88: מנהיגות מוכוונת אימפקט - חלק 2 (English)

Hi, Iran. Hey, Lior. Hi, everyone. I'm Lior Krenchel, and with me is Iran Zinman, co-founder and CTO of Monday.com. And you've reached Startup for Startup, the podcast in which we at Monday.com openly share knowledge, experience, and actionable insights from one startup to another. Today, we'll continue the conversation about impact-driven leadership. In part one of this topic, Iran and I discussed a few ideas that are the heart of how we execute and think of work and progress here at Monday.com. We claim that execution is one of the key elements to achieving success, and that perfection is only attainable through iteration. We shared a couple of real-life examples of how it looks when leadership isn't driven by impact and what it takes to change pace and recreate momentum. Today, we're going to talk about how to practice impact-driven leadership. We'll share some techniques and strategies for overcoming the fear of moving fast in order to achieve perfection through iteration and eventually succeed. So I think the last time we focused more on explaining how it looks when you don't have that. How does it look like when leaders practice impact-driven leadership? So I think we discussed the concept behind it in the first episode. So today what I want to do is give kind of more practical advice. Because I see a lot of people when I say, when I discuss it, they nod their heads and say, yeah, it sounds good. It makes sense. It sounds like something we want to apply in our team, in our company. But then when it comes to real life and how to execute it, they struggle. I agree. And not only that, one of the questions I received about the first part was, but what do I do if I feel that I can't do something? And this is exactly the syndrome we talked about. This is exactly the problem. So how do you break that loop and start creation motion again, right? Yeah. There's consensus that everybody wants to move fast. Again, as long as you have a clear strategy and you're going in the right direction. People get the idea of perfection through iteration. They get the idea that they need to move fast and get feedback. The real question is, how do I apply it in my day-to-day? How do I overcome my fears and the stuff that hold me back? And this is what I want to do today. So to give kind of more practical advice and how to practice it. Before I do that, I want to say one more thing. And here it kind of touches on the topic, which is we discussed leadership. So I think this is kind of one of the key things here is that I really feel this is your role as a leader. So again, a leader can be somebody managing a team, can be somebody, you know, a CEO of a company. It can be just somebody who's not managing people, but is leading a project or an initiative. But at the end of the day, this is your role. What is the role? So when I think about leadership, people, you know, often when they say I'm a team leader, I'm a group manager, I'm a director of the company, I'm a VP. I find that people, especially new managers, I would say, but almost everybody, they kind of try to figure out what they need to do. Right. Like, what is my role exactly? Like being a manager, it's a profession. Operation of thing. Technical. Yeah, technical operations. You know, make sure that the tasks are being done, the job is on track, we're on timetable, whatever. Where I perceive it more as a leadership, from a leadership perspective. So what does it mean to be leader? Because you don't want to be the guy that or you don't want to be the person that, you know, track tasks. So what it is not. Or a babysitter, right? Yeah. Which is something else that sometimes people confuse. Like, I'm the police, I'm the babysitter, I'm the task tracker. Yeah. So basically, if I take an example from a development team, it's always easy for me to take example for that. Engineering, you mean? Yeah, engineering. So it's not your task as a manager, as a leader, to verify people are doing their tasks. That, you know, if you measure story points because you work in an agile environment and not your role to make sure everybody's completing their sprints. And basically, it's not the case. If this is the case…

Have a problem with hiring. You didn't hire the right people, not the right talent, people with the wrong motivation. So what is your role is exactly what we're discussing now. How do you make your team more efficient? How do you make everybody better? How do you help your team get from point A to point B in the most efficient way? So this is kind of the frame. And also how do you inspire them to believe that things are possible when it seems impossible? Back to our question on like when there's struggle, you know, because when it's day to day and everything is working, that's easier. But when people hit a wall, this is where your leadership comes to shine or to fail everyone else, which goes back to your point that this is your responsibility. Yeah. Working on the assumption that the people in your team are professional. So it's not a technical issue. It's not like they don't know how to do their job. And if you kind of think about this whole conversation that we're having, it's not about people struggling with doing their job. It's about wasting time, 80 percent of your time with decision making, being unsure, being afraid, you know, wasting time on things that are not tied to doing the actual work. So assuming everybody knows their professional role and how to do it, it's about how do you make them more efficient? How do you make them