Head Of Mission = HOM Requirements
In mission 3.0 we don't speak about mission any more but about missions. The head of the mission = the HOM.
Being a HOM is a very demanding job and not easy, this document tries to describe what some requirements are.
Believe in the mission
Do it for the belief in the cause of the mission:
- Be 200% convinced about the goal of the mission
- Be the biggest fan
- Willing to figuratively spoken die for that vision and defend it at all cost
- Money is not important, willing to do it even if the money is not good
- Don't become a HOM for the wrong reason (EGO, $$$, power, ...)
- You are the best evangelist & can explain to anyone why, what, how
To be a HOM is a super demanding job
- You need to be the police officer of the mission
- Next to the motivator
- Next to the one being able to create value & provide expected return (if required)
- Everything stops with you
- You are solely responsible for the mission
- Nothing or no-one to hide behind
- Anything going wrong is the HOM's fault
- Unless if properly seen in time & escalated to your stakeholders
- Stakeholders = investors / boards / foundation members, ...
- It's very stressful, you need to be able to cope with this in good ways
- A lot of people will not understand you
- YOU ARE AT SERVICE OF EVERYONE
HOM needs to be a natural leader (not a boss)
- You strive to HIGHEST POSSIBLE VIBRATION
- Because you know you are imperfect but you actively work on yourself (healing sessions, meditation, ...)
- They follow you because
- For the values you live & promote as well as for the mission
- They know you are 100% transparent
- You are always 100% truthful to the cause
- You have the knowledge and can guide the ship when in storm
- You can re-adjust when required in time & are critical enough to see it HOMing (avoid storm)
- For your energy level (vibration)
- They SHOULD NOT follow you for
- Better salary
- Promise of wealth
- Promise of being part of big mission
- Promise of having a serious career
- Being part of the gang (wolf mentality)
- Career move (go up to the career path)
- You need to be in first place & earn respect from board/employees/... by being an example at all times.
Respect for human effort
- Realize that everything is work in progress & changing all the time
- Only do 20% to get to 80% of work
- Realize that exceptional people are 10x more productive than average
- Do everything possible to find & grow those exceptional people
- DRY: do not repeat yourself
- Be a big advocate and determined that the team needs to be utmost organized
- DON'T prematurely optimize (good enough is good enough but needs to be really good enough)
- Respect expertise from your colleagues
This requires:
- Discipline for usage of tools
- Everything needs to be written down (limit the amount of meetings) on right location
- Communicate about content changes & e.g. milestones, do not orally do this, it's not enough
- Demand good enough work for everything
- Old info needs to be moved to an archive e.g. _archive, active effort needs to be done to only have active content in the tools.
- FEW SOURCES OF INFO
- Formatting needs to HOMe out of the content, not the other way around this requires better tooling and probably more expertise from customers or employees. But if this means we can have less complexity and less sources of info then this is a path we need to push
- Everyone needs to be forced to respect human effort
- E.g. if other presentations or visuals or ... feel required, anyone can make a feature request and everyone can vote for it and be vocal if this needs to happen. DON'T go off and just change it for maybe not a good enough reason yet (maybe it's premature optimization).
Less is more
- With less you can always do more (20-80) as well as constantly strive for simplification.
- Anything which feels complex is wrong, HOM needs to have a feeling to smell when it goes wrong somewhere and not be scared to step in, show where it goes wrong so quality can be improved.
Quality driven
- Do not accept average people (is against respect for human effort)
- Do not accept shortcuts (really believe shortcuts never deliver a faster result)
- Make sure that any thing delivered is good enough & uses the 20/80 perc rule
- Think before you do (write specs, plans, ask feedback)
- Welcome feedback on anything at any step in the process (see further), this requires openness from day 1
Demand true transparency (& live it)
- From yourself, board & organization
- In good & bad days (also in bad days)
- About everything to everyone!
