So you wanna be a great operator?

by Adia Sowho

ADAPTABILITY
  • My career in brief:
  • Engineer | Consultant | Senior Manager | Director | VP | MD | CEO | CMO
  • 🌱 → 🌳 → 🌴🌴🌴 → 🏙
  • 🇧🇷🇺🇸🇨🇳🇬🇧🇨🇦🇯🇵🇮🇱🇳🇬🇰🇪🇩🇪🇮🇳🇲🇽🇦🇪🇿🇦
  • Here's what you need to figure out for a successful transition to a new space:
  • What success looks like…in that context
  • Incentives to get what you what want ..in that context
  • Being a shape shifter is hard, but not shifting shape is harder
SELF-AWARENESS IS YOUR PROTECTION
  • To be a great operator, you have to:
  • Raise difficult issues without being difficult to work with
  • Bring up important topics without drawing importance to yourself
  • You are in charge of getting the decisions made but not making all the decisions
  • Master Yourself, (it is even better to) understand others
  • If you don't know your MBTI, find out ASAP
OWN YOUR POINT OF VIEW
  • Know your POV/approach to operating, so you can repeat it, repetition allows you to hone your skill and build credibility - rinse and repeat
  • What is your Ikigai?
  • I found mine - it took a lot of personal reflection, conversations, and looking at my past work - I design, (re)build and scale two-sided/tech platform businesses
  • This means I tend to frequently work on:
  • partnership
  • mobile technology
  • access to millions to consumers
  • monetization / revenue growth
"WHAT IF" and "THEN WHAT"
  • The difference between a good operator and great one is second-order thinking
  • Always ask….'what if' and 'then what'
  • First-order thinking is quick and straightforward. Second-order thinking, on the other hand, is more future-facing, intentional, and multi-dimensional.
  • It's about finding balance between thinking and doing
  • ….Even ordering lunch can be harder in a different environment….
  • The difference between success and failure lies, actually, in the compound effect of decisions made by your team
TALENT
  • You're one conversation away from great talent
  • Don't wait till you need talent to start looking
  • Great potential operators stand out - you can see this anywhere e.g. :
  • Bias for action
  • Clarity of thought
  • Initiative
  • I hired the Migo team from the best of the last 10 years of great conversations in random places - they continue to work and play together
SHOW, DON'T TELL
  • Sometimes, your audience can be hostile to you / your POV
  • Skeptics, Haters, Risk-Avoiders, Those that don't 'Get It', The Biased
  • To be a great Operator, you have to push past all that resistance without overtly persuading or instructing
  • Use data, where your word is not enough so that people figure out the implications for themselves
TO MAKE MONEY, YOU MUST UNDERSTAND RISK

Question Mark

Ready to scale

Cash cow

Market Risk

Execution Risk

75%

3%

22%

Low

Low

Med

Med

High

High

  • This is based on the Discovery-Driven Planning framework by Rita McGrath
  • Market Risk and Execution Risk hinder your ability to meet your initiatives/goals
  • Execution Risk = Can your organization deliver the product in a predictable manner?
  • Market Risk = Is there demand? Do your customers want it? Are they willing to pay?
  • It takes time to figure out where your product is in this matrix
  • Where you have to manage or ship multiple initiatives to meet goals, you have to manage them according to their respective risk and apportion your revenue expectations accordingly
  • When I allotted a +75% revenue expectation from the products that my team and I understood the most (low-low risk) we focused appropriately
UNDERSTAND INCENTIVES TO INFLUENCE THE OUTCOMES YOU WANT
  • You make a plan, and expect an outcome, but human beings are full of surprises
  • Not all incentives are have an immediate financial impact, they can be knowledge-based
  • If you do not understand incentives, misalignment is not only possible, it is likely
Startup B Cooperates
Startup B Competes
Startup A Cooperates
Both gain moderate, sustainable growth
A loses market opportunities; B gains competitive advantage
Startup A Competes
A gains competitive advantage; B loses market opportunities
Both suffer reduced growth due to increased competition and market fragmentation
WIN-WIN NEGOTIATIONS
The key to a successful negotiation is:

Mutual Gain x Fairness

(Conflict Potential + Ego + Bias)

Leverage

*

Making Leverage work for You!
1) You have to have it: Proprietary tech; Specialized knowledge; Exclusive relationships; Better products / services
2) You have to know how to use it: Is it urgent for them? Does it alleviate a problem they have? Do you understand how your solution addresses their problem(s)?
3) Don't look desperate. Do your best to appear confident
Made with Gamma