Build Systems That Enable People

Euda Leadership Principle No. 5

By Keegan Evans

People do their best work when expectations are clear. Good systems reduce the friction of ambiguity so people can focus on work that actually matters.

The new VP is three months in, finally in place after a six-month recruiting process. She's smart, came highly recommended, but she's quietly frustrated. The KPI dashboard has forty-seven data points on the front page. Every weekly stand-up has at least five things flagged as "top priority." She's asked twice what the team should actually deliver first, and she's gotten three different answers from the rest of the executive team, all certain they're right. She's working hard. She's also burning energy on the wrong things, and she knows it can’t last.

Founders and early startup leaders often resist process like a four letter word, and they're usually right about why. Process can be used defensively when someone worries their own team is overwhelmed and behind. It can drift into a comfort blanket for people who struggle to make decisions with imperfect information. Processes can become a substitute for just getting work done. When a founder says "process kills speed" or "we're too small to be that corporate," they’re protecting something precious about what has gotten the company where they are. But failing to recognize the time to mature with lightweight processes when the organization has grown to a size in which what got them there won't get them where they’re going, that instinct can be fatal. The worst version is when a defensive us vs them mentality locks in, with one group pushing structure and another pushing back, all while no one is growing.

As with culture, without intentional systems, informal ones take over. When a fast moving startup that is trying to change the world with its idea relies entirely on informal systems, deliveries stall, the board asks pointed questions, and the founders are exhausted from being the only people who can resolve ambiguity.

Fly the Plane

On the evening of December 28, 1978, United Airlines 173 crashed into a wooded neighborhood six miles from Portland International Airport, killing 10 people. The DC-8 was a perfectly functional airplane that ran out of fuel after the captain and crew had spent an hour holding at 5,000 feet, fixated on a landing gear indicator light, while they tried to figure out whether the gear was down. Investigators determined that the gear was down and the light was a failed microswitch. The accident became one of the foundational cases for Crew Resource Management (CRM), a system of skills and practices that are at the core of safe aviation to this day. 

I felt that firsthand on a cross-country flight during my time as a student naval aviator. My instructor and I had flown six legs from Pensacola to NAS North Island in San Diego in a T-34C over a couple of days. Navigating an instrument approach from over the Pacific, the sun had set and twilight deepening, the marine layer shrouded the sea and land below us, waiting for us to descend into it. What had been a clear horizon became a few wisps and then a complete loss of visibility in the span of seconds.

I had trained for this extensively, but I had not flown one of these approaches in the actual clouds before. My instructor had years of experience and as a student I trusted he could get us out of just about anything I got us into. On previous instrument practice flights, we would be in a simulator or I would be under a hood practicing approaches in clear weather. But as the dark grey clouds wrapped around us completely, I realized this was the first approach I’d flown where we had the same circumstances. We were in the goo and relying on our training, abilities, and the systems around us to get safely to the ground.

An aircraft cockpit can have dozens of instruments, gauges, and warning lights. But each has a standardized set every pilot can find in the same place, the Six Pack: Airspeed, Attitude, Altitude, Heading, Vertical Speed, and Turn Coordinator. The attitude indicator, sometimes called the artificial horizon, is where most of my attention stays. From there I scan each of the others, updating my mental model then returning my focus to the attitude indicator. The scan has to be rhythmic, because my senses are busy lying. Even though I feel most truly myself when I’m flying, my inner ear isn’t evolved to the motion of flight. We train to trust our instruments, because they are honest when our body is not.

In the clouds approaching San Diego, I scanned the altimeter winding down as we got closer to the decision height. I reviewed the missed approach in my head as a parallel process, eyes still fixed on the Six Pack instruments. Through the dark grey murk, the glow of lights was clear before I saw any details of the runway. Seeing the lights was all I needed to call the runway in sight. I felt a relief and release as the wheels touched down a few moments later.

As we taxied in, the only thing my instructor said, with an audible grin, was that I had been awfully quiet.

Pick the Six

When a leadership team is stuck in the pattern of process versus flexibility, I find it helpful to break the knot by helping them develop their company "Six Pack." They likely have plenty of dashboards, but we ruthlessly prioritize the handful of things every leader in the room needs to read the same way, in the same order, when the pressure rises. Strategic outcomes. Roles. A shared definition of "done." Shared, standardized, and small enough that everyone can hold them at once, no matter the context of their day-to-day expertise. 

The temptation to stack more onto the dashboard comes from anyone deep enough in their function to consume all of it. The engineering lead tracking thirty performance metrics. The head of sales running fifteen pipeline cuts. The head of finance who knows every line. Those leaders can hold their own complete picture, and they should. The "Six Pack" is a cross-functional instrument. Good systems set the right level of information for that group while leaving each function free to go as deep as it needs to within its own work.

When goals are clear, roles are defined, and everyone can read where the whole stands relative to the metrics that matter most, an organization earns the right to keep growing toward its vision.