Kenneth Berger: observation

Transcript context

…I love that framework of how to think about why a founder is behaving in a certain way. Just maybe a last following thread there is just what should people look for to help them understand if the founder and them are a good fit, if they're going to have a good time working with that founder? Is there anything just like questions they might ask or ways of operating that are useful to understand like, "Okay, I think I'll be okay with this founder in this company as the first PM or not. I think it's a hard thing to generalize about, but to me it really is about understanding expectations. I guess this is a predictable coming from me, "But what do you really want? Because I think that often the founders put together a job description, but then they're faced with a real human being who has real human subtleties and things they're good at or not so good at. " And so being very, very clear about expectations and of figuring out collaboratively a way to work together that's effective to me is there's no guarantees of course, but it gives you a more sure path to having a productive relationship. It's actually something that I recommend to a lot of founders for maybe their first 10 or 15, or 20 employees of just have a relationship design conversation with each of them when they're first hired. Because I think a lot of us come in naive the way I did, assuming, "Oh yeah, I'm just going to come in and do my thing the way I've always done it. It's going to be fine." Versus coming in and saying, "I actually don't know how I'm going to operate at this company. I have range like anyone has range, and I don't know what this company needs and who else is here and sort of what my role and what my place is going to be within these other people. And so by really understanding that intentionally and not from a place of performance management, you're already doing this poorly, you're in big trouble. But what is the best way to work together given who we have now and what we want and what we need? Let's figure it out. Coming back to our core topic, is there anything that we didn't cover, anything that I should have asked you about the skill, the art of asking for what you want? Anything else you want to leave listeners with?…

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