This document provides advice from various entrepreneurs on optimizing a team's productivity. It discusses assembling a winning team by focusing on character over technical skills. It emphasizes the importance of clear onboarding, putting people first through equal treatment, leading with a disciplined vision, cultivating an entrepreneurial culture, and maintaining a scrappy culture through scale. Key recommendations include transparent communication, empowering problem-solving, celebrating contributions, and fighting bureaucracy.

1. Powered by
How to Optimize Your
Team’s Productivity

2. This presentation consists of insights inspired by
33voices® interviews with Jenna Abdou.

3. Table of Contents
Page 4
Page 17
Page 22
Page 29
Page 36
Page 56
Page 64
Assemble a Team of Winners - Jean Brownhill Lauer, Sweeten
Onboard like a Pro - Matthew Faustman and Mason Blake, UpCounsel
Put People First - Saman Rahmanian, Managed by Q
Lead with Vision - Randy Ross, Cinematique
Cultivate a Culture of Entrepreneurship - Anna M. Counselman, Upstart
Maintain Your Culture Through Scale - Kelsey Meyer, Influence & Co.
Credits

4. Jean Brownhill Lauer
@Sweeten_home
Co-founder and CEO of Sweeten
Assemble a Team of Winners

5. “No matter how many books you read, or the
number of CEOs who tell you about it, your first
hires are so critical. They are going to embody
the very best parts of you, your culture, and also,
the worst parts.” Be cautious about “mirroring
your own work habits and personality…
Screen to compliment and correct.”

6. If you only remember one thing about hiring:
Character > Technical skills

7. Identify these three
traits in new team members:

8. Identify these three
traits in new team members:
A winner’s mindset. “They don’t always
have to be right. They want to win.”

9. Identify these three
traits in new team members:
A natural disposition to help others.

10. Identify these three
traits in new team members.
A high level of self awareness.
No assholes. No ego.

11. Implement an extensive hiring process with
phone, video, and multiple in person interviews.
Understand how an individual fits in your
culture by inviting them to a company social
and watching them interact with the team.

12. Your most important goal as a leader is to
ensure that your message is clearly heard.
“It doesn’t matter how you say something.
It matters how people hear it.”
Ask team members to explain how they
interpreted your conversation to be certain that
you’ve clearly articulated your message.

13. “At a startup, you manage people to not only
work effectively inside of the structure. They’re
building the structure as they are inside of it.”

14. Combat uncertainty with a rigorous testing
culture. Make it a core organizational tenet that
each experiment is a source of data. Evaluate
individuals on effort and execution, not results.

15. Maximize transparency by using an
app like Waggl that enables team members to
anonymously submit questions to the CEO.

16. Empower individuals to be themselves at work.
“People don’t show up with their best ideas if
they aren’t happy or if they don’t feel like they
can come to work as their whole selves. You
need them to come in with everything so
you can get their very best.”

17. Matthew Faustman
& Mason Blake
@MatthewFaustman
Co-founders of UpCounsel
Onboard like a Pro
@Mase

18. Be obsessive about making the right hires.
“A great hire can 10x the organization…If you
are going to bring on the best people you
have to make sure that you’re setting
them up for success.”

19. As a founder, relinquish the idea that
an individual, regardless of how talented, will
join your team and be successful on their own.
On every new hire’s first day, have an intimate
conversation about the company’s vision, how
you’re going to get there, and the direct role
he or she will play achieving it.

20. Your early dialogue should map out a clear
set of goals for an individual to achieve during
their first week and month. This not only
enables them to experience early success,
it provides a safe gateway for them to
contribute to team conversations.

21. Make intellectual honesty a
core value. Encourage team members
to share ideas, openly disagree, and
engage in healthy debate.
“It’s not just one or two people making the
decision. It’s the company as a whole.”

22. Saman Rahmanian
@Saman325
Co-founder of Managed by Q
Put People First

23. As a founder, your most important
job is that everyone in the company -
whether they’re a senior executive,
software engineer, or intern - is treated equally.

24. As a founder, your most important
job is that everyone in the company -
whether they’re a senior executive,
software engineer, or intern - is treated equally.
“We wanted to make sure that everybody gets
the same quality of treatment and experience.
Everyone has the same types of benefits
and expectations of being an employee
at Managed by Q.”

25. Make it clear that no job is beneath any
member of your business - Including you.
At Managed by Q, “Everybody cleans.”

26. “The reason that everybody cleans is to
understand the work that the majority of
our employees do; To feel first hand how it
works is tremendously important. Knowing
the experience enables you to build better
products. It grounds you and sets you on the
same level. Nobody is too good to clean.”

27. Develop a broader vision for your business.
“I think of Q less as a corporate office and
more as a center where we can start
the beginning of a community life.”

28. Nurture meaningful relationships by hosting
fun gatherings for team members and their
families. Celebrate recent company milestones,
outstanding performances, and upcoming
features and announcements.

29. Randy Ross
@CinematiqueHQ
Co-founder and CEO of Cinematique
Lead with Vision

30. The only way to change an industry is to
create “a disciplined roadmap to maximize
the potential of your idea.”

31. Be organized, be compartmentalized,
and have a clear understanding of your
fundamental goals. Don’t let media
and trends impact your focus.