more confident? How do you help them get from point A to point B? And this is exactly what leadership is. When I look at a leader at the company, I try to understand if they're fulfilling that part or are you just managing the operation of the team or just making sure everybody's doing their task, which is not being a leader. Also, I think that we talk a lot in the company about the difference between motion and progress, because many times, as you said, people are motivated and they know their job and they're professionals and they seem to be working really, really hard. Sometimes the people that are stuck the most are those that are actually working the hardest in the company, you know, those that are spending 15 hours doing things and are writing many updates and are all the time putting so much effort. But as you said, it's not taking anyone from point A closer to point B. And this is where you see that it's just a lot of effort, but it's not progress. Yeah, I would even say it's one of the symptoms that you focused more on kind of showing that you're working and kind of wasting time on things that don't make an impact and don't really make real progress. Right, but to the root of it, who is showing that they're working? Those that are very insecure that their job is creating impact, right? Because if your actions speak for themselves and there's impact, you don't have to show anyone you're working. And when someone's so worried and putting so much effort into showing that they're working, you know they're not impact driven at that point of time. And just to clear, it's not about fooling anyone. No, yeah, this is exactly what I'm trying to stress. It's from a place of frustration. And genuine intuition, yeah, you're right. Okay, so let's talk about actual things. So one of the things that… Actual things, right? Right now we're bullshitting, now actual things. Yeah, actual tips, I would say. So what is being a leader, right? So being a leader, we mentioned this specific example, I want to start with it. But people often, when there's a new initiative or something very meaningful we want to achieve, the initial reaction of people is, it's going to take, oh, it's a big project, it's going to take three or four months. Right. Okay. Big project equals a lot of time. Yeah, well, equal complexity. Right. Equal high risk. Equal a lot of time. Yeah. What I hear when people say it to me is I'm insecure about what we need to do. I'm not sure exactly what I need to do. I'm not sure what it takes. Because when people kind of see that far into the future, what I understand, what I read between the lines is, I don't know how the future looks like. Therefore, I'm going to say it's complex. Because I can't see it. And that's okay. I don't expect them to see how it's going to look like. And the hidden assumption is that over time they'll have more clarity just because time passes. Yeah. But it's not. They're going to do more research. Talk to many people, have more opinions. So one thing I like to do when people say this to me is, what can we do in two weeks? Okay. Some people get, I would say, offended by this. But it kind of creates a weird reaction. I just told you it's a…

complex thing, and it's going to take three or four months. Why are you trying to ask me if this can be done in two weeks? Are you not seeing it in a different way? You don't understand the complexity? You don't think I have the right assessment of how hard it is to complete that project? Or even worse, are you trying to stress me out? Yeah, are you trying to stress me out? So my goal is not to take those three months and compress them into two weeks by you not sleeping or working 24 hours a day. It's more about kind of forcing you to choose that one thing that you are confident about, that you feel is in the right path of moving forward. So this is one exercise I do. Whenever I hear somebody say that, this is my reaction, almost always. Sometimes I say, what about tomorrow? Sometimes it's two weeks, depends. But this is kind of the first tool that I use. And this changes the conversation. So often what you hear is, well, I can do it in two weeks, but then I have to compromise on XYZ. And I say, okay, sounds good. I don't care about XYZ. I want to make sure that the initial concept works. And they say, oh, I didn't know. You don't care about XYZ. I didn't know it's not an issue. And this way I'm trying to help them kind of move to the next level. Because what I know is once they complete those two weeks and launch something or get feedback from users or whatever, or even see it on a screen, their entire perspective is going to change. And the next two weeks afterwards is going to be completely different. So this is one tool that I use often in meetings, on one-on-ones. And it's not just saying that. It also forces people to think that way and kind of come back. Sometimes I say tomorrow, they will say, okay, let's do it in a week. Sometimes two weeks, they'll say three weeks. Yeah, that's semantics. It doesn't matter if it's two weeks or three weeks. It's just shifting from many, many months to shorter time and then seeing the mindset changing, right? Yeah. So what people, well, managers that I often give them that tip, they say, yeah, I can do that sometimes, but some products are really tough. So what I'm starting to stress here is that you can do it for everything. Everything. The most complex project in R&D, the most complex process in finance, you know, raising around, whatever. You can apply this method in order to move forward. Right? So it's not an