In a startup team, there is nothing more important than clear communication. If we get communication right, we are far more likely to build the right product, serve customers effectively and hit the goals necessary to raise funding and grow. The problem is, most startups move ridiculously quickly, which is a perfect recipe for communication to get lost in the shuffle. For this reason, I always implement my #1 favorite management tool: weekly reporting.

Weekly reporting is simply having each member of the team fill out a brief form at the end of each week with a summary of what they worked on, results, concerns and general information to share with the team. Each form submission should be emailed to everyone on that team. This simple process is amazing for keeping everyone aligned. Let’s break down what an ideal weekly report looks like.

Each weekly report has 4 key pieces of information to collect:

• Top Objectives: what did you work on this week, and status of each?
• Concerns: what is broken? Let’s air it out in writing so we can address it.
• Plan for Next Week: what is upcoming so we can confirm we’re aligned?
• Other Information: what details should the team know (e.g. travel plans)?

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The best leaders spend more time listening rather than talking. After they listen, they provide feedback. One of the key traits of high-performance startup teams is the frequency and quality of feedback. Feedback is an essential currency in team management — it is how we optimize performance, keep people engaged and ensure that the entire team is aligned.

Like many aspects of people management in startups, feedback is often undefined and lost in the shuffle of product development and sales chaos. First, let’s define 3 types of feedback:

• Positive feedback: “You did an amazing job here — very well done!”
• Negative feedback: “This draft isn’t quite right, let’s review it together.”
• Confirmation feedback: “Looks good to me — please proceed.”

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Every startup has rituals, from chiming a gong when a sale is made to the CEO writing a weekly email newsletter to the team. An important part of a startup’s weekly routine should be the All Hands Meeting. This is the primary staff meeting and likely the only time that the entire group (especially as we grow) is together, focused on the same thing in one room. It is an incredibly important opportunity for leadership to communicate directly with the team in order to:

1. Share important updates from each functional area
2. Praise successes, highlight individual achievements and areas to improve
3. Get the team excited about the mission, vision and strategy

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In the very early days of a startup, there are typically two founding roles: technology and business. The technology founder is architecting and building the product. He is essentially serving as the head of product and engineering. At the same time, the business founder is selling and supporting the product. She is essentially serving as the head of sales, marketing and customer success. Both founders are likely contributing to administration, fundraising and hiring, so they are both essentially serving as head of operations and in some cases, sharing CEO responsibilities.

There is a specific moment in a startup’s growth when it becomes clear: the founders can’t do everything anymore. This is a pivotal point in a startup’s lifecycle because it mandates some structure and organization to scale. Specifically, it requires hiring a functional leader for each operating area of the business. While the founders had to be generalists and constantly context switch between areas of the business, functional leaders (often Director, VP or Head of X) are domain experts that are highly specialized in making one area of the startup crank. Most technology startups have the following functions:

• Product
• Engineering
• Sales
• Marketing
• Customer Success
• Operations

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The startup world is full of visionary and often technical founders. We can stay up all night cranking on code, quickly bring a minimum viable product to market, and passionately pitch to customers and investors, fueling early traction.

Suppose all of that early stuff actually works: we have a product, people want it, we raised some money, and we hired our first few employees. The challenges of building the product, fixing bugs, going through the lean process with early customers and quickly iterating are overwhelming. However, I’ve noticed that the most painful problems for early stage startups more often include:

• Team misalignment
• Unclear goals and metrics
• Confusion over who to hire first
• Unclear timelines
• Unstable engineering priorities
• Miscommunication amongst the team

As I dug into the root causes of these most common issues, two quickly bubbled up to the surface: lack of organizational structure and poor focus.

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Strategy, accounting, coding… nothing is as tough as firing someone. This is probably the most dreaded activity for most managers. It was also one of the haziest subject areas when I first started my role as a COO; I had no clue how to deal with it. After conferring with some great mentors and having to deal with firing a couple of times, I’ve learned some points on how to handle it properly. It certainly does not get easier, but here are some of the tips that I learned:

1. Make it expected

When you need to end a teammate’s relationship with the company, it should not be a surprise. That is because before getting to that point, you should:

• Meet with the teammate and discuss the issues they are having
• Clearly lay out the objectives they must meet to improve and stay on the team
• Explain that if these objectives are not met, they will not be able to remain on the team

Keep in mind, if this person is definitely not the right fit for the team, you can provide objectives that they will not likely meet, such as major changes in attitude and personality. When they inevitably do not change, you can point to the warning and have a clear reason for getting to the point of termination.

