Let's Talk About Failure

The biggest decisions regarding your career will be made inside a room without you there.

Layoffs are nerve-wracking. I’ve been laid off (thanks Uber!) and have had to lay off others. There’s just no going around how shitty it is on either side of that conversation.

You’ll find lots of examples of what not to do and some sage advice of what to do during a layoff. There’s little out there about what the organization itself can do before and after layoffs.

You’re a leader/manager and staring at a bleak looking 2023 right in the eyes wondering how your organization will make it through. What’s one thing you could do to proactively protect and fortify your team?

Identify single points of failure or SPOFs in your team.

SPOF is a term typically used regarding data or information flow within a system but your team is a system and the principle applies just as well.

You’re probably spending thousands of dollars a day, what will you do if your only media buyer were to go?

Who will keep the culture and spirits high if the people team is “trimmed down”?

What happens if there’s a problem on your website and the agency you hired goes under or is forced to layoff the only account manager you actually like working with?

Take out your org chart and go through each function and as you go through this exercise these questions will start to flow. If you’re stumped for a minute or two put a big circle around those people/functions - these are your single points of failure.

Even briefly going through a SPOF exercise annually can help the team move past a layoff event less bruised. And yep, there’s a risk that you might uncover something unsettling about your own position or that all the effort is for naught if you end up being laid off as well. Still, it’s the right thing to do for the org.

A SPOF audit is key to Model #1’s Structure component and can be helpful in other ways – especially at a startup where it’s incredibly difficult to prioritize fortifying an existing function over adding a new one.

What if someone gets sick and has to take leave? At my previous company Thimble, practically the whole company had to chip in when our sole support person needed a week’s vacation. We gained empathy real quick and he got some additional headcount soon after!

What if someone quits? How long would it take to find a replacement? Are there any interim solutions internally or externally. Do you have all the passwords for the tools you need?

It’s probably unfair of me to frame a single point of failure exercise around the topic of layoffs. Especially on a Friday! Think of it this way, anything we can do to strengthen our teams and giving support - even when it seems like someone can handle all the pressure - is worth a few minutes of effort right?

How am I doing? Are these helpful? lengthy? lofty? I’d love to know - reply to the email or reach me @rikin311 on Twitter.

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