Your Team Isn't Slow. You're Not Clear.

A founder writes in asking why their team won't move faster. James Johnson and Freddie Birley take the question apart, and the real answer has almost nothing to do with the team.

They get into what actually causes execution to stall at Series A, the trap of being responsive instead of intentional, and why giving up control feels comforting right up until it costs you your business. Practical, direct, and probably not the answer you were expecting.

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Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Peer Effect Post Bag. I'm James Johnson joined by Freddie Burley. We ask for your questions, and Freddie and I are going to tackle them together. These aren't theoretical case studies, it's the stuff keeping you up at 2 a.m. Let's get answering. Welcome to the Peer Effect Post Bag. This is where we answer your questions. I'm James Johnson.

SPEAKER_00 0:22

I'm Freddie Burley. Welcome. This is exciting. Um how's your week been? What have you been up to?

SPEAKER_01 0:29

I have had one of the most social weeks in a long time. And that not even not even through planning. I just it felt like a whole quarter's worth of sort of events, evening commitments all hit one week.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Yeah. I I can't do it. I I get so exhausted when there's so many social commitments. Like I need to be at home by myself and have a bath and not speak to anyone.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

It just became a bit of a sick. Like I got the stage where I think I was out, I was out for three events during the week. I had three different things in the evenings. And then one day on the train platform, I bumped in someone I sort of kind of kind of knew and ended up having sort of a friendly chat in on the on the train. It's like this is I just need some time. At some stage in this week, I just need some time not to talk to anyone. That was not in my train time. I was like, I don't want, I just want to put my headphones in.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

So fair. Sometimes in my mind, if I'm wearing sunglasses, I'm invisible. And so, yeah. So when I'm out in the world, if I'm wearing sunglasses and I see someone I know, but I just don't have the energy on, in my head, they don't recognize me. So I don't have to say hi. Um so maybe you can use that trick for yourself next time. Yeah, out of control.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

Oh, because imagine just seeing that actually happening in real life, going, you just go, I can't see. It feels like imagine my son when he's doing hide and seek. Yeah. And if he closes his eyes, he's invisible. He's invisible.

SPEAKER_00 1:50

Yeah, I that's stuck. I never lost that. Just put sunglasses on and thought, I'm invisible.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

It makes hide and seek very fast. Like, where's Arthur? I can't see him. He's right in front of me. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. So we've got a great question from Lucy. Uh my team don't execute quickly enough. How do we get them to move faster?

SPEAKER_00 2:15

I think this is quite a classic founder gripe and anxiety. This comes up a lot in coaching at all stages of from like ideation all the way through to kind of hundreds of people in the scale up. The most consistent consistent pattern I've seen when someone is saying this, my team aren't executing fast enough, is that the team aren't aware of what the priorities are. And so I think there's kind of two things. There's the internal piece for the founder, and then there's the external piece in terms of setting up the conditions or the culture or the environment so that people are hyper-aware of what is most important. So big picture when people are like, my team aren't moving fast enough, we think structurally about like how have you architectured your culture so that it's set up to create alignment and clarity and awareness. So that can be everything from have you got a clear vision? Do the team know what they're moving towards, a form of goals, KPIs, OKRs, but like a system of clarity around this is the problems we're solving, these are the outputs we want to create. So there are some structural pieces you can do. And then the second piece is how are you helping people say no to what's not important? So, how do you get your team to be really discerning around what they do and don't spend their time on? Because ultimately, I generally think most you've hired typically like capable, smart, hungry um hustlers, especially early stages startup building. And so sometimes the, especially in the earlier stages, people can be kind of Sami knives. Like they're good, they're often good at lots of things. Maybe they're not like really focused experts. And so that can also lend itself to they can do loads of things and so they spread themselves quite thin. So I think it becomes even more essential to be like, how are we prioritizing? What are the key things and outputs that we want to create? So, yeah, in my experiences, if your team is not executing fast enough, it's because they're not aware of what's absolutely essential. And then I often hold up a mirror of like, where are you spread too thin? Where are you not executing on what's most essential? Where are you not owning the stretchy, harder goal? And that's when it becomes really interesting because as the founders start to focus on what's essential and let go of what's not, when the founders start to push themselves to focus on the things they're maybe not as good at, but they know they need to be focusing on when they upskill and they uplevel, you generally see that lift in the team. Um, but what do you see?