32. As a founder, “you have to make sure
that you sustain as a company. That you’re
still alive tomorrow. It’s a very practical idea
of survival that may mean you can’t execute
on a big idea you’ve been working on
for the last six months for two years.”

33. When you believe in and promote an integral
purpose you “allow team members to get real
about ideas they’re personally attached to.”
Constantly reiterate your “undying integrity
to your fundamental concept.”

34. While transparency should be a vital tenet
of your culture be conscious about sharing
information that will cause your team members
unnecessary stress. Ask yourself: Will my
team lose focus if they know about this?

35. Be honest about the reality of innovation.
“It’s one thing to put it in your marketing
materials that you are an innovative company.
It’s another thing to sit in a room and say that
something is not good enough. It’s not out of
the box enough. To ask, is this really up to our
standards? That’s innovating, and that’s hard.”

36. Anna M. Counselman
Co-founder and Head of Operations
at Upstart
Cultivate a Culture of Entrepreneurship
@amongayt

37. “Strive to build a culture of entrepreneurship.
It’s not the type of culture where you
go and tell your manager to fix it for you.
It’s a self-sustaining business where everyone
is constantly looking to make things better.”

38. Demonstrate your culture
of entrepreneurship by explaining to
new team members, and reinforcing
to currents ones, that if they find a problem
they should actively work to solve it.

39. “No matter how small, you should think
of every opportunity as a chance to
prove how good you are.”

40. Encourage your team member
to go to the product team first.

41. Encourage your team member
to go to the product team first.
“Most problems should get solved on
the product level before they become
operational problems.”

42. Innate collaboration between departments
implements a tight feedback loop, leading to
fast execution. Visible improvements to the
product will motivate team members and create
a “self-cleaning mechanism of improvement.”

43. Balance speed and sustainability.
“Speed isn’t about making people work
crazy hard all the time.” It’s about emboldening
individuals to make fast decisions.

44. Remove roadblocks to empower individuals
to make judgment calls, test, and iterate.

45. As a founder, it’s your responsibility to celebrate
individuals unique contributions and provide
opportunities for them to advance in the
organization based on their career path.

46. “It’s not a one size fits all approach.
As a manager, you need to tailor
it to the right person.”

47. Acknowledging and rewarding individuals
in the way that resonates with them not only
inspires their future behavior, it empowers
them to be champions of change for
the rest of the team to follow.

48. While speed is standard at startups,
remember you won’t be sprinting forever.

49. While speed is standard at startups,
remember you won’t be sprinting forever.
“There are moments when everyone is
sprinting really hard with super aggressive
timelines and burning the midnight oil.
They come in spurts, and then you have
a lull with breathing room.”

50. Show don’t tell. “You can’t say ‘I want the
company to be nimble,’ and then have it be
nimble. You have to set an example. You have
to act nimble. You have to make fast decisions.
You have to launch things quickly. You
can’t build consensus forever
before moving forward.”

51. “We ask our employees to be the
change they want to see.”

52. Follow these three principles
to stay scrappy through scale:

53. Follow these three principles
to stay scrappy through scale:
Hire the right team members. Translation:
You want ‘Get shit done’ kind of people.

54. Follow these three principles
to stay scrappy through scale:
Ask those people to maintain the culture.
You can’t be what you can’t see.

55. Follow these three principles
to stay scrappy through scale:
“Be vigilant about fighting bureaucracy!”
Don’t let decision-making committees
and rigid processes override your
culture of entrepreneurship.

56. Kelsey Meyer
@Kelsey_M_Meyer
Co-founder and President of
Influence & Co.
Maintain Your Culture Through Scale

57. As your team scales, be extremely
intentional with the way you organize company
activities. Connect each new team member
with a veteran in your organization who will
actively make them feel welcome.

58. Redefine delegation as ownership by
empowering individuals to acknowledge,
ideate, and execute on problems they
recognize in your business.

59. Delegation isn’t assigning people busy work.
It’s telling them: “I want you to rise to the
occasion and help me solve this problem.”

60. The more your organization grows the less
likely you are to be the right individual to solve
a problem. Empower the individuals who are
closest to the issues to take action.

61. “Your job as a founder is to enable people to
do their jobs right. If your team members are
getting recognized for great work you’re
doing a good job supporting them.”

62. No matter how large your team is your
strengths as a founder will multiply throughout
the business. Be maniacal about coaching
your team members on the good parts of your
leadership style and connecting them with
alternative individuals and resources that
can supplement your weaknesses.

63. Genuine gratitude is the most meaningful way
you can support your team. Make it a habit by
recognizing stand out team members each
week. Try hand writing two thank you notes to
team members who went above and beyond.

64. When was the last time you
thanked someone on your team?
Show your appreciation today.

65. If you have a question, submit it to
33voices Q&A for a direct answer from
one of our founders or thought leaders.

66. LEARN MORE

67. CONNECT WITH US!
Tell us what you think
Jenna@33voices.com
Presentation by Chase Jennings
Insights by Jenna Abdou