Jenny Kay Pollock

For a long time, I had very naive ideas about prioritization. Here's what I've learned over the years. 1. Unless you are a tiny startup, your company is designed to do multiple high-priority things at once. The argument, "Well, if everything is high priority, nothing is high priority," almost never works (while rational). The 🐘 in the room is that the mix of high-priority things has changed, and the org design is no longer fit for purpose. What seems rational to you—oh, obviously that team is overwhelmed and we need to set priorities—is, behind the scenes, "Crap, we got the budget wrong for that group. Anyone want to contribute? No? Hmmm. Surely they are inefficient and can juggle more than one thing, right?" See below. 2. Most senior execs know that the plans will change. They know that by March, there will be a new set of priorities. So they focus on budgets, not priorities. So when you see lackluster strategies and vague priorities, remember that there is a whole other prioritization activity that centers around the allocation of money, how people get bonuses, very back-of-the-napkin revenue attribution models, etc. 3. Humans, in general, are not great at building a mental model for capacity. Capacity in software is hard. People aren't fungible. The architecture is what it is. You can't have huge teams. You are building the factory (to meet the needs of a strategy) AND the factory is building "the product." Oh, it isn't a factory: it is more like gardening. This is important because our mental models for what we are prioritizing (e.g., focus, capacity, typing, bandwidth, etc.) are often all over the place. 4. Most companies are not progressive when it comes to thoughtful re-orgs, org redesign, reallocating capacity, etc. The simple thinking is: "If we stop doing X, then we should let those people go because they fit in this cell on the spreadsheet." People too heavily couple the finance spreadsheets with one-row-per-person, and the (most often useless and made-up) % allocations to things. This means that basic things like having priorities and reducing work in progress are fraught with very justified fears around layoffs. To some, a pristine list of force-ranked priorities looks like heaven. FINALLY, we can make decisions. To others, it is NOT GOOD. This is why efforts to visualize WIP often turn into Game of Thrones. There's a silver lining with all this! If you are aware of these tendencies, you can figure out approaches to prioritization that can nudge the org in the right direction. Knowing that the theoretically pristine force-ranked list of efforts is likely not possible, you can devise other strategies like building more realistic models with finance and being more open to "everything in high priority" yet focusing on the actual conflicts/trade-off decisions, etc. And embrace products like Runway and DoubleLoop that engage people in tangible discussions about how $s flow into outcomes and then back into your core models.

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Community community...wanna chat? If you either: ✔ Oversee Community & Customer Advocacy at your org, or ✔ Work on either Community or Customer Advocacy at your org and are closely connected with the other function... ...and you'd like to connect with a small group of others who are in this same boat at 10 a.m. CST this Friday, Nov. 22 - shoot me a DM. You don't have Community or Customer Advocacy without the other. Advocates are a part of your community. It's just a matter of how you recognize them. I'm looking to connect with a small group (max of 6 people) this Friday to have a conversation about how these functions are intertwined (or your plans to connect them) at your organization. Let's use our collective brainpower to make the needed changes that will set our customers up for success in Community. 🙌 *Vendors, thanks for what you do, but this convo isn't for you. Looking forward to what comes of this. 🙂 #community #customeradvocacy

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A 1hr all-hands for a 1,500 person org costs ~$225,000. Massively underused activity: running ~10-15m of 10 person cross-department breakouts to source actionable feedback on a current issue vs. the standard 1:M scripted performance + some token Q&A from a highly curated list.

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Biggest learning from this week's customer discovery interviews: DON'T Ask how they typically do x process... Whether they realize it or not, they'll tell you how it SHOULD be done but not how it's actually done. DO Ask them to walk you through a story about the last time they did x process... They'll tell you what ACTUALLY happened. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk.