Visionary
- Able to define & express the vision/mission
- Be able to re-define when required
- Adjust change every day when required, be agile, re-question every path constantly
The HOM is the best sales guy = external head person
- Be able to express the vision in small & big scale (larger audiences)
- Comfortable to interact with decision takers on global scale (all new business is rather global)
- BUT stay loyal to our values at all time
Able to build right team around him
- Find aware people, have attention for their energy fields
- Build young team who is willing to go the extra way
- Team needs to have the right motivation: not for money but for the cause
Do not hire people because
- They have right CV
- Because they claim they have done this before
- Because they were superstars at big companies (or any mission for that matter), it's not enough
Hire them because of
- Their vibration
- Output/cost ratio
- Motivation & passion
- Willing to go the extra mile
- Technical high potential (super high potential), willing & capable to grow a lot
Dare to be different
- Avoid words like
- Others do ...
- It's normal that ...
- These competitors do ...
- Using a quote from "Ford" if I would have listed to my customers I would have created a better horse.
- Feedback from customers, members, is relative, often they don't know what they need
- If only couple complain it does not say much, we can learn from it but it doesn't mean we need to change unless there is a compelling reason and we don't sacrifice something else.
- Be critical in what we try to accomplish and second guess everything in relation to that
- Less than 0.1% of startups are making +90% of the return for investors, we want to be this 0,1%, this will not happen by following the others or try to be the same
- Question everything happening from everyone and constantly check if there are no better ways how to do this (with less effort, with more quality)
- Force this down into the organization.
Critical
- It's normal that +50% of things delivered by team are not meeting above values & quality standards
- The HOM needs to be enough of a micro manager to see this and to point their team to it so the team can self recover, the team needs to understand that low quality will not be accepted.
- It's a constant struggle to more quality, this needs to be tangible & measurable
- Often people say I have not enough time to check ...
- This is not true, all important pieces of info, deals, specs, ... can be reviewed as long as they were rightly presented & prepared.
- There are many examples going from Steve Jobs to Musk, they know everything going on...
Respect for money
- Every $ count
- Never spent any $ we didn't earn yet
- Always keep at least 6 months runway, if you have less tell the full team
- The output/person vs $ cost needs to be ok in line with others
- Don't accept shortcuts here, there are always reasons why it seems like a bad idea why to let someone go.
- Be afraid about what will customers do
- Knowledge drain even if not optimally used
- What will outsiders think if I let this person go...
- It's only fair that potential issues are discussed asap (the quality/$ ratio...)
- Don't accept shortcuts here, there are always reasons why it seems like a bad idea why to let someone go.
Be able to represent information well
- Repackage & represent well (preso's, docs, commercial docs)
- Optimize/write & deliver content directly, do not rely on all 3e party kind of guys to write down
- Be able to construct docs well
Work with peer-reviews
- Allow anyone to see all work in progress from first step
- Allow anyone to give comments & help the person(s) to deliver faster with better quality
- This goes in line with transparency as well as with enough quality.
- Make sure that no work doesn't get validated before it goes out (easy way how to get quality up & improve communication)
Build a true global mission
- Organization needs to be lean & mean
- Communication = written using systems like gogs (github, ...)
- Make sure all is organized
- Make sure everyone communicated
- Make sure people meet at least 2 times a year (can be on different events)
- Make sure video conferencing is used as much as possible (for communication about info which is written down, NEVER as an information medium!!!)
Be a good enough expert on all required domains
- A HOM need to smell if something is not as it should be
- For that a generic good enough knowledge needs to be there
- E.g. technical, finance, admin, legal, sales, ...
- Understand the product inside out
Rule out of love (faith) not out of fear
Find / love yourself & be true to yourself
Don't sell !!!!!
- Be confident, but don't sell
- Always position in as most realistic way as possible
- If you don't know just say so, whatever the consequences are
Work?
- It's not about working more it's about working in the right way
- It's about having time for free time and being able to switch off
- Allows others to switch off
Deal with stress
- Know how to switch off, know how to sleep even if stress is super high
Keep on communicating
- Even if things get very tricky,
- Don't sell at that point, be open, transparent and have faith that your investors / colleagues will do the right thing.