Hi Friends,

About two weeks ago, my team hit a milestone: In just a few months we completed 200 SEO projects 🎉.

This is a major accomplishment.

On the Squarespace marketplace, we are (currently) ranked #3 - out of some 150 designers and agencies for hire. It's a bit of a 'vanity' ranking system but a decent reflection of effectiveness.

Accomplish More & Reduce Stress

The main goal I always share with the team is that we should be able to produce more results overtime AND feel less stress. It may sound contradictory but is where innovation happens. I believe we have a lot of additional learning to do and growing but here are three things we have used to continue to accomplish more and reduce stress:

1. Physiological Safety: Many teams spend more time worrying about other team-members than being able to focus on the work. As soon as this begins to happen (where we are focused more on team members during a meeting than accomplishing the work) we either: address it with the team member. In a Harvard Business Review article, author Laura Delizonna, PhD, says, "Engage them in an exploration. For example, “I imagine there are multiple factors at play. Perhaps we could uncover what they are together?'"
2. Build Quality Systems: When I speak with my team members, any question they have we turn into a system. The system is never too rigid and never too loose. It's something that helps them understand what to do with 80% of the situation and hopefully point them in the right direction to access the additional 20%. Overall, the main goal is to reduce repetitive work by empowering competent team members.
3. Self-management: We rarely use the word 'manage' in the normal sense. Everyone is here to manage themselves. Another way to think about this: In professional sports, it would be very unhealthy if the coach needed to micro-manage the players. Imagine if Frank Vogel (coach of the LA Lakers) needed to call Lebron James to ensure he would show up for practice, have a good nights sleep, eat healthy. At a certain point, that becomes a role without boundaries. Especially as my company is a completely remote team, self-management is the starting point of productive work. So we use the word coach (for direct 'managers') and set a clear standard from the beginning.

Overall, these three items I believe have helped shape our team's effort and strategy to grow and I've seen team members gain more confidence and feel less stress overtime. I'm also excited to review this list 3, 6, or 12 months from now and see if this still holds true. With that said, tonight a team member and myself will be going to a nice dinner to enjoy a bit of a reward for accomplishing this goal. And may be that would be #4 on my list above: Enjoy the wins. 🙂

Have a great week ahead!

My favorite finds this week

• Article: Friends at Work by HBR | A fun read from Harvard Business Review and a good reminder about enjoying the people you spend quality time with (7x more engaged with work) and how we make friends.
• Books I'm Reading: Dare to Lead by Brene Brown, The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham, The Practice by Seth Godin, & A Promise Land by Barack Obama | Hoping to finish these by the end of the year to have read 52 books this year (!!)
• Insight: "People generally need 80 to 100 hours together before they can call one another a friend and more than 200 hours before they would deem themselves “best” friends." More from the article above titled Friends at Work by Alison Beard.
• Video: 6 Productivity Apps You (Probably) Haven't Heard Of - with Ali Abdaal | I love finding new tools that add to my productivity. I use text expansion, loom, and just started using readwise/aiir.
• Quote: From Dare to Lead by Brene Brown, "Leaders must either invest a reasonable amount of time attending to fears and feelings, or squander an unreasonable amount of time trying to manage ineffective and unproductive behavior." | Managing teams is a dynamic and ever-changing experience. Re-evaluating what you are spending your time on is important.

All in,

David

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By David Iskander

I'm David, a search specialist, and beginner YouTuber from Orange County, CA. My motto is: Whatever you do, do it beautifully. I enjoy making YouTube videos about website design, tech, productivity, and faith.