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If you start every day with 'what's our priority for today' - that indicates a lack of planning, a word not mentioned in this article. Running around like a ch

If you start every day with 'what's our priority for today' - that indicates a lack of planning, a word not mentioned in this article. Running around like a chicken sans head is another way to describe this kind of leadership. Now if you have a 'priority meeting' once a week (at most, once a month might really be better) in which tasks are decided on and workloads are passed out, then people will be able to concentrate on those tasks. Maybe have a once-a-week sit-down meeting with individuals to monitor progress, offer encouragement, solve problems that might be holding things up, etc. I sometimes wonder if smartphone culture is at least partially to blame for a tendency towards an inability to plan things in advance. Smartphones make it easy for people to constantly change their schedules, make last-minute arrangements, and they also promote the immediate gratification mentality.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
> Now if you have a 'priority meeting' once a week (at most, once a month might really be better) in which tasks are decided on and workloads are passed out, then people will be able to concentrate on those tasks. That all sounds nice and good in theory, but I think everyone who has worked at a startup knows how difficult that can be in practice, primarily because you have lots of unexpected issues and challenges come up on a day-to-day basis, and at a startup (as opposed to a large, established company) there is rarely spare capacity to deal with those emergent issues. Every startup I've ever worked at certainly had weekly or biweekly sprint plannings, and monthly status checks, and quarterly planning. That didn't really make it any easier to solve the constant prioritization struggle of the strategic vs. the day-to-day.
adverbly 5y ago
> If you start every day with 'what's our priority for today' - that indicates a lack of planning How much experience do you have at very early stage startups? From my personal experience, things are often very chaotic prior to product-market fit. It is wasteful to plan too far in advance because there are so many uncertainties. There are too many teams that spend a whole lot of time feeling productive while scheduling and planning, but in reality they aren't actually getting s** done. Not saying this is always the case - it depends on the product/industry/tech, but getting things done without a clear plan is a very advantageous trait for early stage founders.
throwaway98797 5y ago
pre market product fit this is a disastrous approach
derfabianpeter 5y ago
Starting your day with „what’s your priority today“ is the basis of many engineering orgs these days. Most of the time it’s not a lack of planning but a desire to overplan that leads to these daily introspectives.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

> Now if you have a 'priority meeting' once a week (at most, once a month might really be better) in which tasks are decided on and workloads are passed out, then people will be able to concentrate on those tasks. That all sounds nice and good in theory, but I think everyone who has worked at a startup knows how difficult that can be in practice, primarily because you have lots of unexpected issues and challenges come up on a day-to-day basis, and at a startup (as opposed to a large, established company) there is rarely spare capacity to deal with those emergent issues. Every startup I've ever worked at certainly had weekly or biweekly sprint plannings, and monthly status checks, and quarterly planning. That didn't really make it any easier to solve the constant prioritization struggle of the strategic vs. the day-to-day.

adverbly 5y ago

> If you start every day with 'what's our priority for today' - that indicates a lack of planning How much experience do you have at very early stage startups? From my personal experience, things are often very chaotic prior to product-market fit. It is wasteful to plan too far in advance because there are so many uncertainties. There are too many teams that spend a whole lot of time feeling productive while scheduling and planning, but in reality they aren't actually getting s** done. Not saying this is always the case - it depends on the product/industry/tech, but getting things done without a clear plan is a very advantageous trait for early stage founders.

throwaway98797 5y ago

pre market product fit this is a disastrous approach

derfabianpeter 5y ago

Starting your day with „what’s your priority today“ is the basis of many engineering orgs these days. Most of the time it’s not a lack of planning but a desire to overplan that leads to these daily introspectives.