Chris Hicken’s Post

🤔 Ever notice that when people like how things are done, it's called "Best Practices," but when they don't, it's the "Status Quo"? Food for thought. 🍽️

The battle between MICROMANAGING vs BEING IN THE DETAILS. I've often heard executives say, "my job is strategy, not being in the weeds." While it's great to avoid micromanagement, a leader who isn't familiar with the details offers limited value to their organization. Is there a difference between "being in the details" and "micromanaging"? Absolutely. 🔍 BEING IN THE DETAILS Motivation is rooted in high trust, strategic alignment, quality assessment, and coaching. Behaviors include stepping in to help as needed, facilitating detailed problem-solving discussions, and frequently delegating tasks. Examples: * Asking thoughtful questions to ensure goals are aligned. * Providing constructive feedback while giving autonomy in execution. * Clarifying expectations and outcomes without dictating every step. * Being available for support and coaching when needed. ⚠️ MICROMANAGING Motivation often stems from a need for control or a lack of trust. Behaviors include constantly checking on status, giving rigid instructions with little room for creativity, and hesitating to delegate. Examples: * Requiring frequent, unnecessary status reports. * Reworking tasks already completed by team members. * Providing step-by-step instructions for simple tasks. * Requesting to be cc'd on every email and attending all meetings. When a manager succumbs to micromanagement, it strips away the team's sense of ownership, saps their motivation, and fosters an unhealthy dependence on the manager for every decision. The manager might feel good that they're in control, but they sacrifice the total output and talent of the team. A good manager needs to be "in the details" to course-correct early, offer coaching, assess work quality, and maintain alignment across teams. The team will feel both ownership and support from their manager. So, ask yourself: Are you "in the details" enough, or are you micromanaging? Tag your boss if they need to see this 😂 #Management #DetailsMatter #WorkCulture

When resources are tight and workloads are high, it's easy to fall into the trap of pushing the team to work harder, saying things like: * This isn't the place for a 9-to-5 mindset. * We need to double down on our efforts! * If you're not willing to give 110%, this isn't the place for you. But here's the reality: these blanket statements often backfire, leading to responses like: ❌ I'm not working harder just to make you rich. ❌ My value is tied to my skills and results, not hours clocked. ❌ Why should I grind just to make my boss look good? ❌ Working more won't help me reach my personal goals. The result? Demotivated high-performers and disengaged teams. And those who are quietly quitting? Unfazed. So, what's the solution? The best managers measure team productivity with objective metrics (activity, quality, impact). They use those metrics to have targeted discussions with under performers to either coach them to improve or exit them from the business. Want to dive deeper into how to measure productivity? Drop a comment below, and I'll share a detailed guide on measuring productivity objectively across any team. 💡 #Leadership #Productivity #PerformanceManagement #Management

🚀 Team Dynamics: Where Does Each Member Land? 🚀 Understanding the unique traits and motivations of your team members is crucial for effective leadership. Here’s a quick reference to identify and motivate each type: 🌟 STAR 🌟 * The top 10% driving your company forward with their results-oriented mindset. * Self-motivated, they generally don't need much praise recognition. How to Motivate: Give them autonomy and ongoing career advancement 💪 WORKHORSE 💪 * They may take longer to learn, but once they do, they become a powerhouse. * Often the torchbearers of company culture, they are diligent and reliable. How to Motivate: Recognize their effort and ensure they take time off to recharge. 🛋️ LAZY INNOVATOR 🛋️ * They try to avoid work whenever possible, and a result... * They find creative, elegant solutions that require significantly less effort. How to Motivate: Reward their impact, not hours clocked. 🚪 EXIT 🚪 * These are the quiet quitters, putting in just enough effort to not get fired. * They don't contribute to team goals or culture. How to Manage: Exit them respectfully, acknowledging that it's either a hiring mismatch or a motivational failure. ------------------------- 👉 Knowing these profiles will help you tailor your management approach and build a more cohesive, motivated team. Is there another profile that's missing? #Management #TeamManagement #TalentOptimization #WorkplaceCulture

One of the simplest ways to keep your team aligned and productive is by clearly defining how decisions are made. Yet, surprisingly few teams actually do it! Traditional decision-making models like RACI, RAPID, and DARE focus on who is included in the decision-making process but leave out other crucial guidelines. A comprehensive decision-making framework should define: ✔️ What you value in a 'good' decision ✔️ Who gets to make decisions ✔️ The process decision-makers should follow ✔️ How you use data ✔️ How you disagree respectfully Here's an example framework to consider: ------------------------------------------- 1️⃣ We ensure every decision has one owner 2️⃣ State the problem in 1 sentence, and ensure it aligns with a company goal 3️⃣ Determine the decision type and proceed accordingly * Two-way doors (easily reversed decisions): fast, imperfect decisions are better than slow, perfect decisions * One-way doors (hard to reverse decisions): prioritize protecting customer experience, brand, and talent 4️⃣ Seek the best possible data to propose a solution: Great: Customer or business data + feedback (surveys, dashboards) Good: Credible external data (competitors, case studies) Better: Team experience Worst: Personal experience 5️⃣ When it's time to make a decision: * Whenever possible, choose the simplest solution and iterate * Clearly define what success looks like with dates 6️⃣ How to disagree with a decision: * Challenge decisions anytime by proposing solutions with better data * Disagree and commit to decisions when better data is not available * Your boss can escalate decisions they disagree with, to a tie-breaker 3rd party ------------------------------------------- Key Insight: In this framework, the team acknowledges that personal experience has almost no value in company decisions. Personal opinions are easily overruled—a powerful standard that keeps decision-making objective and aligned. What frameworks have you used to help your team make healthy, consistent decisions? #DecisionMaking #TeamAlignment #Management #Productivity