excuse. It's not that you're special. Sorry. Everything can be used in this. Everybody can use this technique for almost anything. And it's very natural that our mind will trick us and say, oh, it works for only this particular thing, but everything else can't be done this way. This is how we keep that insecurity close to our hearts. Yeah. The second method that I use, and again, this might sound stupid, but I do want to say it, is to use deadlines. People, when they hear deadlines, I would say especially in tech companies, it became like a forbidden word. Oh, we're creative humans building something amazing. Like, you can put a deadline on creativity. You can put a deadline on building something very creative. Well, that's the point. I really believe in deadlines, because when you give deadlines, when I say deadlines, it's basically saying to a team, we're going to launch it on November 20th, for example. And that's it. This is where we're going to launch. And it might be a month and a half from now, but you put a deadline. And what I found, especially in younger managers, is that they're afraid to put deadlines. I'll tell you why. Because I have this struggle. No, really. I'm here, and I'm listening to you, and it's something that I face. I feel as if I'm limiting the freedom. You know, it's like, I'll take you to another universe, just because it's like with my daughter. It's the same. I fear that if I tell her no or put limits to something, deadlines are limits, that she'll hate me or get angry at me. And every time, it's the other way around. She's so happy that I tell her what's the right way to do it. And it's the same with my team. Many times, I'm trying to avoid a conversation of deadlines. And even though I know this is what they need from me right now. So what I found, and I'm talking from a perspective of a person who had the same issue,

But I've changed. First of all, you know the saying that they say restrictions are liberating. So when you give someone a restriction and you put a deadline or you put a border, you're basically liberating them because when you don't have that, it's the most stressful thing. Because not only you're responsible for the results, but you're also responsible for figuring out what's the best time to do it, how much effort you're going to put on everything. You're lying to yourself, playing games with yourself, need to motivate yourself. It's so much harder to do. And having that limitation is liberating because, okay, this is what it is, and I'm going to work around this frame. This is what I'm going to do. And that's easy. And what I found is that leaders are often using that analogy, like you've mentioned. I don't want to harm my team. I don't want them to feel stressed. And it's an excuse because you're feeling stressed. You're afraid to give the deadline. You're afraid of that reaction. So it's an excuse. And you apply that to the team and not yourself because it's easier to cope like this. I used to do it the same way. I didn't give deadlines to teams because I didn't want to stress them. I didn't want them to feel I'm bossy. But it's more stressful when you do that. I remember a time, it was a couple of years ago, that I was working on a very first version of a website. And we didn't put a deadline. And every time I saw you, you were like, oh, what's with that website? And instead of having a deadline and never talking about or talking about progress, you would just occasionally ask me every time you saw me, what's with it? And it's made me so like sometimes I saw you and I was like, oh, here's the website question coming. You wanted to avoid me. Yeah. And it's like it's always in my head instead of like and this is not liberating, you know? Yeah. What I often do to cope with it, and this is kind of my third tip, is to put traps. I love traps because traps takes the liability for myself and the team. Because we wanted to put something real. So we wanted something real to happen in real life, the actual billboards, and tie this into a project that it made a significant impact on the company. Could we complete the project after we had the billboards? Of course. But we put a trap on ourselves to do so. And it works. Another classic one we do is company meetings. You set a team to say, oh, in two months, in two weeks from now, you're going to report and share with the entire company on X, Y, Z. And if you're like, wait, I have to talk to the entire company about it, then I got to make some progress. There are a few things that have to be finalized by then. Now, could you, you know, could you postpone the date of the company meeting? Yes, of course. Could you present without having it completed? Yes, of course. But it's a trap because you want it to be perfect by then. And many times see people making a lot of progress right before this company meeting. Yeah. But it gives you a sense of purpose. It gives you a sense of urgency. And this is what we're trying to create. And again, the point is not for you to work harder towards that day. The point is that once you have this date, have a clear deadline. What happens is that you don't waste time because you have a deadline. So, you know, I need to decide between A and B. OK, I have this deadline. So I won't call a meeting with 20 people to help me decide between A and B. I'm just going to make a decision because it's worse to be late to the deadline than choosing the wrong option between A and B. And this is the whole thing. Like it's forcing you to make decisions. It's forcing you to be very focused on what you need to do.

