THE STARTUP CHAT

Steli:

Hey, everybody, this is Steli Efti.

Hiten:

This is Hiten Shah.

Steli:

In today’s episode of The Startup Chat, we’re gonna talk about how to deal  with people on your team that are breaking the rules or disobey you or do  exactly the opposite of what you’re telling them to do. Here’s why I want to  talk to you about this, Hiten. I got an email yesterday from a sales manager.  He was basically telling me that he’s having this challenge. He has this sales person  on the team and the sales person seems to be kind of just like constantly  wanting to do the exact opposite of what the sales manager is telling the entire  team to do and so as an example, he shared many examples, but one example  that he shared was that he basically … They had a team meeting and he  told people that moving forward, they should not demo more than four features in the  product in the first online demo they do because it’s shown that when it’s too  many features that are being demoed in the first call, it kind of is overwhelming  and is not getting good results. What does everybody do? Everybody follows his advice and  just starts limiting the amount of features they are demoing, but then this person, this  sales person was demoing 10, 11 features and basically going around telling the team, “Hey,  I just had a demo and I demoed 11 features and it went amazing and  I think the more you demo, the better.” It’s basically just promoting and shouting out  to everybody that you did the exact opposite of what was told to her and  that it’s working really, really great. Now, on top of her apparently performing that way  in terms of always going the opposite direction of what was told to her, she’s  also under performing. Her general quota, she only hits whatever 60, 70% of her quote  and she’s not doing as well as the rest of the team. This sales manager  was basically asking, “Hey, how do I deal with this? I think the person has  potential, the person is definitely talented, but it’s getting really disruptive and difficult. What would  you advise to do?” I thought it’s kind of an interesting challenge to have. Doesn’t  matter if you’re a sales manager or a marketing manager, you have somebody on your  team, or if you are the founder or CEO and somebody, the overall company is potentially very strong fashion going the opposite direction of what you wanted them to do  or what you told the team to do. How do you deal with those situations?  I thought it might make fascinating topic for us to talk about.

Hiten:

Yeah. I like to really figure out, just like in most situations, I really like  to figure out why. Want to figure out why, my first advice for this person  would be like, “Why do you think she’s doing that?” That’s number one. Number two,  and asking just the person who’s emailing me right that wants the advice, the person  that emailed you, the second question I go for on that would be have you  talked to her about it? What has she said about it? Because, this could just  be someone who’s generally has a certain personality, maybe very excitable, very excited about having  a great call or whatever, or might not be a cultured fit, might not really  be willing to follow the rules, but there’s such a myriad of reasons why this  person might be doing that and making an assumption about the person, even based on  behavior, might not be as good as literally sitting the person down, not having a  talking to with her, but literally speaking to her as a human to human and  saying, “Hey, what’s going on? I noticed this pattern or this thing.” I like calling  these things patterns if they’re repetitive and really trying to figure out what this person  was thinking or what’s going on in their head. Clearly some language like clearly, I’ve  been telling the team not to do what you’re telling the team to do and  you seel to have a great call doing that but what that’s doing is causing  the team to be confused as to what to do, right?

Steli:

Right.

Hiten:

That’s not what we want. Just an explanation and things like that. Honestly, my gut  feeling tells me that this person is just not necessarily a good fit for the  team and doesn’t really get the process that’s in place and want to follow it.

Steli:

Yeah, that’s funny. My first reaction was fairly similar. To me, in these types of  situations, the why and the how really matter. What is the reason why this person  is doing this really matters. Some people, and sitting down and [inaudible 00:04:53] conversation is  definitely, you should not be guessing. At some point, especially in this situation when he  is the manager, the first few times this happens, there should be a conversation, an  [inaudible 00:05:06] conversation just like you mentioned where sits down and just tries to understand  why. Why is this happening? What’s the perspective that this person has? What’s the motivation?  What drives this person to act in this particular way? To me, there’s good reasons  and bad reasons, right? Good reasons, obviously, to me is anytime a person is passionate  about a specific idea or an approach and just wants to champion it to the  degree where they get some data or some more proof that they might be right  to get back to the team versus some people just habitually like to be in  opposition or they get a kick out of sticking it to the man, to the  proverbial man or showing everybody that they don’t care, showing everybody how much of a  renegade or how much of a rebel they are. Some people just like to be  contrarians. There’s nothing against that. That can be an interesting person, but it can be also incredibly disruptive. Some people, the reason why they do the opposite or use that  they just think that their ideas are always better and they just can’t adopt somebody  else’s approach or idea. To me, those are really bad reasons versus if you truly  care so much that either you’re so passionate about the idea, not so much that  it’s your idea, that you want to move on, and then the how is also  important. I use somebody that when you disagree with whatever your CEO, your manager, whoever  it is, are you gonna be somebody that is going to be complaining and whining  about this and constantly talking about it and constantly just confusing everybody else, or if  you honestly disagree and you can’t convince your manager in a conversation, shut the fuck  up. You go and you take a little bit of action to generate some results  and then you bring that, those results back to the manager and go, “Hey, I  know that you said we should do A, I really believe B could also be  a viable option, so I went ahead and did a little test and here’s the  numbers. I just wanted to give you more data, more information so you can decide  what’s best for the team.” If you take action to generate insights and data and  results and enrich the conversation in the team, to me, that’s very different than if  you’re a person that when you disagree with something, your manager says you just complain  and whine and argue about it all day long. The why, the how really matters a lot, but ultimately, I went back and forth with this guy yesterday in email  about this and apparently, he has had a few “softer” conversations where at first he  was just like, “Here is why she was doing this and what she’s thinking about  all of this.” Apparently her answers to this were that she just didn’t believe that  he was right with some of the directions that he was giving to the sales  team and that she was thinking that his approach is not the right approach for  everybody and she just wants to be an individual and have her own way of  doing things, but apparently he was giving me some examples that I’m not gonna be  able to share in the [inaudible 00:08:35], but apparently I think the conclusion we were  getting to in the conversation was that maybe it’s just part of her personality and  then it’s really tough. He was asking if somebody is that type of personality, what  can you do to coach them and manage them out of it? Honestly, I’m sure  that it’s worth the amount of energy and effort co completely change a human if  it’s that big of a part of their personality. It might just be better to  help them find a team or place where they can be their full self and  it’s totally aligned with the culture and how the company wants to operate versus trying  to change her or change somebody, right?

Hiten:

Yeah, I agree 100%. My gut was this is her personality, right? Just from seeing  so many different people and different behaviors. It’s just not a good fit for the  company, which is totally reasonable. That’s a very common thing, actually right? The way someone  prefers to operate and behave and act in a company environment might not be aligned  with her company. That’s something I think that a lot of people spend a lot  time trying to change or fix so to speak. It’s not fixable like that. It’s  like someone’s personality, right? If there’s a pattern, that’s why I call it a pattern.  It’s a nice way to say, “This has been repeating and we should change something.”

Steli:

Yeah. Now, there are good examples of this. I would be surprised if you were  any different on this, I think it’s a sign of a healthy culture to have  A, people disagree on things, but also B, once in a while have somebody just  like do it anyways. Break the rules or break the guidelines or instead of asking  for permission, at some point just asking for forgiveness and going ahead and doing something,  I don’t think that that’s necessarily a sign of a bad company or a bad  team. It’s not the military. I don’t believe in teams where it’s super hierarchal and  whatever the manager says, everybody has to always obey by that. People being confident and  passionate enough to break the rules once in a while, I think that’s a sign  of a healthy thing. If it happens all the time, it’s super disruptive, and then  it’s kind of toxic. I have many examples. I don’t know, I’m sure you do  too, but I have tons of examples [inaudible 00:10:58] where people did the exact opposite  of what I told them to do and they were right. They came back and  they proved. We would not have a logo if people listened to me because I  told two guys that came to me that wanted the logo, no literally. They came  to me and they said, “Steli, we need to have a logo. We’re launching in  six weeks.” I said, “Fuck this. Logo doesn’t matter, we’re just gonna have the name.  Logo-shmogo, it’s at the very bottom of the list of things that truly matter to  me in the world. Just go and do something else, don’t bother me about this.”  Two days later, they said-

Hiten:

[inaudible 00:11:31].

Steli:

Two days later they send an email to team [inaudible 00:11:34].

Hiten:

Oh yeah.

Steli:

They went, “Well, we put a 99 design project on and here are our top  two choices. We really like the first one.” Literally, everybody in the team, including me,  we looked at those two and we went, “Huh, the first one is really …  Yeah, that’s good. That’s our new logo.” Right? That’s it. That’s the logo that you  see today. That’s the whole thought process that went into selecting a logo. These two  guys just completely ignored what I told them and they went ahead and did it  anyways. It was fine. It didn’t take much time and all the entire team agreed  that yeah, this one is actually cool and that’s how we … There’s so many  examples I have of people, me saying … Cora is another example. I’ll just give  you one more example on this. Cora was another example. When we launched clothes in  January 2013, Cora was on the rise and still a thing that lots of people  were talking about in the Valley. We had a team mate and she was very  passionate about the idea that we should try to market clothes on Cora and do  stuff on Cora. I took a look and honestly, at first I didn’t fully understand  Cora. I looked at it and I was like, “I don’t get it. This is  a waste of time.” I told her, “Don’t waste your time on Cora. Just write  more blog posts and do more this and do more that, please don’t waste your  time on that ting.” She went ahead and did it anyways. She completely ignored me  and she found five or six questions that had a lot of traffic, a lot  of votes, a lot of comments, and that were around [inaudible 00:13:02] select and start  up in sales and some very relevant questions to our business and what we offer.  She wrote really thoughtful and so she posted them. For the first three or four  months, actually for a really long time, but especially in the beginning, Cora was one  of our best, highest quality source of traffic. We converted a ton of customers through  these Cora questions. Cora became a really big part of our content strategy and our  marketing strategy. I have so many examples of people just completely ignoring what I told  them and then proving me wrong. Obviously, I don’t have as readily available funny enough,  but I’m sure there’s many examples where I’ve told somebody not to do something and  they did it and it was a bad idea to do it, right? They of  course, corrected that. I love that people on the team have always been comfortable with  at certain times not listening to me and proving me wrong. I love that. Once  somebody proves me wrong, when somebody comes back to me with proves that their idea  was actually right and they didn’t spend months and months and months on it, which  is very risky, and they were [inaudible 00:14:07] about it, running around telling everybody, arguing with me, they just went to work and they came back with results that proved  them right. In that situation, I never brought up … I never had a conversation  that was like, “Well, didn’t I tell you not to do this?” I just looked  at her and went, “Oh, shit, this is awesome. Alright, let’s do more of this.”  It shouldn’t be about you and your ego, if you’re a good leader, a good  manager, or, “Well, they disobeyed me, or they didn’t listen to me.” Who cares? We’re  all just trying to make the company successful, hopefully, and we’re all just trying to  accomplish the same goals and in this situation, you happen to be wrong, which to  me is awesome. This is a chance for me to learn and grow. I don’t  know. I just think that a good team culture is one where you have diverse  opinions and people feel comfortable arguing and at times, when people can’t convince each other  with words, I think it’s a good sign of people to just go ahead and  create some results and come back and try to convince people with results. Sometimes even  do the exact opposite of what was told to them to do.

Hiten:

Yeah, I mean I couldn’t agree more. I think there’s a fine line. I think  a lot of it has to do in my mind with how you do it. Meaning, how does someone go against what, in quotes I’m gonna say, “the boss” set.  Right? Their way of doing it is so much more important than the fact that  they’re doing it. If it’s something repetitive and it’s personality and either they’re doing it  for their ego or a disagreement that they’re not willing to discuss with you, I  think it can turn bad, so to speak. A lot of it has to do  with it’s a pattern of disobedience. It’s just something that they naturally do versus, “Oh,  Steli is just saying no, but we know it’s right, so we’re gonna do it.”  I think some of the examples you gave it wasn’t just one person either, which  I think is also an interesting take, but honestly, I’ll say one thing about this.  It’s really important and I’m curious what you have to say, but the one thing  I will say about this is that it has everything to do with the culture  of the company. If the company is a command and control culture where everything is  top down so to speak or the highest paid person or the smartest person or the founders or the CEO or the executives are the bosses, and they’re dictating everything,  then that means that what you’re saying about challenging what they say is just not  accepted in the same way, while in your case, I think you have a different culture where like, “Yeah, I might say no, but I’m willing to change my mind.”  Or, “I might say no, but if you go do it and it’s amazing, I’m  not gonna complain.” A lot of other folks would, that I’ve seen, depending on the  culture and depending on the style and the company, even if it was a great  endeavor and it worked, they’d still be upset about it because somebody disobeyed them.

Steli:

Yeah. I think that the reason for that is that a lot of people are  fairly insecure about their authority and how they’re being perceived.

Hiten:

I agree.

Steli:

When somebody is overstepping them, and does something like this, then they are so afraid  and so insecure about how that’s gonna be perceived by other people, that they are  over reacting as a response. “Oh shit, people are not taking me serious. People don’t  think that I really have authority. What if I let this go? Then other people  will just not listen to me” and they over react to this where if you  find a manager or founder or a leader within a team that’s really centered and  grounded in their authority and comfortable and confident in who they are, it should not  shake them if somebody once in a while breaks the rule and does something opposite  to what they said. Again, lots of things matter. Nuance and context matter so much here because you break the rules and you bring back success. It’s very different than  when you break the rules and you bring back failure, right? Then how much time,  how much energy, how much money did you spend to figure this out also matters.  If people had wasted six months on something I told them not to do and  they came back and they didn’t bring real results, I’d be pretty pissed versus if  they spend a day and they come back and they don’t have the results that  I promised, I’d be like, “Alright. You had it in your heart to go and  prove this further, now you know it’s not working, so let’s get back with the  program.” Or if they prove me wrong, then I’m like, “Oh shit, I’m wrong, let’s  go.” I think that people that are really super sensitive to it, usually it’s because  they are still not convinced of their own authority and they are too worried about  what everybody else will think, so they can’t deal with the fact that somebody potentially  in front of lots of other people disagree with them or disobeys them or whatever  you want. Disobey is a weird word, but I can’t come up with another word  for this.

