Spring cleaning: Time to toss this bad management habit

I founded a startup, and I’m still the CEO.

I have put in ridiculous hours at times. I’ve made sacrifices I would never ask my team to make. It’s put a strain on my spouse at times, such as the time I left for a nearly two week trip while she was left with a baby and another child who was failing miserably at potty training.

(If you ever find yourself in this situation, here’s a hint: don’t leave). 

Our company was founded six years ago, and I’ve been doing this full time for about five years. In some ways, we should be more mature than we are as a company, but at the end of 2020, we scrapped our entire business model and started over. We had to rebuild a startup within our startup and it created a fresh tsunami of chaos. It was new wave after wave of adversity. We’re still working through it all.

All of this orchestrated chaos can be hell on teams. Having been through plenty of these stressful scenarios, I know the impacts it can have at home. One of my top priorities is making sure these high impact moments are brief and infrequent. One of the worst things you can do for culture is allowing startup bedlam to take root—it will always takeover like a weed.

I am very proud to say that since founding our company, we’ve only had two people ever leave.* One of them came back within 90 days.

Today I have a few examples of times we’ve been there, and how we’ve handled it. Implementing a few of these easy tactics can avoid mutiny and atrophy.

Instead, you can use adversity to build loyalty.

The dangers of working in excess

Long hours are effective for powering through a project, but burning the candle at both ends for a long-term period is not the badge of honor the Hustle crowd would have you think. You’ll eventually get burned.

I stay hyper aware of how much time my team is putting in. If we have people working late, I know there is a ripple effect that hits family members.

There is no such thing as harmlessly "working late."

• Working late means planned homemade meals are canceled.

• Working late means plans to see a movie, go for a walk or even a simple trip to Costco are dead in the water.

• Working late means the team member's spouse had to pick up dog or kids duty or go to pick up the car from the mechanic solo.

These small changes in day-to-day tasks have high impacts on personal wellbeing. They aren’t small ripples for your team—they’re negative force multipliers on a marriage or self care.

I keep this in mind anytime we plan an evening or weekend event, and every time I ask someone to travel. If I drive by our office late at night and see a team member’s truck there, I will text that person begging them to go home and see their spouse.

I’m not writing this to brag about myself. This is an example of what leaders should do—it's common sense. Yet I've seen many who would simply say "thanks for the hard work" in front of the team, or, worse, nothing at all. Instead of normalizing a healthy schedule, leaders commend one person’s sacrifices in front of their team, which says “this is what kind of behavior is expected here.”

It’s a dangerous game.

Work sacrifices have real world impact on marriages and friendships, and I try to make sure that we give more than we take away. I know the names of my team members’ spouses and kids. I try to know what they like to do on the weekend. It helps me stay grounded, because I know what I’m asking them to walk away from in when we have to travel or work on the weekend.

Now, make no mistake—sometimes we just gotta dig in and do it. The company needs us, too, and great teams get that.

We're all sacrificing because this is a startup—we don't have infrastructure or manpower that big companies might. We all knew exactly what we were signing up for when we went all in.

But even still, it wears thin on startup teams when leaders:

• Ask too often

• Are not grateful for employees helping the company on THEIR time

• Ask for time you really didn't need

• Ask for too much time at once

It adds up, and eventually, starts to multiply.

Solutions can be simple

My cofounder Zack and I aren't afraid to give back to our team any time we ask heavily of them. We'll make sure their bellies are full of free food and drink if we take over even something as simple as a lunch hour, for example.

When trade show season wraps, I give my seasoned travelers an extra day off when we get back. They don’t have to log it in our HR system or anything—just let me know when, and go. No questions asked.

We commanded our entire team’s time to pull off our first outdoor festival (Send It Slam) last summer. Some even traveled in for the event. Once the festival was complete, we shut down the following Friday to thank the team for its work on the event. This applied to our remote employees who couldn't make it, because it took the whole team to pull it off.

Remember, people can love what they do, but they work to live. If you ask too much of them, and flip that paradigm on its head, it is nearly impossible to flip back. You'll be on a path to high turnover and bad morale.

Be kind. Be mindful. Be human.

3 easy ways to find balance

1) Don’t celebrate the time, celebrate the work completed

Leaders who commend people merely for working late or on weekends are putting the wrong behaviors on a pedestal. That kind of leadership is sending a message to your entire team that working more is what is rewarded. Celebrate jobs well done, not hours logged.

2) Give back

You won’t always be able to do it, but when possible, give an employee time back. If someone has to travel over the weekend, tell them to head out early on Friday. Or heck, give them the whole day. This isn’t eating into the company’s time—it’s resetting the work/life balance scale and showing you see the person, not just the task list. This is a key tactic to avoid burn out.

3) Delight your team

Small gestures of appreciation go a long way towards loyalty. When my team travels for our longest show (we’re gone for a collective 14 days for a 9 day show), I ship cookies to their spouses and kids as a small thank you for sharing their partner with us. This small token of appreciation provides some delight at home while our team mates are gone. Most companies chalk travel up to “being part of the job,” but a little note saying “I know this is hard—thank you for your help” shows we’re not most companies. Don’t overlook chances to show your team they’re making sacrifices for a company that cares about them, not just a job well done.

If you enjoyed, please share on LinkedIn and give me an @! I’d love to read your thoughts and engage with you there.

*Leave on their own. We’ve fired many bad fits along the way. 

Who I’m listening to: Luke Bell

What I’m reading: “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”

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