So, because you're more afraid of missing the deadline than making a small mistake. It's basically creating a situation that is artificial, but the effect of it is real, that you have a little amount of resources. Right? This is what we are trying to make your mind… Well, this is the reality. No, well, but in reality sometimes we feel like we have a limitless amount of something. Time, people, budget. But that's fake. That's fake. Yeah. You have this feeling, but it's not true because what we need to do is like 10x of what we currently can't do as a company. And that's always going to be a reality. So, I've used many traps in the past. I've used billboards campaigns. I've used big PR news. So, for example, we use our PR team and we schedule like an interview or a news article that's going to come up on a specific date and just told everybody that we want to release this feature before that article is going to come out. Company meetings, another one. So, the point is to find a trap. And it has to be something you believe. Yeah. Well, that's one option. Another option which I use on myself because I'm not free of that. So, I can give you one example from real life. So, we've been hiring a lot of new managers to the company, senior managers as we scale. And one of the things that we found out is we didn't onboard them properly in the past. Yeah. So, we have an onboarding process for everybody in the company, but with managers, we needed to kind of tweak that because there's a lot of aspects about management that we didn't cover in the onboarding session. And we knew that and I became frustrated with that. And I said to myself, okay, we need to build like a management training program. And this is kind of the easiest thing to postpone, right? Like nobody, I don't want to do it. I have a million other things, but I know it's important. And by the way, it's an easy one to postpone because you hire a new manager, you're thinking, oh, I need a program. Okay, I'll have it by the next one. Then you forget about it because it's very easy to postpone. Then a month later, there's another one coming, oh, I still need that program. But then you kind of let it go and then it's very easy because it's not in your face all the time. Yeah. I suffer from it, but nobody told me, Eran, you have to do it by this date. So, I'm aware of this. So, what I did is we hired a new VP of HR to the company and when she signed, I told her that, her name is Oshrat, she's just joined. When she signed, I told her, it's amazing you're going to join in a month because we created this amazing manager training program for you and I'm super excited to give it to you. I have nothing ready at that point, but I made a promise. I put myself a trap because I knew I had to do it so we can prepare something like this. And what I did the day after, I felt stressed because I made a promise. The last thing I want to do is break my promise and I sat down and just started working on it. It's more than a promise because you didn't tell her, I'll build it by then. No, no, I told her. You said it's ready. I told her it's ready and it's awesome. Yeah. Good luck with that. Yeah. Yeah. So what did you do? I built it and I think it's awesome. And it's ready. Yeah, well, we're now in the middle of the program. So I created it and then we said it was ready before she joined, like two months before she joined and we started giving it to our existing managers here and the feedback so far is really good. But it forced me to do it. I put myself a trap knowing that I'm putting myself into a trap in order to motivate myself. It sounds weird, but it works. Another tip that I found is to find an enemy or to make one up. What is finding an enemy? Oh, look at that company, a startup in our space. They're so much better than us. They have XYZ. And if you have people who are motivated, people who want to win, they're going to say, what? We can do much better than that. We can achieve all those things in half the time. So finding an enemy also works. The problem with finding an enemy is as you become better, you have less and less enemies. So you need to find other enemies as you make progress. Yeah, and if you don't have an enemy, I think another way to do that is just to find a benchmark.

