The Exchanges

Q But I do want to touch on an element that you said there with the prior startups, and having one success And then one not successful. I'm intrigued. How did that experience influence your running and approach to clutter today? What were the big learnings?

A It had a tremendous impact on my approach with clutter. What I found with my second startup pocket change, the one that failed was that culture is not happy hour. It's not a foosball table. It's not swag. Culture is Your hiring methodology and your performance management methodology. So at clutter, we've invested heavily into those two and actually actively de-emphasized the former. And the problem with the former is if you invest too heavily in what I call putting the right coat of paint on the walls is that you're really masking the problems with the business. If everyone is having fun at work because you're having a Movie days, or you're giving away free lunches, or you're doing happy hours regularly. What you're really doing, I think, is obfuscating the underlying problems with the business, and you're preventing everyone from being able to honestly wear their emotions on their sleeves as it regards to the health of the business.

AI assessment note: “So at clutter, we've invested heavily into those two and actually actively de-emphasized the former.”

Q But I do want to touch on an element that you said there with the prior startups, and having one success And then one not successful. I'm intrigued. How did that experience influence your running and approach to clutter today? What were the big learnings?

A It had a tremendous impact on my approach with clutter. What I found with my second startup pocket change, the one that failed was that culture is not happy hour. It's not a foosball table. It's not swag. Culture is Your hiring methodology and your performance management methodology. So at clutter, we've invested heavily into those two and actually actively de-emphasized the former. And the problem with the former is if you invest too heavily in what I call putting the right coat of paint on the walls is that you're really masking the problems with the business. If everyone is having fun at work because you're having a Movie days, or you're giving away free lunches, or you're doing happy hours regularly. What you're really doing, I think, is obfuscating the underlying problems with the business, and you're preventing everyone from being able to honestly wear their emotions on their sleeves as it regards to the health of the business.

AI assessment note: “It had a tremendous impact on my approach with clutter.”

Q So talk to me. You said there about the hiring methodology with regards to kind of culture, and you've said before you should build a A sports team and not a family. What do you mean by this, and how does it apply to the hiring methodology?

A Sure, so there's a well-known concept in the technology industry as it relates to team building that Reed at Netflix pioneered, and this idea that the single biggest lie that employees tell employers is that it's a family. You don't leave your family for another family because the second family is giving you more attractive compensation package, and The second biggest lie that employers tell employees is that it's a family. You don't source, hire, train, and manage your sister, and so I think it's really important that you're up front with each other as a team, and this is a bi-directional communication that happens between, I think, the team member and the management team, is that what we're really trying to do is create a culture that is primarily driven by Humane performance management, and what we mean by humane performance management is we're going to set the expectation for what your performance should be. We will try our best to clearly communicate to you your progress against this benchmark, and if it so happens that you don't meet the expectation, it won't come as a surprise to you, but we will then have to performance manage you out, and I think this is very different than what you would get in a Family environments. In a family environment, there's almost an illogical sense of loyalty, right? And so often I find first-time entrepreneurs or inexperienced managers wait…

AI assessment note: “create a culture that is primarily driven by Humane performance management”

Q How much time do you give if performance isn't matched with the metrics?

A Good question. So, you know, our perspective is a little atypical. So we spend a lot of time at the top of the hiring funnel to make sure that we have the right people on the bus. And then our assumption is that once you're on the bus, we're going to be less of an active manager than you would typically find in a, in a traditional company. And what I mean by that is we're going to continue spending most of our time on hiring and less of it on managing you. And so then what we do is this, we will randomly audit your work at any point within the first six months. And we'll do this several times to be clear. And what we're looking for is one of three different outcomes. The first is that the audit shows your work product is amazing. What then happens is we give you more autonomy, more responsibilities, and we try to reward you for that performance. The second outcome is that your work product is neutral. This is when we actually become active managers and mentors, and we try to help you get from good to great. And this, in our opinion, should take three to four months maximum. The third outcome is that your work product is very poor. If it's very poor, our tolerance level is much lower, and we'll typically give you 30 days to improve your quality of work, and then we'll try to randomly audit you at some point after that. And the reason why you could argue we spend very little time…

AI assessment note: “we'll typically give you 30 days to improve your quality of work”

Q How much time do you give if performance isn't matched with the metrics?