SPEAKER_01 4:39

I mean, I agree. I think it's a founder and a team thing. I think I says before, sort of if I ask my clients, is it what's the bigger problem? Is it you or the team? If they say it's if they say it's them, then often it's the team. And if they say it's the team, it's often them. Yes. Yes. I do think the biggest gift that you can give your team is that intentionality rather than being responsive. And so if the team I agreed, I think step one is always to look at yourself and go, how can I be doing this better? And I think one is being intentional rather than responsive, because if you're being responsive, you force your whole business to be responsive. So, how good are you about holding that clarity, planning, making sure everyone's clear, like what the next three months will look like as much as you can so that the team can operate at speed? Because I think with that responsive mindset, with lack of clarity, with a sense of things might change any stage, people stop committing to the action. Because, like, what's the point? Like, we can just wait this out, give it a week, something else be really important. Why why bother burning burning us out on this thing because it probably won't be the thing in a week's time? Yeah. So I mean that's quite an extreme example, but I think there's there's often an element of that at play. So if it can change, or if it's just too much, like there's no prioritization. It's like, oh, these 10 things are top priority. It's like that's not that's not really prioritizing, then, is it? It's just just saying we need to do lots. So I I do think coming back to that founder expectation of like how much is going to get done, how clear is it, how well sequenced is it. But often I do think there is a team element of has the team been set up for success? And it's like, so I've got this as no excuses framework looking at how the business operates top to bottom. And part of that is like going just acknowledging that often people are set up as a management and they've not been managed before, they might have been top performers, or you've got people coming in from outside managing differently. I think you can manage differently, but I think it's really useful to have a framework that everyone understands and everyone uses as a benchmark. Because the ma management is tricky and people often aren't very good at it. And as you're growing, suddenly you've got like yourself, you've got a management layer, and then you've got your sort of individual contributors, which just makes your business so much more complex. Like so you go from a lean business where it's just like you, like a top layer and a bottom layer, all of whom are kind of doing, and suddenly then you've got this new structure where like sort of infinitely more interactions. It's not really surprising that it starts going wrong, and we haven't really adjusted as leaders, yeah, and we haven't thought about what our whole management philosophy is or what our expectations are. Yeah. So I think I agree that structurally there's quite a lot of work to do. And like, what does a high performance business look like? So I think it's both. I think it's founder and structured, kind of like you said.

SPEAKER_00 7:30

I really love your point. It's simple, but I think it's so true. This intentional versus responsive. And I often see almost like a downward spiral when people have been in responsiveness for too long. And the same extreme can work on the other side of if you're so intentional that you're disconnected from reality, then you're building, it's almost like building a fake business, or you're like building a fake house of cards that's not really built on anything that's true. But that balance between it's almost like a rhythm between how do I, how do I be intentional enough to understand my current reality and understand where I'm going and have enough time to actually bring people on the journey with me so that I can be connected to the team and help them understand why we're going and why we're going there and how we're gonna get there and what they all think and the gear we're gonna need for the journey and all of that stuff. But equally, once once responsiveness gets the better of you, often I feel like the founders then chase it's almost like they're chasing everything and everyone, and suddenly it goes to herding cats. And I think that that's such a great point.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

And I think when I when I think about the clients I work with, probably saying for you, I really like working with founders who have drifted, who tend to drift too much into responsive. Because something I find very good is helping them get to intentional, have a simple plan. And actually, that responsiveness is is can often be driven by a sort of a tendency towards action.

SPEAKER_00 8:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:49

And I really like action-oriented founders. Yeah. But it's important to see how that action orientation taken too far can be dangerous for themselves, for the team, for the business as a whole. Yes. And actually, if you can balance that action orientation with like time to reflect, time to do, that's that can be a really great combination. But I do think there are some founders who are more prone to the intentionality and planning and less towards action. That can also be dangerous, you say, because then just a bit action paralysis, you're they're not happening. Yeah. But I think I'm less effective with those founders because I feel it's harder to push them towards action. I know other coaches are good at sort of that side of it. So I think it's also again finding going back to something previously, so a good match in terms of understanding where you are in terms of where you as a founder might tend to drift towards.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