So if you're doing, we just did our first really big conference here at Monday a month ago. And I think that looking for our benchmarks on what really, really big companies do was just a good way to motivate ourselves and say, what, if they can bring this amount of people, of course we can do that. Even though it's not in our space, it's not a real competitor, they don't care. They don't know we exist. It's just bringing a benchmark and working with it. Or for example, for this podcast, you can say, let's look at the number one tech podcast in Israel. They have 100,000 listeners. This is what we want to be. So this is another way to motivate people and also create a sense of urgency because having an enemy says that somebody is right now doing better than you. So it creates like this sense of urgency where if you work in a vacuum, you don't feel it. The best model though, is to have a dynamic enemy because sometimes if you stick to one and they slow down, it can become the opposite effect. You can get too comfortable. You want to find a good enemy. Yeah, it happened to us in the past that you were like, oh, this is the one running next to me. And then one day you're like, wait, they're so far behind. What, do I have to slow down and wait for them now? No, no, no. You got to find a new one. Yeah, that's the point. Still, and this is another kind of practical tip of how to deal with people. So you can use all those techniques that I've used, but people always find excuses. So one thing that I found is that people that feel insecure about what they need to do, and again, this is all about being confident, will say things. And I can use the same example that we used last time, right? We talked about, if you remember from the last episode, we talked about the feature of freezing a column. And we said that it was built in a week, but they waited 14 months until they released it. Now, one of the reasons when I kind of ran this analysis with the team, so I tried to figure out why this happened. So part of it was the momentum that got lost, but part of it was that too much time have passed. But one of the interesting things was that somebody invented something, okay? So somebody can say, listen, I think we can't release this feature because when you create a new view on the platform, it doesn't save which columns were frozen. And the problem with people saying stuff is that it can either be right or wrong. I have a better one that we had, this podcast. Both of us. Yeah, together, the dynamics between us. Two and a half years ago, it was my birthday. You called me and you said, hey, I have an idea. Where are you? I'm like, I'm on a vacation. Okay, come back. I know exactly what we're gonna do. And we sat on this floor and you told me, listen, everything we do has to become a podcast and you can do it. And then immediately I started telling you, hey, but I can't be the one to do that because I don't listen to podcasts. You know, this is the can't do mode. Like inventing stuff. Oh, if I don't listen to podcasts, I can't record one. Remember I told you, but I never listened to a podcast. So what I do when I get this, I say the opposite. In your case, I would say, listen, the fact that you don't listen to podcasts is the best thing to start a new podcast because you're not biased. Yeah, that's what you said. You're like, perfect. That's the best way to start. I found that the best thing to confront somebody saying an unbiased, like unbased thing is to say another unbased thing, which is opposite. It's both unbased. So they cancel each other and then you can move forward. So this is in this example. Another example with the one I've just mentioned about the columns. So this person said, we have to have this feature before we go live. I thought for a few seconds and said, listen. We must go without it. I think it's exactly what people expect. Okay, so when you switch to a new view, it won't save the columns, okay? And then often what happens is that people look at you and say, okay, and that's it. You can move on because people, they have intuition. They can either be right or wrong. I'm not saying my intuition is better. It's just intuition. And the point here is to achieve perfection through iteration, meaning get feedback from real users and real usage and not intuition. Again, somebody saying something not based on anything, say the opposite, just say it. Even if you don't believe it, it's a nice exercise and you'll see people are not that stressed or really believe in what they said. It's just trying to get feedback, just want to get confidence. So that's kind of the same point. And another technique, last one that I often apply is to make, or not make.

