"No Brown M&Ms:” A Genius Leadership Hack for Ensuring Attention to Detail
Plus, A Leader’s Quick Fix for Big Impact via "The Broken Shelf Approach"
In today’s newsletter:
📖 "No Brown M&Ms:” A Genius Leadership Hack for Ensuring Attention to Detail
💬 The Broken Shelf Approach: A Leader’s Quick Fix for Big Impact
🏫 A Newsletter for Smart Leaders: 1440
🧠 The Difference Between a Boss & a Leader
✍️ An 80/20 Tip You Can Apply Today
Read time: 5.5 minutes
THE ONE THING
1. "No Brown M&Ms:” A Genius Leadership Hack for Ensuring Attention to Detail
Van Halen’s contracts with concert promoters included a “No brown M&Ms” clause.*
It was a genius move to ensure safety.
David Lee Roth (the lead singer of Van Halen) insisted on adding a clause that stated that a bowl of M&Ms should be provided in the backstage area but that every single brown M&M should be removed.
The penalty for leaving one in was unforgiving: cancellation of the show and full payment to the band.
The reason for that clause was to make sure that people read the contract carefully.
Van Halen’s productions were massive, and they included very complex requirements that could easily lead to technical and often catastrophic errors.
For example, applying the wrong specs to the girders could lead to the stage falling apart.
Finding a brown M&M meant that the band was guaranteed to run into a production problem and had to recheck everything in detail.
The takeaway
This is a smart lesson on writing business contracts in general, but it also applies to communicating anything sensitive.
As a leader, use your version of a “No Brown M&Ms” clause when you want to make sure that people read an instruction carefully.
For example, if you’re writing an important email, add a weird question or an incorrect date that would prove to you that the recipient read the whole message.
*This is an anecdote from Atul Gawande's book, The Checklist Manifesto, about the importance of using checklists to get things right
INSIGHTFUL THOUGHTS
2. The Broken Shelf Approach: A Leader’s Quick Fix for Big Impact
Here’s a tweet I read recently from Shaan Puri (I pasted the text below to make it easier to read):
OK - here’s a short story that will make you a better leader/CEO.
I just hired a new CEO for one of my companies. On Day 1 - he started doing what most CEO’s would do:
- Meet & greet the team
- Get access/permission to our tools
- Start coming up with a Big Picture plan/vision to present to the team.
I pulled him aside and told him about a different way that I learned from @natfriedman.
Nat was named CEO of Github, and what he did on Day 1 was amazing.
[8 am: everyone in the company gets on a call].
Instead of sharing the vision & multi-year plan. Nat screen-shared and displayed a giant list of 100+ issues & complaints from customers.
He said: “Today, we’re going to find one item on here, and fix it”
“And tomorrow, we’re going to pick another one, and fix that”
“And the next day.. And the next.. Until we’ve nailed 20+ of these”
This did 3 big things:
1) Shock Therapy. The team used to “think in quarters and years”. Suddenly the timeline shrinks to “ship something today”.
2) Taught Him The Business, Bottoms Up. Where are the problems? Where’s the tech debt? Which teams are good at getting shit done?
3) Action Speaks Louder. Customers were worried when Microsoft bought GitHub. Will they ruin it? Should we leave? But immediately seeing the product improve built faith that things will be OK.
I call this the ‘Broken Shelf Approach’.
Every home has broken shelves. The people living in the house have learned to ignore it, and just live with it.
If you want to make an impression when you move in. Find the broken shelves, and fix them first.
The takeaway
I’m not sure the Broken Shelf Approach is the optimal way of kickstarting things on day 1 as a leader (and there are some drawbacks to this approach).
However, I do like the shock therapy aspect and the hyper-focus on customer issues. I think that incorporating some version of this exercise (e.g., once a quarter or two) can help you gain the benefits of getting quick results without being too disruptive.
You can even make events out of them (call them something like “Customer-Focused Hackathons”).
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MEMES I LIKE
4. The Difference Between a Boss & a Leader
THE 80/20
5. An 80/20 Tip You Can Apply Today
Here’s a low-effort, high-impact tip you can use with your team today:
What: Assign tasks to specific individuals (and not to groups)
Why: This helps avoid the bystander effect (where everyone’s responsibility is no one’s responsibility).
Example: “Mila will be responsible for completing this task, and both Jessica and Steve will help her out,” is more effective than “Mila, Jessica, and Steve will be responsible for completing this task.”
Want more of those tips?
Check out my free Amazon Bestselling book called: Influencing Virtual Teams.
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