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Happy Thanksgiving Operators ⚙️

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving with their loved ones 🦃 

Let's keep this short.

Here is what we’re chatting about today:

• How to avoid Board of Directors chaos

• Building bigger Lego towers

• Revamping your knowledge base

Let’s get started.

^{Together With OpsZen}
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1. How to set up your board of directors

Insight from link

Everyone is talking about the drama with Sam Altman and the board members of OpenAI.

How do you avoid the same fate as Sam?

Let's listen in on how Bredd Adock thinks about board structures. He has raised over $1B and has constructed 4 boards in his career, so he knows what he's talking about.

His advice is to focus on four areas:

1. The board can make the decision to fire an executive by majority vote. Your goal is to control the majority of the board seats. Always try to have as small of a board as possible.

2. Independent board members suck at their jobs because they are incentivized to move slowly. They do not want to risk their reputation, especially at a hard-charging startup.

3. A special class of stock to get a super majority of voting is reserved for only the top class of founders.

4. You need to get buy-in with your investors that have special clauses if you would like to make major business decisions. To avoid this headache, try to run a competitive process during fundraising to get as much as you can.

2. Give away your responsibilities to scale

Insight from link

Be sure to have the ‘Give Away Your Legos’ talk as the business scales.

Picture this: you're building a massive Lego tower. Each Lego represents an individual's responsibility.

In the early days, everyone is juggling a bunch of different responsibilities. Eventually, you’ve got to pass some Legos to the next person.

New folks join, and everyone's instinct is to cling to their Legos for dear life.

Ignore that urge.

You need to let go of that little piece you built and eye a bigger challenge.

If you are a manager, try to make your direct reports comfortable by:

• Encouraging them to look for a taller, cooler tower to build. I bet the employee will drop their old Legos if you challenge them with a huge project

• When the whispers of “Why did we hire them?” or “Why’s she taking over?” start, encourage your team not to act on their knee-jerk emotions. Let them simmer for a bit, then reassess.

3. How to revamp your knowledge base

Insight from link

The best customer support knowledge bases are clear, concise, and relevant. Nike does an awesome job.

If yours isn't, it's time for a revamp.

A successful knowledge base revamp includes three main phases:

1. Preparation → Organize your articles to then test what's working and identify gaps. Once done, set up a style guide to ensure consistency in tone and formatting. Then select a knowledge management platform based on needs and budget.

2. Execution → Write, rewrite, and quality-check the content with your team.

3. Maintenance → After launching, be sure to analyze success after the first 30/60/90 days. Be sure to install a process on how to update existing articles and fill content gaps.

4.  The hardest things about startups

Insight from link

Paul Graham's article on startup lessons emphasizes the counterintuitive nature of startups and shares key lessons learned from funding various companies.

These include:

1. Release Early: Startups should launch a basic version of their product quickly and improve it based on user feedback. Avoiding long delays is critical.

2. Keep Pumping Out Features: Continuously improve and add new features to keep the product evolving and users engaged.

3. Make Users Happy: The ultimate goal is to satisfy users, as their support is crucial for a startup's success.

4. Fear the Right Things: Startups should worry less about established competitors and more about other startups and internal issues.

5. Commitment Is Key: Determination and flexibility are vital for navigating the challenges and uncertainties of a startup.

6. There Is Always Room: There's always potential for new ideas and innovations, even in seemingly saturated markets.

7. Don't Get Your Hopes Up: Manage expectations, especially regarding deals and investments, and focus on building the company independently.

There is a lot that can go wrong in a startup. Being able to navigate this is crucial throughout your journey.

Operators Library

• Wes Kao writes about how to decide what to say when giving feedback (Link)

• In Harvard Business Review, Elizabeth Grace Saunders writes about whether your curiosity is helping or hurting your work. (Link)

• 5 things a CFO wishes he knew about managing a board (Link)

• Amanda Garza shares the pros and cons of different C-suite reporting lines for RevOps (Link)

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Something Fun

Feel free to reply with your meme; I might add yours to next week’s edition.