decision, we're just running an experiment. Somehow people feel comfortable running experiments and it becomes really hard to make a decision. Basically the same result, just different framing. So people say, listen, I don't know which one is the best option. I'm confused. I'm stressed about making a decision between A and B. So I say, don't make a decision. Just run an experiment. Do one of them and see the result. And then, miraculously, you just make them just do it. So in your team, if somebody says, listen, we don't know, it's a hard decision. Not sure if we can do it. Not sure if it's the right thing for the team. Just remove the stress. We're not speaking here about the fate of humanity. We're just running an experiment. It's true that making the point that it's not vital and it's not fatal. And if it's not the right thing, you can change. Because this is one of the questions we got. What if you get it wrong? Point is to get it wrong. Point is to get it wrong. That's the whole point. You don't want to be right all the time because it means you're not bold enough. You're not trying enough. If you want to be right all the time, just don't do anything. You don't need to optimize for that. You need to optimize for the best results over time in the fastest way possible. And part of it is being wrong. Because we don't know. That's the point. So don't optimize for not making mistakes. Optimize for getting the perfect result in the shortest amount of time. And that's the whole point. Sum it up. This is the tools that I use on a day-to-day basis. I use it on myself. I use it on my team. I use it with people. And one last thing that I would say as a leader, a lot of leaders that… And I gave this talk a few times in the past to different teams here. Sometimes, you know, they say all of that, but deep in their stomach, they're still afraid because they're afraid of what the reaction of their team will be. And even on the most fundamental level, they're afraid that they're not going to love them as leaders because they put deadlines, because they force people to make decisions, because they ask them to do something in two weeks instead of three months. What I found is that the intuition here is wrong. It's the other way around. When I look at the past of the company and all of our history, when people were the most happy, most motivated, had the best feeling of accomplishment, and I saw the biggest smile on their face when they woke up every morning, they knew exactly what they need to do. You know, the whole day was like one long meditation because every minute they knew what they need to do. They were focused. They felt like they're making real progress. And when people feel the most miserable is when they overthink things, when they feel like they're not sure what they're going to do, when they feel like they're stressed about making decisions. So intuition is wrong here. You want to be a good manager. You want to lead people. You want them to be happy. You want them to make progress and evolve. Help them create focus for them. Help them achieve the best version of themselves using those techniques. I can assure you that they're going to be happy. They're going to feel complete. They're going to feel like they're making progress. Yeah, Roy, our CEO, so many times he says that if you overthink something, just get busy. You know, just do something instead of thinking. If you're stuck thinking, just go and do something immediately. Still a few questions. What if someone comes and says, hey, but our users will suffer from an incomplete product? You know, like we'll give them a poor experience because it's too fast. So now I'm going to apply one technique on you. So the opposite is true. Our users are going to enjoy if we give them an incomplete product. Why? Because we think that they're going to see all the bugs or if it's not going to be perfect. I think that, you know, they've been missing this feature for that long. Even if it's not 100%, they're going to love it because you solved like a major issue for them. You don't need to wait for it to be perfect. I would say as fast as you can push things and get feedback and users can use that, even if it's not perfect, it's better for them. So I've just said the opposite of the intuition of what you've said. Okay, here's another question to you. What if I just tell my team, hey, by tomorrow set estimations and…

Give me your deadlines, give me your own deadlines. Why don't I let them, empower them to put the deadlines? That's okay, but as long as you're in the same zip code. So if somebody says, okay, so my deadline is four months from now, that's not good. I think one thing that happened when we, when I've mentioned the story about the board meeting and everything, we set our own deadlines and the billboard, is that it changed people's mindset about how fast they can move and how fast we can deliver new features and new capabilities to the platform. So once people are calibrated, that's fine, but in the beginning, you need to make them believe that they can do it. You need to change their perspective on how fast we can move. Dramatically. Dramatically. Once you achieve that, that's fine. You can give people the freedom and then they're going to use