True Grit: Thats The Key To Success As An Entrepreneur, Says Triangle Success Story Scot Wingo

Editor's Note: Thought leader Grace Weng is CEO of Savvy Growth, a respected leadership and management consulting firm celebrating its 20th anniversary. Grace writes a regular column on happiness and leadership . Grace's core offerings include strategic reviews for companies at critical junctures and one-on-one coaching for CEOs and their leadership teams.

+++

TRIANGLE SEARCH PARK. Today we finished learning leadership wisdom from Scott Wing. Last week, we discussed how Scott's dedication to customer satisfaction and his team's good attitude have created a winning culture: Wingo's success formula at e-commerce service provider ChannelAdvisor, the rapid growth of Get Spiffy, a startup services company, and its Tweener seed fund, which is also growing.

Culture is important for everyone. Although some consider it an art, it is actually a science.

Entrepreneur Scott Wing's formula for success: Delight the customer, treat the team right

netflix cultural platform

When Netflix's Reed Hastings released his cultural presentation, it instantly went viral, garnering over 17 million views. Sheryl Sandberg called it " one of the most important documents in Silicon Valley." "

The game captured a lot of what Scott already knew intuitively. The biggest problem was that when you're trying to build a high-performing team, the worst thing you can do is have a weak person on the team. Scott, a natural empath, needed to change his innate behavior to act more quickly when an employee was not fulfilling their responsibilities, for the benefit of the team and, just as importantly, for underperformance.

Grace Wang (left) with Scott Wingo. (Photo courtesy of Grace Wen)

Just today I was advising a client on the high opportunity cost of investing several months in B-level employees who are unlikely to become A+ players. A team is only as strong as its weakest link, so continuing to hire understaffed affects team performance.

Scott said that culture is what everyone believes in words. Does not agree. Netflix also says that's not what it says... but that " values ​​are shown to those who are rewarded, promoted or fired ."

Netflix's cultural platform is reduced to 5 themes:

1. Hire, reward and tolerate only fully trained adults. Ask employees to rely on logic and common sense rather than formal rules, whether it's about communication, time off or expenses. For example, the company's spending policy can be summed up in five words: " To act in the best interests of Netflix ."
2. Tell the truth about productivity . Avoid formal criticism in favor of informal communication. Offer generous severance pay instead of retaining workers whose skills no longer match their needs. That's why Netflix pays generous severance pay for decent work.
3. Managers need to build great teams. This is your most important task. Don't give them credit for being good teachers or for completing assignments on time.
4. Managers are responsible for creating a corporate culture. You need to model and encourage the behavior you are talking about.
5. Talent managers must think like entrepreneurs and innovators first, and HR professionals last. Forget t-shirt parties and giveaways; make sure every employee understands what the company needs most and what high performance means.

Amazon Culture: Doing things fast

At ChannelAdvisor, Scott was fortunate to meet partners such as Paypal, Yahoo, eBay and Twitter where their customers were their customers. You will see how many layers and people in and out of the room it takes to answer your questions.

You would be surprised that Amazon, unlike other big companies, can answer your questions more easily and thus respond faster. So he began to examine how its culture worked: He focused on what made Amazon a great company.

Scott concluded that it all came down to his relentless focus on the customer and everyone's responsibility in that regard. This makes everyone from SVP to SVP aware of what is impacting their customers.

Scott cited the book Think Like an Amazon to understand the creation of Amazonian culture. I ordered a copy to learn more about the ideas he applied to his business. I share three:

1: A team of two pizza players and A+ players

The Amazon concept that Scott uses at Spiffy is called the Two Pizza Team (TPT). The idea is that no team is too big to eat two pizzas. What really matters is not the actual size of the team, but the autonomy, responsibility and entrepreneurial spirit of the team. Two-Pizza equipment must be properly equipped for independent and flexible operation and the ability to make significant changes to the system. It frees teams from innovation-killing bureaucracy.

At Amazon, teams are organized by capabilities and services, not projects, have been working together for at least two years, and are constantly working to achieve better results. TPTs minimize communication costs, including the number of meetings and coordination points.

Like Netflix, Amazon supports "only players with an A+ contract," which makes the TPT concept work. Netflix believes that the best employee benefits it can offer are great partners who will go the extra mile and provide generous compensation to those whose service is superior.

TPTs lead to more innovation, higher quality work and a stronger culture.

2: MBWA - Check out the walk

Just as Amazon believes management can get out of the office and spend time with customers, at his previous companies Scott had a secret management method where he brought his dog to work. He walked, checked people, saw what they were doing, and had a special conversation, because he did not scare the dog.

3: door on 1 or 2 sides

Know if the solution looks like going through a one-way or two-way door. He tries with the second, but there is no way with the first. Two-way decisions are reversible, so Amazon and Scot encourage employees to walk them through an easier approval process.

Characteristics of the company

When asked what he believes are important qualities to be a successful entrepreneur, Scott responded with one word: "courage." It takes some time to determine if they have this trait. Entrepreneurship is complex, especially in determining product-market fit. One must be extremely optimistic and stubborn, like Don Quixote, ready to go through the wall. Finally, for the 90th time, break through. You are so passionate and crazy about what you want to do that you can get through tough times.

However, determination does not guarantee success. You also need to have a unique idea that solves the customer's problems.

 pull away

Scott Wingo is to the Triangle's technology community what Bob Ingram is to the Triangle's life sciences community. We love him not because of his growing success, but because he generously shared his business wisdom and was an exceptionally true Scotsman.

I like to relate how I contacted Scott a few years ago to see if he would meet with a client who had an attractive offer. Not only did he take the time to go to my client's office and leave his review, but the next day my client received a book in the mail from Scott that he thought might help him.

Scott encourages others to be entrepreneurs. While researching how to help more people, he realized that his best place was as an entrepreneur, determining product-market fit. So he made a list: a list of triangles, those who were in the thick of things but needed a little more capital or resources to get ahead. A few years later, he started the Triangle Tweener Fund, which writes checks to help grow those said companies. It attracted more than 100 individual investors interested in supporting the future of technology in the Triangle.

Its TweenerFund was named one of the most active in the country last year and leads the Southeast with 46 investments.

When asked why he does all this, Scott replied that many years ago, when he opened his first startup, entrepreneurs Chris Evans and Richard Holcomb spared no time to help him. When she asked Richard how he could return the money, he replied, “ At Triangle, we return the favor. In one day, you can also help a budding entrepreneur ."

When I told Richard what Scott had said, he was touched and said, " It's much more than a fee ." I think everyone in the Triangle tech community would agree.

Do you want your own happy dance?

I will put on my fancy penguin costume to do my happy dance! If you're not great yet and want $20 off, email me and I'll give you a discount that gives me the same discount... I love the #GetSpiffy Happy Dance and I think you will too!

Watch Grace Wen's full interview with Scott Wingo: link

oh grace wan

Grace is the CEO of Savvy Growth, a management consulting and coaching firm founded in 2003. She specializes in strategic reviews for companies looking to take them to the next level and 360-degree reviews for executives to identify their turning points points.

A marketing strategist, Grace has held leadership roles in five technology companies that have successfully exited through takeovers or IPOs. He began his career at Bain, then worked in brand management at Clorox and General Mills. Graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Business School.

Grace and her partner, Rich Hlebosky, develop and implement strategies to support the growth of impact-driven companies and then coach their leaders to achieve their strategic plans. His experience spans all stages of business, from valuation to growth and liquidity.

The secret ingredients of great hospitality | Will Guidara | efile