The Tao of Chuck - Business Building and That Humility Thing
If you want an over-caffeinated 7-minute info dump, this isn't it.
This is a 40-minute conversational story by Chuck Templeton, a salt-of-the-earth human with the experience that comes from hard yards.
This is full of pragmatic advice.
On the chart of smart, engaging, experienced, reflective, wise, and the super rare combinatorial element of truly humble, Chuck is at the top.
For the record though, I am the better poker player by a tiny margin. We were early supporters of this marvelous thing: Smart Bet Charity. He is also bonkers fit, resilient and tough…top of the Army Rangers tough. Twenty years ago in Chicago, I once asked where Chuck and Gladwin were (at a poker game) and was told they went for a run - to Kenosha, WI. It could have been Canada, but I am not sure.
I grew up at FedEx, where 'polishing the friction out of process' as Chuck says, and layering in smart controls was always money well spent and the foundation of record-shattering profitable service/experience at scale.
The magic in that is being proactive, preventative, pattern matched, predictive, and precise because you did that work on process design, controls, and instrumentation is not only the low defect/high-quality output to your clients, it is also the low-cost structure path. The icing on that cake is that because you are process-aware, informationally smart, and instrumented; you are also generally more agile.
More agile, better cost structure and better client engagement/offering/value are how you win on the competitive battlefield or the real battlefield.
Another early FedEx-ism is in his story. Jim Barksdale, FedEx president, who went on to run Netscape used to say 'just get it out the door, don't let best get in the way of better'.
Chuck built one of the earliest two-sided networks and covers that well in the attached talk. It is super relevant today.
I am a broken record with startups on five things:
The 4 T's - Team, Tech, Traction, Trajectory - if those things aren't great and integrating well it may not work. Success is about great...there are no B- start up success stories.
NETV - Net Transactional Value - The value you deliver is the value the actual customer gets/experiences divided by the hassle of getting it. Chuck has some great examples of taking work out of the engagement. Your offering gets better by eliminating things. Product Development usually doesn't think that way.
Information Architecture - design to answer the questions/needs that won't be thought of until next year. If the person in charge of that doesn't love that question, get a better person.
Build Trip Wires into your sales/investment funnel. You need these to detonate the targets that show excitement but will never get to dry ink. Last year I saw an exciting VC have 15 work sessions with the leadership of a great startup to just get to ‘no’. A huge amount of leadership time was siphoned away from construction/sales. Shitty behavior by the VC by the way.
Lego - in every startup, CIO/CTO , Product Dev/Mgmt, and BU leadership role I have ever had, it is simply my favorite and, annoyingly to my team, most repeated word. Build Lego not complexity.
Another thing about Chuck’s insights and the above is that while they are start-up-focused, they apply to all businesses.
Having said all that, remember that no amount of great tech, team, clever acronyms, or hard work will save you from bad strategy.
If you can steal anything from Chuck’s talk content and comms style start with a bit of his humility… it is rare and valuable. Humble isn't milk toast; it isn't passive/agreeable/consensus. It can be crazy tough and resilient. It is just a smarter way. It is maybe one of my biggest gaps...working on it, for decades.