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People that care about UX and productivity for sales people: SDR Managers (god bless you wonderful folks). I do find that most direct managers in Sales aren't polling their employees--especially AE's to find out what's not working, what they are putting up with and not complaining about. There are tons of tools that sales folks are buying on their own dime like Scratchpad, Superhuman, etc. We all care about "giving developers the right tools to stay in flow".. but your revenue team? Sure, leaders need our forecasting tools and enablement systems (maybe)--but ask your team "what sucks about this CRM layout, how does thing work on your mobile device, what things are getting in your way, how much time do you spend clicking around poorly designed tooling interfaces---and what would move the needle for you". As an AE-centric leader, i'm working to put things in place that sure--make folks more productive--but that they don't hate using. What say you? whats sucks in your world? what tools do you buy on your own to deal with your day? or even how should the world work for a day-to-day SDR/AE/Account Manager, etc

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One of the biggest blockers to meaningful improvement is success and inertia. No one can believe something can be so broken if a product is growing and making money. It is almost *easier* when a company hits the skids completely and has a catastrophic failure of some sort. It is the same in our lives. When things are going great, it is easy to let "debt" develop. "One more quarter...then I'll start spending more time to eat healthy and get in shape!" You rationalize how it is fine to run fast and loose because you're riding a good wave. Until.... Crash. Personally, many of my big personal growth achievements happened after I hit rock bottom, really opened up to friends about the situation, built a social support network, and rebuilt. But this came at a big cost. The trick is how to "cheat" this wicked loop—for us as individuals, and for companies. 1. Accountability partners during the good times 2. Enabling constraints (with someone holding you to them) 3. Listening to the "soft voices" you tend to ignore 4. Intentional efforts to disrupt yourself.... chaos engineering 5. Paying very close attention to the early indicators 6. Diary keeping, retrospectives (with yourself, and others) 7. Remembering that the good times were set in motion years ago What else? Etc.

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What gets measured gets done. But only if everyone knows what they're measuring. 📊 I'm a big believer in setting team and individual OKRs that roll up into our broader company-wide goals. We don't have any official tools, like 15Five to track this, so we made our own in ClickUp. Here’s how we do it: ✅ Start with Company OKRs: Our team has clear OKRs directly connected to our company’s top objectives. This means that every task we complete is tied to a bigger picture. ✅ Break Down to Individual Goals: Individual targets are defined and tracked so that everyone knows how their work contributes to team and company success. ✅ Visualize Individual Targets: Progress visuals and check-ins remind us where we stand and what needs our focus. Even if we’re mid-quarter, there’s still time to recalibrate and make a big impact before year-end. Here's why this matters: Without clear goals, teams get caught up in low-impact projects that feel urgent but don't move the needle. It's not too late to implement this for Q4. Even a simple version can help focus your team's energy on what matters most. A structured, visualized system doesn’t just help with focus—it creates accountability, transparency, and a roadmap to success. 💪

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💬 Head of People: "What does your Community actually look like? Is it on Slack? How do people interact? etc" 💬 Me: "Why don't I just show you..." 📽 ------------------------------------------------------------ Some of you will know we have a community you can join at Open Org. We meet everyone who applies. This ☝ is probably the number 1 question we get asked on calls, and quite often we'll just dive into a screenshare to actually show people, rather than tell them 🍿 🔮 So I thought I'd share a quick loom here in case anyone else has been thinking of joining too....but TL;DR... 🆘 Slack for Async help & support; from 350+ other startup people people, but also from John & I (we're very sad, we live here all day, every day) 🍿 Luma & Butter for monthly events 👉👉 Monthly paid speakers.. Start up people leaders with a story to tell, NOT HR tech platforms trying to demo you their product ❌ 👉👉 Culture SOS sessions; we crowdsource problems, and solves them as coaches together over 60 min 🔥 🏗 Community Co-Creation 👉👉 2-3 times a year we come together virtually, async to decide on a new resource we can build together for the wider people world. Everyone's free to contribute before we share it with the world. 📖 The Open OS, on Gitbook. 👉👉 Our community Wiki, which has a media library of all the previous speakers & sessions, but also 'the hive mind', powered by AI, converting conversations from our help-please channel into a searchable knowledgebase Interested in joining in? www.openorg.fyi/community

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An idea i've been playing around with. Creating a guild that all current company + company alumni can be apart of. This way, even though a company cannot be family, it can be a long term professional relationship. Guilds are broken into pods/teams: * Networking opportunities * Mentorship programs * Resource sharing * Events and Workshops * Job board + recommendations (this one can get tricky looking into) * Community support * stock investment opportunities What do you think?

