#48: Firing your top talent, removing blind spots, making decisions, and the future of SaaS
Happy Saturday, friends.
Do I have any subscribers in Columbus, Ohio? I'll be there next week speaking at Women in Digital - join me? I've been looking forward to this event all year - only 4% of tickets are sold to men, as only 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women.
Mwahaha.
In this edition #48 of the World's Best Newsletter:
1. "Find an Enemy" webinar on-demand
2. Decide, already.
3. Female writer = magnet for hate.
4. User engagement won't matter
5. Diversity blind spots
6. Firing your top talent
7. What should be celebrated in content?
8. Quote of the week - reflection
1. "Find an Enemy" webinar on-demand
My friends at BrightTALK invited me to present at their virtual Content Marketing Summit.
I figured... a speaking gig I can do in my yoga pants? I am so down. You can watch the replay right here. (Pro tip: Miss my INBOUND talk? This is it!)
It received 5 stars from every viewer except Eugene, from HPE. Eugene, your 4 star review is what motivates me every day to be better. Thank you.
2. Decide, already.
"We often view waiting as a non-decision. It's often the easiest because it seemingly doesn't require commitment. But it is a decision with a trade-off. Leaders of any size team know the organization incurs huge cost for that indecision: lost productivity. Everyone waits."
Read more, in this piece by Tomasz Tunguz "How to Decide with Speed and Conviction."
3. Female writer = magnet for hate
Catie Hogan - my former Emerson College softball teammate, funny lady, and now critically acclaimed author has a poignant piece about being a woman on the internet.
"The more I write, the more I get trolled..."
(Yup. Write on, woman.)
"Behind every article, video, and social media account is a real life woman with a beating heart."
Read more in her piece "I am a Female Writer, Therefore I am a Magnet for Hate" on The Scold.
4. User engagement won't matter
The next generation of SaaS won't optimize for user engagement, says this Plainflow blog post. Instead, many SaaS tools will evolve to anti-active usage.
"Anti-active usage products flip this model— you don’t necessarily need to use the product to get something done because the product (1) understands the problem, (2) works out a solution and (3) outputs a result.
Anti-active usage products don’t need human interactions at any level of their value-chain. We can expect in 10 years from now, a good part of today’s SaaS product flocking to this new category..."
5. Diversity blind spots
In another study that shocks EXACTLY NOBODY, men think our workplaces are equal, while women believe there's work to be done. Thanks McKinsey.
"...we have blind spots when it comes to diversity, and we can’t solve problems that we don’t see or understand clearly."
6. Firing your top talent
On a recent panel event at the ROMBA Boston conference, I was asked a question about culture, and how important it is to startup success.
I responded in a fairly honest way - culture absolutely matters, it's something you must be intentional about, especially in the early days of a business where every hire is a major percentage of your team.
But, often there's an over-glamorized expectation of what "culture" means - it's given a lot of lip service, conflated with ping pong and outings instead of values and standards. Ping pong is a lot easier to deal with than the difficult question of what to overlook, and what to allow in the name of performance.
My point was that founders often find themselves deciding where to draw the line. And it's not always clear where that is.
When is a star performer too toxic for the overall culture? At what point do you pull the plug, even on your top talent who drives results for you? This story from freeCodeCamp is a great example of that kind of dilemma. "We fired our top talent. Best decision we ever made."
Toxic employees are exactly that - toxic. But many times, startups need what they produce (sales, code, etc) to keep surviving. Where do you draw the line?
7. What should be celebrated in content?
Boston Content is brainstorming our forthcoming awards program. I see this as a great opportunity to determine what kind of bar should be set for this critical profession.
What do you think should be celebrated in the world of content? Weigh in here.
8. Quote of the week - reflection
"If you are willing to look at another person's behavior towards you as a reflection of the state of the relationship with themselves, rather than a statement about your value as a person, then you will, over a period of time, cease to react at all." - Yogi Bhajan
Mic drop.
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Thank you, as always, for reading. Go be good to each other.
Katie
www.katie-martell.com