help spread the magic of entrepreneurship, and make an impact on the world. My systems will help me do my best, not striving for goals.

Start thinking in systems, stop thinking in goals.

I can control the systems. I can control the effort I put in. I can control where I spend my time.

I can’t control if I hit the goal of creating 100 successful startups. I can’t control if I hit the goal of creating 10,000 high paying jobs.

This type of thinking really crystallized for me while at Pardot when we did our quarterly and annual planning. Yes, we had goals. Yes, we cared about hitting the goals. Only, we couldn’t guarantee that we’d hit the goals. This idea of control, or lack thereof, made me go deeper. Primarily, what can we control?

We can control the required number of sales activities to likely achieve quota.

We can control the on-boarding steps necessary to ensure customers have a successful experience.

We can control the product planning process to ensure the most important enhancements.

So, we set goals and focused our energies on the systems we could control.

When I see goals, and talk to entrepreneurs about their goals, I try to tease apart if the goal is within his or her control. If it isn’t, I work at helping reshape the goal to something that is more controllable, and share the idea about systems.

Control what you can control.

Start thinking in systems.

Last week I was talking to a local entrepreneur about peer groups. This particular entrepreneur has built a multi-million dollar revenue business with dozens of employees after years of high growth. Now, the business is much larger than him and he’s spending more time as a business manager, and less as a scrappy, growth-oriented entrepreneur. He wants to scale to the next level, and is looking for a peer group to share ideas and grow as a leader.

My recommendation was to consider the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) and the Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), both of which have been immensely valuable to me. In addition to strong programming and networking, the heart of each organization is the small group (usually eight members) forum experience. Forums meet monthly for four hours in a setting of strict confidence and high commitment. The confidentiality is serious — nobody, nothing, never.

Forums often have a consistent agenda:

• Opening
• Lightning round
  • Short questions for every person in the group to answer
• Monthly updates (10 – 15 minutes per person, inclusive of questions)
  • Business
    • Last 30 days
      • Highlights
      • Lowlights
    • Next 30 days
      • Most looking forward to
      • Least looking forward to
  • Family
    • Last 30 days
      • Highlights
      • Lowlights
    • Next 30 days
      • Most looking forward to
      • Least looking forward to
  • Personal
    • Last 30 days
      • Highlights
      • Lowlights
    • Next 30 days
      • Most looking forward to
      • Least looking forward to
• Presentations
  • Member does a deep dive on a topic, the groups asks questions, the group shares experiences, and the presenting member closes with any takeaways
• Closing

A small group of people committed to helping each other and meeting on a regular basis is one of the most powerful things I’ve ever experienced.

Entrepreneurs would do well to seek out a peer group like EO or YPO. For me, it’s made a tremendous impact.

Last week I was reading the excellent Iacocca: An Autobiography of Lee Iacocca — one of my favorite book genres is life adventures of people who created or changed an industry. Here, the stories are superb, and one of the comments by Iacocca caught my attention. The author writes:

If our stockholders had a quarterly review system, why shouldn’t our executives?…I’ve asked my key people a few basic questions:

What are your objectives for the next ninety days?

What are your plans, your priorities, your hopes?

And how do you intend to go about achieving them?

Now, the book was published in 1984. 1984! When I started my entrepreneurial career full-time in the early 2000s, people were still talking about annual reviews. Annual reviews never made sense to me. A year was much too long of a time frame with most of the review comments being the current, top-of-mind items.

When we were building Pardot, and working towards establishing our company as one of the top market automation platforms, we modeled our quarter review process based on a variation of Patrick Lencioni’s recommendations. Everyone answered the following questions in a simple Google Doc and shared it with their manager and direct reports:

What did you accomplish last quarter?

What are you going to accomplish next quarter?

How can you improve?

How are you following the values?

Simple. Effective. Repeatable. Regardless of the quarterly review format used, it’s important to develop a rhythm that aligns the team and focuses everyone on the mission.

Figure out what your team needs and consider these two different approaches to the quarterly review process.

In Patrick Lencioni’s latest book The Motive, he writes that leaders make their organizations healthier by “reducing politics, confusion, and dysfunction and increasing clarity, alignment, and productivity.” In today’s turbulent world, the need for strong organizational health has never been more important.

Entrepreneurs often struggle with a lack of clarity and alignment due to weak communication.

The more turmoil, the more communication required.

The more uncertainty, the more communication required.

The more chaos, the more communication required.

Regardless of the times, entrepreneurs should send a weekly email update to their constituents — employees, advisors, mentors, and investors. People want to know what’s going on. People want to help. Regular email communication is the most repeatable, and scalable, method.

As for the format of the email, go with something simple:

• Purpose of the company (repeat it every time!)
• Recent customer story
• Recent culture story
• Goals with current progress
• Any other highlights (employee, team, department, etc.)

That’s it. Communicate in a variety of manners, repeat the message, and make the foundation a weekly email.

I was two years in as a full-time entrepreneur and we were meeting a potential customer in a small nondescript building less than a mile from our office. Our startup was still struggling and I, as an eager first-time entrepreneur, was chasing any opportunity regardless of fit. Helping me that day at our sales meeting was our lead engineer, and after a few pleasantries, we started talking shop with the prospect.

Quickly, as the conversation turned technical regarding product capabilities, our lead engineer dove in regaling all the details. Only I, as a sales-oriented entrepreneur, thought our lead engineer was focused too much on the minutia and not enough on tying the functionality back to the customer’s needs. So, in an expression of poor leadership, I interrupted him mid sentence and took the conversation a different direction.

Another topic with the prospect, another detailed comment from our engineer, another poor interruption from me going a different direction — on and on it repeated.

Only after the meeting, as we got into the car, the lead engineer shared with me how little he felt. How I had unprofessionally talked over him. How poorly I had reflected our company in front of the prospect. How miserable I was in the setting.

It was all true.

Now, 16 years later, I still remember this lesson. I did an unacceptable job setting expectations with the lead engineer before the meeting. I did an unacceptable job showing respect to the lead engineer in the meeting. I did not lead, I trampled.

Disrespecting a team member is never acceptable.

The next time you have the urge to talk over someone, let them finish. Hear them out. Reflect on their position. Treat them with respect — it’s always the right thing to do.

One of the more common conversations I’ve had with entrepreneurs scaling their startup goes something like this:

Me: How are things going?

Entrepreneur: We’re having a hard time with leader X?

Me: Why’s that?

Entrepreneur: It feels like he’s always reactive.

Me: What do you mean?

Entrepreneur: Well, we keep having issues in his department and it feels like they’re things that shouldn’t be issues.

Me: What should he be doing?

Entrepreneur: He should be proactively spotting things that could be potential issues and addressing them so that they they’re non-events.

Me: Sounds like the struggling executive is really a manager, not an executive.

I’ve had this conversation with entrepreneurs numerous times and it’s always the same issue: a person was put in an executive position and they aren’t really an executive, they’re a manager.

Managers see short-term, right in front of them, and are often reactive.

Executives see long-term, around corners, and are proactive.

Managers bring problems forward.

Executives bring solutions forward.

Now, not all managers are like this and not all executives are like this, but the key difference between and a manager and an executive is the ability to see further out into the future and proactively get things done.

The next time you’re having an issue with a leader, ask the key question: are they a manager or an executive?