2. Have specifics

You need to have highly specific reasons for terminating the business relationship, not just “you have been doing bad work.” Instead the reasons should be “You have been 20 minute late 5 times in the past month” or “your sales numbers are 30% below our targets.” This is why it is so important to have clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)… you know exactly where you want to be, and if performance is not there, you have a clear reason to make changes.

3. Schedule a time & place

Try to do any terminations at the end of a pay period (usually at the end or middle of the month) and have the teammate’s final paycheck ready at the meeting. It is best to have the meeting in a private setting first thing in the morning. The office conference room is a solid spot, and remember that you and a colleague should be present at the meeting… don’t do it alone.

4. Be honest & get to the point

When you sit down for the meeting, you will be incredibly nervous. The hardest part is the first sentence, so you must get to it immediately. No beating around the bush or small talk, it just makes the whole thing more difficult. I’d recommend saying (credit to Kevin Wang for helping adjust this sentence):

“Unfortunately, things just aren’t working out, and we have to let you go.”

5. End it quickly

If the person starts to argue or ask questions, you respond with:

“I understand that this is unfortunate. However at this point the decision is not reversible.”

6. Finishing up

At that point, you should stand up, shake their hand and escort them out of the building. At the same time, you should have someone standing by to immediately cut their access to company email, files, etc. Any passwords they have should be changed immediately as well. Ensure you ask for their key to the building if they have one, and watch them walk out the door.

This process should be done with courtesy, respect and professionalism. It is highly unpleasant for both you and the person who is being let go. The best defense is hiring slowly (to find the best people) and firing quickly (when it is clear someone is not a fit after all).

Feel free to shoot me an email if you’re struggling with needing to end someone’s role at your company, it always feels good to talk it out. Good luck!

Thanks to a world full of eager developers and creative entrepreneurs constantly building new things, businesses have a mountain of low-cost web software products that we can leverage to make our organizations run more efficiently. Since I started as COO of influencers@, I’ve been on the hunt for the best mix of these products to implement for our team. Here are the findings… I hope you can use them for your team as well!

1. Google Apps

This system has become the lifeline of our business. Our email, calendar, contacts and documents all work around the Google Apps system. The only documents, spreadsheets and presentations we make are done via Google Docs, and all other files like photos and videos are stored on Google Drive. Everything syncs to the cloud from my team’s local computers, so it’s effortless to share files, change permissions and collaborate.

2. Producteev

When it comes to social collaboration, Producteev owns it by making it easy to assign tasks, follow up on to-do items and share information throughout the team. Producteev lets us tag different tasks and track what areas of the business are keeping us busy. It also enables us to prioritize what we need to focus on across all of our different business units.

3. Quickbooks Online

All of our financials are run through Quickbooks Online – it is an incredible tool to track expenses, invoice customers, pay employees and more. Everytime we write a check it is logged in Quickbooks, and when our team wants to get a pulse on how our business is doing financially, it’s as simple as clicking “Run Report” in our online control panel.

4. Toggl

Most teams are constantly moving from one task to another. Especially if you are doing those tasks for customers, you’ll want to track time. Toggl is both a web and mobile app that allows us to easily track the time we spend on certain tasks for certain customers. It allows us to effortlessly figure out how much time to bill for when we do design work and more. Here is an in-depth review of Toggl.

5. Pipedrive

If you are selling anything, you need to track the interactions you have with customers in a CRM. Pipedrive makes it simple to track leads, see our sales pipeline and remember who to follow up with. It enables us to have different sales pipelines for different products, compare performance of sales reps and much more.

So, if you are starting a new business and thinking about what software solutions might help you move faster and work smarter, try these out and let me know what you think!