This came from a post from The Athletic that has been deleted but I wanted to re-post it. At first glance, this is about an 18-year-old plan for a basketball practice by the legendary Coach K. But really, it’s about leadership and the many things that go into it: organization, delegation, adaptability and standards.
Coach K (real name: Mike Krzyzewski), is one of the most successful coaches in history:
1,202 wins, the most of any men’s college basketball coach
Five national championships
Three Olympic gold medals as head coach of Team USA
Krzyzewski is retired from Duke and has stated to TheAthletic, that he doesn’t miss the games. But he does miss the preparation, saying, “I do miss developing a practice plan.”
Many technical and product-driven founders (especially engineers) have a weird blind spot. While they can build and instrument the hell out of their product, they strangely tend to manage their people with vibes, casual checkins and gut feel.
If you’re a product person or an engineer moving into leadership, here’s a framing that makes it much more clear how you should manage and how to be successful at it.
Your team is now your product.
I don’t mean this as a metaphor but as a management strategy.
I was talking with a CEO about one of his engineering leaders who is smart, capable, good intentions but hit that classic wall. He was saying…
“I don’t know if I should be Director of Engineering.”
“Two people are frustrated and I feel like I’m failing.”
“I just want to go back to coding.”
I gave him the same advice I got from my manager at Airbnb when I was put in charge of managing 8 PMs. It was to stop thinking about “managing people” and keep thinking like a product builder.
Why this works
We all have experience with
Systems
Feedback loops
Metrics
Experiments
Iteration
Clear definitions of “working” vs “not working”
This is easy with products. But people are messy. Why not treat people like products? Meaning
Design → Instrument → Observe → Iterate.
What that means, practically
If your team is the product, you naturally start asking better questions:
1) What does “great” look like?
A product team starts with a spec.
So does a leader.
What kind of team are we trying to build?
What behaviors do we want?
What’s our bar for talent and attitude?
What do we tolerate? What do we not tolerate?
This is where a lot of leaders accidentally fall flat. They treat team shape as something that “happens” to them; they accept what was already there.
Satisfaction: Do people actually like working here?
Adoption: Are they bought into the direction, the standards, the operating cadence?
Effectiveness: Are we shipping? Are we solving real problems and moving metrics? Are we getting better?
Energy: Do people come in hot… or dragged? Yes, “energy” is a metric. It’s just one you measure with eyes and ears instead of Mixpanel.
3) How do we instrument it?
Product people and Engineers will track everything. But often are have no idea what’s happening inside their team. You can instrument the human system:
Regular check-ins that aren’t just status updates
1:1s that include “what’s working / what’s not”
Clear expectations in writing
Visible goals and ownership
Team health pulse (simple, repeatable)
Not because you want bureaucracy or to be a micro-manager, but think of it as data or signal.
4) What experiments are we running?
To improve a product you run experiments. Same with teams.
Examples:
Try a new meeting cadence for 2 weeks
Change how decisions are made (who decides what)
Redefine roles or ownership boundaries
Adjust hiring bar and interview loop
Coach hard, or cut fast—based on data and standards
Iteration is not a bad thing. If you’re not learning, you’re not doing enough.
Gut-check Questions
If you’re leading people, ask yourself:
Do I have a clear picture of the team I’m building?
Do I know how I’ll notice if it’s working?
Do I have a feedback loop that gives me signal early?
Am I running experiments, or just reacting?
If the answers are fuzzy, you don’t have a “people problem.” You have a product management problem. Or, even harsher, YOU are the problem.
Make your people your product. Design it. Measure it. Iterate it. Ship a better version every month.
Because in the end, your code isn’t your company. Your team is.
Over the past months I’ve come to realize that much of my process with my clients is this three step plan:
Figure out what you really want
Decide on a strategy of how to get it
Work on that
That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
Step 1: Figuring out what you want
This could be anything. For a person, this is where they want to go in life. It could be a promotion, a raise, a new house, moving to a new location, anything. Many people are reactive, they just chase whatever opportunity is in front of them rather than setting a course for what they really want.
I came across this piece of wisdom in Annie Duke’s book Quit, and I love it.
The concept also shows up in Google X—the division responsible for tackling the company’s most audacious bets. Self-driving cars. Internet balloons. Robotics.
At X, they use a mental model to prioritize work:
If your goal is to get a monkey to recite Shakespeare while standing on a pedestal… You don’t start by building the pedestal.
Why?
Because building a pedestal is easy. Training a monkey to speak? That’s the hard part—and also the part that determines whether the whole idea is viable.
Back in 2005-2013, I was close with Uber founder Travis Kalanick.
Before he started Uber, he was Founder/CEO of RedSwoosh which was an interesting P2P software provider for content companies. RedSwoosh was eventually acquired by Akamai and Travis made a bit of money.
At that time he worked as an advisor helping companies get off the ground and raise money (see CrowdFlower, Honestly, etc.). He then went on to be an epic fundraiser himself with Uber and CloudKitchens. I wanted to share some of his tips as he was an expert at the art of negotiating and raising money. This list is his tips for success that he initially blogged at Swooshing.com (his old blog). At the bottom there’s a great video of him talking about working with seed stage startups and how to grow. It’s a great watch.
I found this quick 4min video really interesting. It talks about how willpower isn’t enough to accomplish change. Similarly, neither giving someone an explanation of what’s wrong.
To truly get change, you have to have an insight. A new thought. That “aha” moment is what really drives change.
I recently read Claire Hughes Johnson’s book and loved it. She talks about the difference between management and leadership. Both are necessary but they’re not the same thing. I found 3 interesting parts…
I always enjoy the writings of Tim Urban and love his blog Wait But Why I recently saw a tweet of his where he visualized the life of a typical American. It looks like this:
I just read the book Atomic Habits and really enjoyed it. Specifically, there was one part that really called out to me and it was about how to accomplish your goals.
As the author James Clear says, there are really mainly 3 ways to change
Change your outcomes. Set new goals
Change your processes. Set new habits, new activities, new meetings
Change your identity or your beliefs. Set new thoughts or perspectives
