Written particularly for young founders who haven't been managers before (and who may never have had a manager before!) to better understand how to manage their fast growing team. It covers setting expectations, performance management and training. EF works with technologists to help them find co-founders, develop ideas and to get funding. Join us www.joinef.com

1. How to manage when you’ve
never managed before.
joinef.com
@efLDN
@alicebentinck co-founder EF

2. Startups are only as strong as their team.
As they are so small, every person makes a
difference.
This can be a good difference or a bad one.
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3. Startups are keen to talk about culture, but
no-one talks about management.
If you care about culture, you should care
about management.
Your management style will impact your
culture.
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4. Poor team management leads to higher
costs (hiring costs, time sink, loss of
knowledge and contacts) and lower
productivity and happiness.
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5. We find that first-time founders often
struggle with understanding how much, or
how little to manage.
We want to help you get better.
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6. If you are a founder, you are a manager.
This means you have to manage.
The team’s productivity and effectiveness is
your responsibility.
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7. Your investors, advisors and board will
support you.
Your responsibility is to support the rest of
the team.
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8. What is management?

9. “No one was born a great manager.
Management is a learned skill. Nobody is a
natural at it, it’s an unnatural job.
It’s not natural, but as a manager that’s what you have to do. You
have to evaluate everyone’s performance you have to correct them,
you have to make sure they’re on task.
You have have to learn how to do that so everyone doesn’t hate you
all of the time.”
Ben Horowitz
Minute 24 of this video
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10. “Before you were a manager, your number
one job was to accomplish tasks.
Now, your number one job is to help other
people accomplish those tasks in an
outstanding way.”
Penelope Trunk
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11. “Studies consistently show that the most
important factor in employee happiness is
the relationship the employee has with his
immediate manager.
This gives every company, even those with weak “brands,” a chance
to attract great people, as long as you offer the promise of career
transformation.”
Reid Hoffman - Read here
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12. From an employee perspective, good
management is knowing:
§ what you` need to do to succeed
§ why you have to do it
§ what good and bad looks like and
understanding how to improve
§ what they get out of it
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13. As a founder, you should:
1. have teams that know what their daily,
weekly and long term goals are
2. train your teams to get better at their jobs
3. monitor your team’s performance and to
give them regular feedback
4. be honest about weak points in the team
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14. 1a. Teams that know what their daily goals
are
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“Good product managers crisply define the
target, the "what" (as opposed to the how)
and manage the delivery of the "what.”
Good product managers err on the side of
clarity vs. explaining the obvious. Bad product
managers never explain the obvious.”
Ben Horowitz

15. “Managers must hold lightly to goals, but
strongly to intentions”
Ed Catmull, Pixar
1b. Teams that know what their weekly goals
are
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16. “In good organizations, people can focus on
their work and have confidence that if they
get their work done, good things will happen
for both the company and them personally.
With bad managers, they are not even clear
on what their jobs are, so there is no way to
know if they are getting the job done or not.”
Ben Horowitz
1c. Teams that know what their long term goals
are
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17. 1. Tools
§ Daily checkin – 10 minutes every morning to clarify
priorities
§ Weekly checkins that outline mid term goals
§ Team problem solving sessions and team
involvement in some strategic decision making
§ 1-2-1 coffees to discuss how their career trajectory
fits into your startup’s long term goals
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18. “Employees who are immature in a given task require
detailed training and instruction. They need to be
micromanaged.
So, micromanagement is like fine wine. A little at the
right times will really enhance things; too much all the
time and you’ll end up in rehab.”
Ben Horowitz - Read more here
2. Train your teams to get better at their jobs
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19. When people start a new role “they are looking to
develop. But, once they’ve learned the basics, they
stop trying to improve, maybe it seems like too much
trouble, or they may not see where the improvement
will take them.”
Dr Carol Dweck, Mindset
2. Train your teams to get better at their jobs
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20. ‘If you don't train your people, you establish no
basis for performance management.'
Ben Horowitz
2. Train your teams to get better at their jobs
joinef.com