A Good question. So, you know, our perspective is a little atypical. So we spend a lot of time at the top of the hiring funnel to make sure that we have the right people on the bus. And then our assumption is that once you're on the bus, we're going to be less of an active manager than you would typically find in a, in a traditional company. And what I mean by that is we're going to continue spending most of our time on hiring and less of it on managing you. And so then what we do is this, we will randomly audit your work at any point within the first six months. And we'll do this several times to be clear. And what we're looking for is one of three different outcomes. The first is that the audit shows your work product is amazing. What then happens is we give you more autonomy, more responsibilities, and we try to reward you for that performance. The second outcome is that your work product is neutral. This is when we actually become active managers and mentors, and we try to help you get from good to great. And this, in our opinion, should take three to four months maximum. The third outcome is that your work product is very poor. If it's very poor, our tolerance level is much lower, and we'll typically give you 30 days to improve your quality of work, and then we'll try to randomly audit you at some point after that. And the reason why you could argue we spend very little time…

AI assessment note: “we'll typically give you 30 days to improve your quality of work”

Q So talk to me. You said there about the hiring methodology with regards to kind of culture, and you've said before you should build a A sports team and not a family. What do you mean by this, and how does it apply to the hiring methodology?

A Sure, so there's a well-known concept in the technology industry as it relates to team building that Reed at Netflix pioneered, and this idea that the single biggest lie that employees tell employers is that it's a family. You don't leave your family for another family because the second family is giving you more attractive compensation package, and The second biggest lie that employers tell employees is that it's a family. You don't source, hire, train, and manage your sister, and so I think it's really important that you're up front with each other as a team, and this is a bi-directional communication that happens between, I think, the team member and the management team, is that what we're really trying to do is create a culture that is primarily driven by Humane performance management, and what we mean by humane performance management is we're going to set the expectation for what your performance should be. We will try our best to clearly communicate to you your progress against this benchmark, and if it so happens that you don't meet the expectation, it won't come as a surprise to you, but we will then have to performance manage you out, and I think this is very different than what you would get in a Family environments. In a family environment, there's almost an illogical sense of loyalty, right? And so often I find first-time entrepreneurs or inexperienced managers wait…

AI assessment note: “create a culture that is primarily driven by Humane performance management”

Q Can I ask, with such a methodology, is it not instantly creating a culture of Fear with regards to the intense performance management, and if one doesn't hit the bars required, how do you kind of communicate that, and what's the time lapse on when someone doesn't hit those performance metrics that you give them the leeway?

A It's a great question. There is definitely an element of fear that results from building a culture that resembles a sports team more than a family, but there are two types of fear. There's irrational fear, and then there's healthy fear. Irrational fear, you want to avoid at all costs. And the way to do that is to set the expectation up front, to communicate progress against that expectation, and to be fair in regards to their performance management as you would with anyone else within the organization. So there's never any surprise. The worst thing you can do is just surprise an employee or team member and say, thank you, but no thank you, you're not a right fit. And I'll be honest, when you're Building out a performance culture. You're going to make those mistakes because your hands are full. You're looking at a million different problems. This is just one of those problems, but over time you will get better and you will create a humane performance culture.

AI assessment note: “There is definitely an element of fear that results from building a culture”

Q Can I ask, with such a methodology, is it not instantly creating a culture of Fear with regards to the intense performance management, and if one doesn't hit the bars required, how do you kind of communicate that, and what's the time lapse on when someone doesn't hit those performance metrics that you give them the leeway?

A It's a great question. There is definitely an element of fear that results from building a culture that resembles a sports team more than a family, but there are two types of fear. There's irrational fear, and then there's healthy fear. Irrational fear, you want to avoid at all costs. And the way to do that is to set the expectation up front, to communicate progress against that expectation, and to be fair in regards to their performance management as you would with anyone else within the organization. So there's never any surprise. The worst thing you can do is just surprise an employee or team member and say, thank you, but no thank you, you're not a right fit. And I'll be honest, when you're Building out a performance culture. You're going to make those mistakes because your hands are full. You're looking at a million different problems. This is just one of those problems, but over time you will get better and you will create a humane performance culture.

AI assessment note: “There is definitely an element of fear that results from building a culture”