Honestly I didn't "get it" until I saw a full eclipse for the first time today. While other people's description perfectly prepared me for what I was going to see, they didn't capture the awe and emotion of the experience. Made me wonder if this is why we fail to describe our products to our customers. We describe the 'eclipse' (the features and how it works), but the thing that gets people hooked is the story, emotion, and experience we provide. #brand #storytelling #eclipse

Every company has core values. Most of them are useless. Values like "Integrity, Transparency, Scrappiness" are great in theory, but if employees don't know what behaviors are expected to live up to those values, then the values get ignored. Core values, when done well, significantly improve the quality of team work, collaboration, and results for a company/team while increasing employee retention (via a better culture). After leading, coaching, and investing in dozens of companies, I've spotted some trends that the most successful leaders adopt. And this isn't just for CEOs! Any manager can do this with their team or department! ----------------------------- GIVE CONCRETE EXAMPLES ----------------------------- It's critical to give employees examples of how to live up to a core value. For example one of my personal core values that I've carried across to several companies is to "Act quickly", which included 4 key behaviors: * Ensure every decision has one owner [link to doc with owners for all major responsibilities] * Decision owners make decisions using a specific process [documented 4 step process] * When we disagree with a decision owner there's an opportunity to disagree gracefully [another documented process] * We follow clear meeting guidelines [best practices to reduce total meetings] With these clear examples, any employee knows exactly what's expected and also how to work in a way that's inline with the company or team values. ----------------------------- FREQUENTLY ASK IF WE'RE LIVING UP TO VALUES ----------------------------- This is a way for the Manager or Leader to monitor the health of the core values. One of the easiest ways to do this is set up a weekly or bi-weekly pulse program (theysaid.io does this out of the box). Here's how it works: * As part of a weekly pulse program, ensure that 1 question ties back to Core Values * This question should be a ranking of how the company is living up to its Core Values on a 1-5 scale and should provide an open-ended prompt for feedback to leadership * Collate responses, and focus company energy on core values that received the lowest score overall * Regularly share results back to employees with a plan for how to improve, based on employee comments This keeps a continuous feedback loop between employees and managers and makes everyone feel like owners of the company culture. ------------- Finish reading in the article below 👇 Also post below if you've found any secrets to unleashing values and making them a core part of your team culture. #leadership #culture #corevalues #productivity

Want to give a shout out to a few women that deserve a million kudos for how awesome they are: Sheeva Ghassemian - one of ClickUp's secret weapons. Sheeva does an incredible job organizing, driving urgency, building relationships, and just getting an enormous amount of stuff done for the company. Amy Long - an entrepreneur turned tech exec. Amy strikes the perfect balance of strong ambition while still be incredibly nurturing. It's why she's godmother to my kids! Brook Perry - one of the best marketers on the planet. She's creative, thoughtful about market trends, takes initiative, and levels up every company she joins! Lihong Hicken - my wife and CEO of TheySaid. She's got it all. Sales skills, Marketing Skills, Customer Success skills, and most recently CEO skills. And she's decided one of our kids will be the first President of Mars. Is there anything she can't do? ❤️ Thanks and appreciation to all of the wonderful women I work with!

I've never really loved "project management" apps. They're the place where we do low value stuff like update task statuses, make notes for upper management, and pretend to organize work. The high value stuff is all the context and collaboration that happens during projects. That's the *real* work. ClickUp is building the thing I aspired to build at Nuffsaid - a single place where all that real work happens - docs, chat, projects, dashboards. It's why I decided to sell Nuffsaid to ClickUp earlier this year. Today ClickUp launched 3.0, a mind boggling large upgrade with an almost endless list of new features that allow ClickUp to deliver on the promise of being the place where all your work, people and data connect together. Check it out here! https://clickup.com/v3

CEOs are taking a beating on social media right now, so I'm going to balance it out by calling out an exceptional CEO - Nick Mehta. There's a lot I could call out: his constant positive energy, his passion for customers, his obsession around building a great product... But the thing I want to call out, that I appreciate most about Nick, is how he treats people. These are some things I've observed Nick do over the past couple years: * He goes out of his way to connect people and the community * He coaches countless founders * He ALWAYS defends his team when anyone criticizes them * He's kind and tries to be helpful when people ask for it * He easily empathizes with people's problems He really is a role model. Someone I want my kids to meet. Anyone in a post-sale role should be proud to have Nick as their champion. Thank you for everything you've done for the community and for the CEO role Nick! #ceo #customersuccess