> Talking to your cofounders and team - Sometimes, this looks like having coffee or grabbing a beer. Invariably, you'll be talking about work and how things are going. This is work because you need to know what's going on, and need to care about how your team is feeling and doing.
I can't stress the importance of that enough. I think one of my best decisions on GrantTree was, until recently, to have 121s with almost everyone in the company on a biweekly basis. This scaled up to about 20 people. Yes, it took a chunk of time out, but it was extremely well invested time, imho. I think it was instrumental in pushing through some very complex cultural shifts and getting to where we are now, which is that the company is basically self-managing and I no longer need to steer people in this hands on manner at all.
I strongly recommend this type of work. Someone may occasionally criticise you and say "but you're wasting a quarter of your time each week!" - you're not wasting it, you're investing it in the most valuable resource of your startup: its people.
I guess the reason many people might not do it is that it takes a certain humility to realise that your work output is actually worth less than investing that time in growing and developing the people who work in your business.
My old manager used to do these with the entire team, but he would literally sit with us, as 'how are things?' and then end the conversation if they said not bad
From the management perspective, I want to know about personal development goals, team member interactions (and problems), and generally just "how you are doing" with a focus not on work product/tasks but on human health.
I block off an hour for each, but want a minimum of 30 minutes of conversation and I can't imagine leaving before then.
When I have mine with my manager, I tend to break it down into four categories: personal, team, department, company.
Whilst I've had some 121s that were cut short if the person was very busy and just wanted to focus on something else, most took the full hour and some overran.
The structure was very fluid, but I generally did start with a fairly straightforward open question: "So, how are you doing?"
Then I generally let the person take it from there. In my experience there are three major kinds of conversation that emerge:
1) The phatic conversation: the other person wants to get stuff off their chest, wants to express it and to feel listened to. This may seem like a waste of time to people who don't understand human beings, but this is actually a hugely important part of 121s and probably the one people get wrong the most, as they tend to confuse this with the second and third kind. Offering advice or suggesting a conflict-resolution approach when the person just wants to be heard is not helpful. Listen to them, hear them, acknowledge how they feel, etc. That's the goal here.
2) The problem-solving conversation: the other person wants advice on a problem they're facing. I often fall into that mode because it's my natural mode... Basically, you help the other person figure out what the solution is to their problem. Sometimes, if they're explicitly asking, maybe you directly suggest the solution. Often, you help the person work out the solution for themselves (much more powerful).
3) The conflict resolution conversation: the other person has a conflict, which they may or may not be aware of, and needs external help to be able to resolve that conflict. This has become much less frequent since our conflict resolution skills have improved across the company, but often there are natural frictions when smart people work hard together, and this conversation is about identifying this friction, making sure the person feels their point of view is understood (so kind of like type #1), and then going and speaking to the other person in the conflict, fully understanding their position as well, and then helping both people see each other's viewpoints so they can come to a joint understanding. Ideally, once people learn good conflict resolution skills, they can do this for themselves.
I don't impose either structure on the person I'm having a 121 with. It's their time, a bit like a therapy session, and they can take it wherever they want it. My job is to spend some time talking to them and genuinely care about them. This one element is the most important: you have to actually give a shit about people. If you don't, if you're just doing this for some utilitarian purpose, it will be felt and will not have the desired effect.
I can't stress the importance of that enough. I think one of my best decisions on GrantTree was, until recently, to have 121s with almost everyone in the company on a biweekly basis. This scaled up to about 20 people. Yes, it took a chunk of time out, but it was extremely well invested time, imho. I think it was instrumental in pushing through some very complex cultural shifts and getting to where we are now, which is that the company is basically self-managing and I no longer need to steer people in this hands on manner at all.
I strongly recommend this type of work. Someone may occasionally criticise you and say "but you're wasting a quarter of your time each week!" - you're not wasting it, you're investing it in the most valuable resource of your startup: its people.
I guess the reason many people might not do it is that it takes a certain humility to realise that your work output is actually worth less than investing that time in growing and developing the people who work in your business.