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I am going to take the other side. In my experience, metrics that people are judged by drive behavior. I understand why retention dollars is an important CCO metric, but any flavor of sales metrics into a CCO role impacts their behavior and that of their staff. I have always believed that the CCO and their organization is meant to be the advocate and the voice of the customer. The moment that the CCO and their organization's comp/performance is driven by selling to the customer, their intentions come into question. I still believe there is immeasurable value in being able to tell the customer, truthfully, that no one's compensation in the CCO's organization, including the CCO, is driven by selling them anything. The moment you put the CCO under a CRO, unless you structure their role, performance, and compensation under the CRO as net retention only, you lose legitimacy. I think that there is value in having positive friction between the customer and sales groups at any company. There needs to be an ongoing push/pull between them to ensure that the customer is getting the value that they deserve. Customer advocacy needs to continue. Retention should be the driver, not revenue expansion, for the CCO and their organization.

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People don't buy your program, product, or service. They buy their transformation. If you're selling coaching, the moment your prospect decides, you've succeeded in helping them transform. The decision shifts the energy. The decision is the transformation. Selling is part of the coaching process. The sale is a breakthrough experience.

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Where should you build your startup? Last week, I attended LA Tech Week. For the first time since moving to Los Angeles three years ago, it felt like a real startup community with legitimate entrepreneurs. I met several founders who went through YC, several founders with exits, and many who came from strong LA backgrounds, including SpaceX, Riot Games, Google, Facebook, and more. For context, LA has struggled to build a startup scene until recently despite its size, proximity to Silicon Valley, presence of big tech, and access to great talent from top universities. So what changed? We all agreed that it was one thing. Access to capital. If you are an entrepreneur and you have the flexibility to choose your city, you optimize for two things. 1. Access to customers  2. Access to capital Before I moved to Silicon Valley 13 years ago, the LA venture scene was just a handful of firms and a handful of angels. Today, the tables have turned in favor of founders, and there is more capital than deals to invest in. What city will you build in?

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Hiring talent at scale? It’s hard 🔪 Especially when your startup is in rapid growth mode, you can't afford to hit pause just because your team isn’t complete yet. 🤷‍♂️ Currently, NexHire is working with a dev agency that needed to hire an entire team of developers, designers, and administrative staff from scratch—while simultaneously kicking off their new projects. It’s a high-stakes balancing act: scaling up a team while keeping projects on track. If you’ve been in a similar situation, you know how intense it can be. Fortunately, NexHire makes it easy. 👻

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If I was an A player / high performer seeking employment right now, I'd look for jobs at organizations running one of these business operating systems: Scaling Up: A Gazelles Company, Metronomics, or EOS - Entrepreneurial Operating System. There are several reasons for this: -Core Values-Driven CEOs: Many will have CEOs that actually live their company core values (and insist everyone else does, too), giving you the best chance possible to thrive -A Player Team: Because these organizations are more likely to use Topgrading to hire, you'd be part of a drama-free, A Player team (do not underestimate the importance of this; if you've had bad team members or have been dismayed by workplace drama, you understand) -Get Paid More: Compensation will likely be at the high end for your role because these organizations understand the value the A Player creates -5D Focused Leadership Teams: Leadership teams are focused on Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, resulting in less workplace politics (doing the wrong thing for the wrong reason) and way less stupidity from leaders All of these things will result in the most fulfilling working environment you've ever had. Remember the "Great resignation"? That may as well have been a myth to my clients. Why? Nobody leaves an A player team. NOBODY. That was a problem for companies that don't live there core values and that tolerate B and C players. Unfortunately, there isn't a public list of these companies. That would be one incredible A Player recruitment website. But there are a few things A players can do to find these employers: 1. Reach out to the organizations above to find out if they know of companies in your area using their systems/tools 2. Reach out to your local chapter of Entrepreneurs' Organization or Young Presidents' Organization - that's where the self-aware leaders using these systems/tools congregate ***Important interview question all candidates for all candidates to ask: Is your CEO a member of EO or YPO? Self-aware leaders tend to join these peer learning associations, and that's the kind of leader you generally want as an employer/leader.*** 3. Reach out to Metronomics, Scaling Up, or EOS coaches in your area to find out which of their clients is currently hiring. I'll be posting some of my clients' open positions - as well as background on the company - here in the near future. Find a company that is deserving of your behavior and talents. #Metronomics #ScalingUp #EOS #Hiring #JobSeekers #Jobsearch #employerofchoice #topgrading #fivedysfunctionsofateam #corevalues #YPO #EO #Grovertalent #talent #Aplayers #Aplayerhiring

