I’ve had a lot of roles in my almost 35 years of working. I’m still using lessons I learned as a fry cook at Golden Corral at the age of 15. But I don’t have an MBA and have never really studied business, just gotten “on-the-job training.”
Wait. On-the-job training.
A lot of what I’ve learned about managing people, for instance, came from making mistakes and missing really obvious things.
For instance, you can never communicate too much. No matter how clear you think you’ve made something, some smart, dedicated, valued member of your team has the wrong end of the stick. And as the manager, that’s your fault.
I’m thinking about this because I started listening to “StartUp” last week, a podcast about the genesis and early days of Gimlet Media, a company that makes podcasts, including “StartUp.”
All fun meta stuff aside, it’s the fully-documented, evolving story of a new business trying to get off the ground, grow and scale. I’m learning a lot, and it’s fascinating to hear their conversations, analysis, self-doubts and fears and all the stuff that usually goes unsaid.
Moreover, you can see the benefit that the podcast itself has had for the business itself. Talking openly about getting funding helped them get funding, despite the fact that they were very open about the challenges they were facing and their doubts and fears.
Or did it help them get funding because they were open about their challenges and doubts and fears? I think so. Although I’m not an investor, I certainly trust them more after hearing them address their issues realistically, without hype or bluster, and work through them.
I’ve always been fascinated by radical transparency as a corporate communications philosophy. I’ve been lucky to mostly work for companies that made genuinely good products. Most of our marketing struggles have been how to capture the value of what we did in terms that could make a good headline or fit on a postcard.
That’s hard, but it’s a separate challenge from building a great product. Great products have been brought down by bad marketing, and the obverse is even more common.
I’m thinking about this now because at my new job, at a startup, I’m trying to find the best way to encapsulate the vision, passion, knowledge and commitment of our founder/CTO and our CEO, as well as our product’s genuine excellence.
When the two of them sit down with customers or analysts, they tell a fascinating, compelling story. But it’s hard to turn it into a strap line and three circles on a slide. “Maybe they’re just better at what they do than I am.”
What I really want to do is put a camera on them whenever they get talking and show the process and the debate. Am I putting too much trust in the marketplace, to hope transparency and honesty would trump a clever slogan, a made-up word with a trademark symbol and a big ad budget?