Hiten:

That is the word.

Steli:

That is the word, huh? It’s such a weird word.

Hiten:

It’s a culture thing, right? Some cultures are just designed around the fact that it’s  focused on the ideas of a set of people and their opinions or execution. That  if anyone does anything that’s not in agreement with that, it’s disobedience. You’d be surprised  at how many people have companies that are like that, you know? I think the  importance of this topic is to know the difference. Also, it’s like here’s a weird  thing. Nobody wants anybody else to do something against what they said.

Steli:

True.

Hiten:

Just in general.

Steli:

Yeah, true.

Hiten:

You’re hitting a lot of resistance in general. That’s why I say that it’s disobedience  if you’re the manager or you’re the boss and a better word would be it’s  a disagreement of what to do, but then one party loses in most cases. In  your case, the way you treat this is if they do something and I said,  “We shouldn’t do” and it works, great and if it doesn’t work, they learn. I don’t care. You know what I mean? That would be your attitude, I know that.

Steli:

Yeah, yeah.

Hiten:

You’re like, “Ah, I was right, whatever. Moving on.” You make decisions really fast and  it’s your way. For me, I’ll give one perspective before this episode’s over and again  would love to hear your thoughts on this, but for me, I’m like I just  try not to have that strong of an opinion about something unless it’s really subjective  and it deserves my opinion in that way. What I mean by that is in  your logo situation, I’d be like, “Look, if you guys or gals whatever, you people  on the team don’t think it’s great, then just find a way to spend the  least amount of time on it because we have so much to do before we  launch.” That probably would have been the Hiten answer if you asked me versus being  like, “I don’t care what the logo whatever.” Which probably would have [inaudible 00:21:07] no,  don’t do that. For me, it’s like, look, we can’t waste time on … Context because if someone’s bringing something and it’s important to them, my whole opinion of it  is, “Well, here’s why it’s not important to me and the company, but if you  really think it is, just find a way to get it done but not let  it disrupt everything else we’re trying to do.” Honestly, your team automatically did that it  sounds like.

Steli:

Yeah, that’s awesome. I couldn’t agree more. I think it is absolutely a cultural thing.  Honestly, I don’t even want to point fingers and say that cultures that are different  are necessarily less successful, I just think that depending on what-

Hiten:

No, they’re not.

Steli:

-Depending on what the culture is you as a team member need to know how  to operate. Also, if you’re in the leadership position, I think that you need to  be clear on how you want to handle these situations and be consistent in the  way that you’re handling them so that people know how to deal with this. In  my company, I think people know I have my voice carries a lot of weight,  but they also know that it’s okay to disagree with me or to argue with  me or to do something opposing to what I said if they can back it  up with data and if they move really fast and that it’s not gonna be  a big deal so that they are comfortable doing it once in a while. It  doesn’t happen all the time, but nobody’s totally afraid of doing it once in a  while and they also know that there is no seniority to the why and the  how is much more important than the who does this. Yeah, I think it’s all  about culture and being cohesive in that way. Anyways, I think a fascinating subject. How  do you deal with people that are not listening or doing the opposite of what  you told them to do is something I’ve never read anywhere else or never heard  anybody else talk about, so I thought it might be valuable to the start up  community for the two of us to at least share, and I was curious to  hear your thoughts on this as well. Alright, so I think we’ll wrap this up  with some tips. What’s the final tip of the episode?

Hiten:

Be aware. Be aware. Just be aware of patterns in other people, especially if you’re  leading, managing, CEOing, foundering, or even being in the company. I am sure there are  people on that sales team that noticed this lady being the way she is, right?  As a manager, if you really want to get conviction on making a change there,  whatever that may be, you can also just talk to other people. Be like, “Oh,  I noticed she sent that email. What do you think about what she said?” It’s  not to cause politics or cause a stir, it’s just to get a gauge from  your team. I think there’s a lot of ways to be aware, I’m just giving examples. To me, awareness is so much more important than reaction in these situations. I  wouldn’t necessarily react. I’d make sure that you have an objective view of what’s goin  on and why.

Steli:

I love that. I don’t even want to add a tip to that. Let’s just  wrap this episode up on this one. This is it from us for this week. We’ll hear you very, very soon.

Hiten:

Bye.