Operational Rigor

The Anti-Guide: Chase the vibes, dump the discipline

I was recently asked at an offsite about what it meant to have operational rigor. The word is thrown around a lot, but poorly defined. A clear definition is absolutely possible and a worthy endeavor. But when there are a variety of paths to success, inverting the problem is often a better guide. This is one that’s worth inverting. Flip the problem - what does bad operational rigor look like? Once you define those things, and this is the hard part, avoid them. So, if I wanted to build a team that was an operational train wreck, this is what I’d do:

Have several, ambiguous goals. This is critical because you want to make sure people are marching in as many fragmented directions as possible. When coming up with goals, don’t worry too much if it’s not immediately clear how it’s connected to the bottom line of the company. When asking someone on the team what success looks like for what they’re working on, hopefully it takes a good amount of time and word salad for them to pull out an answer. Even after all that verbal labor, it’s best that the goal remains little understood.

Don’t execute, and never follow up on progress. Make no effort to follow through on your work. Declare your plan, assign no owners, hint at goals (refer above on ambiguity), and hope things get done.

You don’t make mistakes so there’s nothing to learn. Why have feedback loops to check up on your plan and strategy? What’s good in theory is good in practice, so there’s no need to have processes in place to track progress and revise your plan.

The more people, the better. Have a problem? Throw people at it. Do this consistently and generously. If all goes well, org charts won’t fit on a single page. We don’t want single people to be accountable. In fact, we don’t want to work with the kind of ambitious people that want that kind of accountability. Better to distribute the blame so when things go wrong, there’s no clear person to bring a fix. Will we scare off ambitious, talented people that want to do more work and take on responsibility? Sure. But remember, building big teams strokes our egos, and big egos are the keys to success - not accomplishing our goals that, hopefully, remain a mystery.

Solve everything and do not prioritize. Pay lip service to prioritization, but never cut anything out. Never say no - solve the next problem that comes up regardless of whether it actually helps achieve your goals. This practice is easier the more ambiguous your goals are (please refer back to the top). Substance over quality is the name of the game, and make sure to create the incentives come performance time to not review impact.

Remember, principles are merely hobbies. Dump them immediately when times get tough. Set your team’s principles, post them everywhere and, when possible, virtue signal. But remember, when times get tough, dump them and chase the good vibes.

Again, this is what not to do.