Jan-Aage Frydenbø-Bruvoll

Learn how to communicate effectively with all stakeholders of the project. You will have to collate information about the current status of the systems you are designing or refactoring, as well as the requirements from users, current or future. Communication with these stakeholders will take many forms, from detailed technical discussions on what's possible and what not, standardised and formal diagrams, as well as non-technical and practical discussions on what the system you are designing is supposed to achieve. Finally, keep in mind the operational aspect - the systems you are building and integrating are supposed to be maintained and kept alive in a practical, effective and profitable way.

Differentiate between things that are scary, and things that are dangerous. Scary things live only in your head. Nowhere else. They have the power to stop you in your tracks, but unless they're dangerous, they cannot actually hurt you. Dangerous things can be defined, analysed and planned for. They are inherently rational and real, they can definitely hurt you, yet they can be controlled. Make a list of those dangerous things (losing your house, working yourself sick, not finding customers, etc), and then create plans on how to avoid them, reduce them or mitigate them once they occur. The more you understand about the dangerous things, the less dangerous they will be - and as a bonus, the fewer things will be scary.

There are a couple of parts to communicating your expectations: 1) Make sure the expectations are as clear as possible. Define them as SMART goals where you can. 2) Ask your team members to (individually) re-tell the expectations, so that you can weed out any ambiguities. 3) Define and communicate how tracking progress will take place, and how the team members will be responsible for actively providing progress feedback. 4) Define and communicate how policing of progress will work, and the repercussions of underperformance (and rewards for overperformance) In essence, you're building a framework where your own input is almost superfluous - everyone knows what's expected, how to measure and what happens if targets aren't met.

So if you, like me, have hit your fifties (and obviously still haven't peaked!!!) and keep thinking back to when you were in your twenties and were getting everything wrong... what wouldn't you have given for the wisdom you have now? But when you were in your twenties you had no idea where to find a mentor, nor the belief that anyone would bother mentor you. This is why you have to actively approach and offer your mentoring and coaching to aspiring and ambitious people - just like you were back then. You can't go back in time yourself, but you can help others on their path to their success.

Trying to define your core values can feel awkward if you haven't given it much thought before. Try thinking about your anti-values - what is it that disappoints you, angers you, saddens you. Your values will most likely be the opposite of those. Let's say that you find others' tardiness deeply frustrating. One of your values might then be "do what you promise".

Make sure to extend the due diligence into aspects that can tell you whether it "will" work, not just whether it "could" work. Looking at market, industry, commercial plans and financial projections filters whether to pursue the opportunity but should not be sufficient to decide whether to invest. Look for proof that the founders understand what's required to build the right assets, processes and culture required to scale with minimum friction. Lack of documentation and onboarding procedures will slow down new recruits' productivity. Poor role definitions and prioritisation will hamper delegation. Missing plan B's, crisis plan drafts and "extreme case" infrastructure modelling will leave the company vulnerable to unforeseen events.