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Hiring the right sales, marketing, and CX leaders is incredibly challenging, especially for early-stage startups. Check out our ElevenX Talent's Janine O'Neill (she/her) and Dan Hurwitz discuss all things GtM hiring in this awesome podcast. Some great wisdom nuggets in this one. Watch the full episode, now live at howtounfuckyourstartup.com

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Here at Previ, we're starting to think a lot about #hiring. What types of roles... What experiences and networks to prioritize.. What level (entry versus super experienced).. What superpowers necessary for continuing our explosive growth.. What cultural traits that mesh well with the existing team.. And as I reflect on the tactics I can't help but to zoom out at the bigger picture.. As a member of the team...you need to develop the muscle that enables you to influence people who are better than you to join the team. People who bring something unique and complementary to the table. People who, with a very high level of certainty, can elevate everyone around them.. People who create breakthroughs for the organization and expand your view and toolbox. So I'm striving to develop that muscle more..so Previ can keep winning and soar to new heights. Let's go! 🚀

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CSMs, ➡️ you have accounts currently Quiet Quitting ⬅️ your product. Do you know who they are? Quiet Quitting, also known as Quiet Cancelling isn't the dramatic, sudden churn that makes headlines. It's the slow, insidious loss of customers who disengage over time, quietly fading away without a sound. They start by using your product less frequently, logging in sporadically, and before you know it, you're looking at their cancellation notification email. No warning, no feedback. This type of cancellation usually doesn't show up on generic analytic systems found in Product Analytic Software packages or even Customer Success Platforms and definitely not Google Analytics. Letting revenue die on the vine is far worse than the more dramatic cancellations that come from poor onboarding or customer support related issues. Here's the kicker: this kind of churn is completely, 100% avoidable. With the right tools such as Churn Assassin, a Churn Analytics and Prediction Platform (CAPP), you can spot the warning signs early and take the needed actions to change the accounts outcome. It is truly the easiest way to get ahead of churn and to never get caught off-guard again by a cancelling client. #CustomerSuccess #SaaS #HRTech #QuietQuitting #QuietCancelling #ChurnPrevention #B2B #RetentionStrategies #technology

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"Hire great people and get out of the way," is bad advice. It has no support from modern ideas about distributed leadership/autonomy, resiliency, mission command, or effective feedback mechanisms. Whoever was giving this advice to startup founders was giving outdated advice, and apparently the founders lacked the skill and experience to understand the advice was flawed. For all the talk about "first principles", somehow this was missed. Hint: it was the community itself giving itself this advice based on the premise that management was somehow a solved problem. It encouraged merely copying the org charts of large Silicon Valley tech companies instead of thinking critically about the challenges of rapid growth and scale. It encouraged blindly copying people who had done "it" before, without critically asking what "it" is. Suddenly, people were bringing in the professional management approaches from [insert famous company here], which were not fit-for-purpose for a company still struggling for legitimacy. And lo and behold you got the same bureaucracies emerge. I think the Paul Graham essay sends all kinds of weird, self-serving, and revisionist messages. But if you peel away these layers, it is an indictment of copy-pasting models, and believing something has been figured out. The conclusion: "we knew that all along, and listened to the wrong people" is self-serving, but the end-result is not. The meme will end up causing more harm than good, sadly, but perhaps the bright side is that people will question their defaults.

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