21. “Many organisations believe in natural talent,
and don’t look for people with the potential to
develop”
Morgan McCall
2. Train your teams to get better at their jobs
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22. 2. Tools
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§ Carve out training time with your team to help them individually,
or collectively, with specific areas, or if you don’t have the
expertise connect them to someone in your network.
§ Help your team to find their own mentors, in-house or externally.
Use your network and your investors’ networks to make this
happen.
§ Make sure you role model the behaviour you want to see.
§ See one, do one, teach one. Use an apprenticeship model to help
get new team members up to speed and to breed a training
culture.
§ Read Mindset by Carol Dweck to understand how to create a
learning culture with your organisation

23. 3. Monitor your team’s performance and give
them regular feedback
§ Have regular, expected feedback time in the diary so that
everyone can prepare for it – don’t push it back, your team will
take this seriously and so should you
§ Make sure you know what you are measuring and what you
value (in terms of their performance)
§ Your team should know what ‘not good enough’, ‘good’ and
‘exceptional’ looks like – and you must hold yourself to the same
standards
§ You should give both on the fly feedback and structured
feedback - provide public praise and private criticism
§ Ensure that feedback works both ways so you can also get
better
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24. 3. Tools
+ 360 feedback: Use an online tool to gather anonymous feedback on a set
of criteria. Use this to gather feedback on yourself, as well as the team.
+ 1-2-1 feedback sessions: These can take 1-2 hours and should be done at
least once a quarter. These should have a set structure, that allows both
people to give feedback, both positive and constructive.
+ Performance evaluations: Set out clearly what good vs exceptional
performance looks like and help team members understand where they are
on the grid and what they need to do to get to the next stage.
+ Evaluate against clear, measurable goals: Use tools like KPIs to set
targets for the team and for individuals.
+ Do you understand why they aren’t performing? Read Susan Scott’s
Fierce Conversations (n.b. it might not be them, it might be you…).
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25. 4. Be honest about weak points in the team
Weak points in the team bring down the whole team’s performance
and will affect your startup’s productivity.
§ The Keeper Test
If my employee told me they were leaving, how hard would I
work to keep them? If not very hard, then you should let them go.
§ Honesty always
As a manager no-one in your group should be materially
surprised of your views. This is what feedback and performance
evaluation is for.
§ Fire fast, but honestly
Those who don’t fit into the team should leave asap, but be
honest about why they are leaving. Is it their fault or yours?
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26. Some examples from the EF team*
*We’re a small (8 people) fast-growing team
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27. 1. To have teams that know what their daily,
weekly and long term goals are
Every couple of months, we have an away day out of the office
(usually in someone’s flat) where we set the mid term strategy
as a team. It’s lead by whichever team will lead the
implementation and the whole team is expected to contribute.
Each quarter we set KPIs.
Every week, each workstream has a checkin with the EF
founders for an hour. This is at the same time every week and
is a mixture of strategy and tactical discussions.
The team is highly autonomous, but in times of high pressure,
we do a morning checkin at 9.30 with the whole team running
briefly through their priorities for the day.
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28. 2. Train your teams to get better at their jobs
Every member of the team has a training budget and a book
budget to spend at their discretion.
We do group training sessions for the team based on areas
that they all want to improve on e.g., public speaking. We put
these sessions in the calendar weeks in advance and rigidly
stick to them (otherwise it becomes de-prioritised).
We use an apprenticeship model to help the team learn. This
means we get the team to join meetings and sit in discussions
that we expect them to take over in the future (see one, do
one, teach one). Discussing post-hoc why we did certain things
and letting them take the lead at certain points allows for
instant feedback and discussion.
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29. 3. Monitor your team’s performance and to
give them regular feedback
We do reviews every three months.
We use alternately 360 feedback from across the team (set
against certain criteria), and a performance evaluation grid
that clearly shows what good looks like vs exceptional.
We give on the fly feedback, post positive and constructive.
Positive feedback is given in front of the team, with a slack
channel dedicated to ‘team-praise’ for when the team is
working remotely.
We encourage upward feedback to help us improve and
specifically ask for this during review sessions.
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30. 4. Be honest about weak points in the team
We try to hire fast and fire fast, but this is always easier said
than done.
In particular, we try to be honest as a team as to whether we
are moving someone on because they aren’t good enough, or
because the team didn’t do a good enough job of bringing
them into the team and helping them understand their short
term and long term goals.
joinef.com

31. How to manage when you’ve
never managed before.
joinef.com
@efLDN
@alicebentinck co-founder EF