Completely. And it also with this idea of like, how do I get my team to move faster on this point? I I sometimes come back to like slow is smooth and smooth is fast. And the intentionality is the slowing down, which sometimes people can feel like if I spent, I don't have time to plan, I don't have time to be intentional, I don't have time to gather my team. They just need to get it and they just need to move faster. And there's this it in some ways, when I get it, because it's the anxiety that's driving, we just need to get there. And and, but it's often the anxiety in the founder that's preventing them from communicating what they want to see in a way, or even owning what they want. Like sometimes they're scared of owning what they see as true because it means they have to own it and that's vulnerable. And so they just hope their team are going to answer the questions for them so that they don't have to worry about being wrong in their opinions. And so they can often be quite a bit baked in, but creating those pockets or those windows for intentional planning and reflection and consolidation so that you can act with more weight and gravitas and clarity, the team then feel that and they trust it more. And they're like, oh, you've got two hands on the wheel again. And and and things start to shift.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

I think it's a really good point, though. That's the idea of like almost giving away control of it. It's like it can be quite sometimes do it deliberately, sometimes you do it accidentally. It's like, oh, well, I'll respond to what my clients want, I'll respond to what my team wants, I'll respond to what my investors want. Outsource authority. And particularly when you're busy, you're outsourcing authority and planning. It's like it's just actually easier to be responsive and go, okay, I'll just, I'll just organize my time based on what's urgent, which essentially is abdicating all sense of responsibility and ownership. And that I've we said like no time to plan. For me, that is the time when you most need to plan because you need to get back in control and back on top. And it doesn't even have to take that long, but it can feel like a massive task when you're out of control. Totally. But it does come back to do you are you willing to take control? I think like or is it kind of comforting to think, oh, it's slightly victor mindset, it's it's outside my control, it's not my fault.

SPEAKER_00 11:50

Therefore, it's not my fault. Yeah. If it's outside my control, it's therefore not my fault. It's my team's fault, it's my investors' fault, it's my board's fault. They all made the wrong decisions. They all and the I think sometimes just the awareness that we're in that is what triggers people to get out of it. Because you you actually most founders are driven by freedom, they're driven by responsibility, they want to create a world in which they want to live, they want to surround themselves with people they choose, they actually want to be agents. But all human beings, when you feel scared, it's it's easy to slip into victim mode because it outsources responsibility. But also in the same breath, you outsource your freedom by outsourcing your responsibility. And that's sometimes when I feel like when founders become aware of that, they then click into like, oh fuck, I don't want to be like that. That's that's not what's going on here. This is my company. I want to have two hands back on the wheel and it re-instigates that responsibility in them.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

Yeah. And then reconnects them to their business. Exactly. Exactly. I think giving up control is both comforting the short term, but also does disconnect you from your business because it's no longer your business. And I think re-re-acknowledging that you want to be in control, re-coming up with a plan, making decisions again, suddenly like I'm connected to my purpose again, I'm connected to my vision. And it unlocks sort of a higher level of performance.

SPEAKER_00 13:03

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Nice.

SPEAKER_01 13:06

Well, what would be what would be your takeaway from this? Then we'll wrap up.

SPEAKER_00 13:09

Interesting. My key takeaway is that the almost like infinity between intentionality and responsiveness, and how how we need both. Second key takeaway is what we just talked about at the end of how do you, as a founder, when you've been in a season of disconnected from your business, and also it's whether it's like disconnected and blaming, how do you reconnect and like retake responsibility and move past like any fears that are blocking you from doing that so that you can then you can refocus on what's important. You can also then help your team focus on what's important and then perform with much more power and speed. Those those are my takeaways. Um, what are you taking away?

SPEAKER_01 13:50

I don't think I've ever worked with a founder who hasn't raised this my team to execute quickly enough.

unknown 13:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:57

It's so true.

SPEAKER_01 13:59

And I'm sure that's matched by a whole every if you ever actually talk to their team, like my founder's expectations are unrealistic. Yeah. Um, so I think it's a dynamic that's that's never gonna go away. But there is actually a lot you can control in this. Nice. Well, that's it for another week. Thanks for listening. Remember to hit subscribe, and we will see you next week for another episode. Happy scaling.