the same tools on themselves. So you're saying once we're speaking the same language and we understand the technique that we're just discussing, it's okay to let other people be part of that. In the beginning, you need to help them not, so it's more about helping them understand what they can achieve in a short amount of time, in addition to the fact that you want to give them freedom in the future. I know you talked about it mostly on part one, but the question of the excuse or the claim that you'll end up working harder, especially in a life where work-life balance is something very sensitive, is so easy to bring up. If someone, it's so easy to come up and say, but I'll have to work over weekends, but I'll have to sacrifice something super important, but I won't pick up my daughter from school. Like, what do you do with that? So I get this a lot. That's why I use the word efficiency and not amount of work or speed. But if people are not convinced, I do this exercise with them. And again, I'll use an example from R&D, but pick it for whatever department you're in. I will sit with that person and we will analyze a day in their life. And I would ask, like, let's look at that day and let's see where you wasted your time or where you invested your time. Or where you're not efficient. Well, we'll get to that. But the point is, so we see if it's a developer in that case, what I often see is that 20% of their time, they'll be writing code. 80% of their time, they'll be debating, doing meetings, discussing what they need to do. And when I asked them specifically about the code they wrote that day, what I found is they're not focused or don't have a deadline, they will say, oh, and we changed the code two days later because we chose another direction. So I said to them, okay, so what I want us to achieve is that 100% of your time or 80% of your time, you will work towards where you want to go. You won't change that because you're indecisive or you're not sure where you want to go. And therefore, you're going to work less and not more, right? Like this is the concept. So doing more meaningful work that drives you towards the next point. So you'll be ready to get to the next point afterwards. So that's the point, right? So becoming more efficient. Just think about your team, for example, how much of actual work they do versus how much they spend on other things. They don't put them towards where they want to get to. Right, and I think you have it in every process. You know, like when I find myself in a meeting, preparing for a meeting that is a prep for another meeting, this is where my head is like, let's just jump into the waters and fail and learn so much more than preparing for so long. You know, you do that many times to avoid failing in front of other people. Again, like the confidence you're talking about writing code, like, oh, what if I write something and then it's not used? So I'll move slower so that I don't make so much of a mistake, right? It's really psychology, then more than anything else. It's a mental game. I told you in the beginning, it's not a tip about how becoming more efficient as a developer because you use an agile methodology. It's not about doing a meditation every, like five minutes every hour. It's not about drinking coffee in certain times of the day. It's a mental game. And this is the whole point. Maybe we can wrap up with one story that we can share about this podcast. You joined the company how long ago? Three years ago. Three years ago. Well, we know one another for many years before, but you got on board because you wanted to help the startup ecosystem. And we built a startup for startup initiative. And I remember, you know, after six months, we had those long conversation, very frustrated about, you were asking me, so let's think about the strategy. Let's think about what we want to do. I don't get it. I didn't have better answers. It's not like I knew everything and you didn't. And I try to tell you all the time,

Just do something. Let's just make progress. Let's just move forward. And it's even more frustrating because I'm asking you and you really say, I don't know. I'm like, he doesn't know. What does he want from me? Yeah. And then we create this podcast because we wanted to do something. We want to get feedback. And, you know, most chances it was a failure. Now it seems obvious. But, you know, back then when we recorded the first episode, I remember when we had a conversation saying this is probably going to be crap. Nobody's going to listen to this. It's going to fail. We have no experience with it. You never listened to a podcast in your life before, but you just did it. I suggested it, but it could have been any other idea. But I felt, you know, as a leader, as your manager, I would say that I need to do it in order to help you get out of that situation that you're in. And lo and behold, you know, after three episodes, you understood much more of what, you know, this thing is and what it can become. And now you created a monster. I had no idea you're going to build this unbelievable thing. And maybe everything was because of that, you know, one podcast episode, which just made us kind of move to the next hill and have a different perspective about the world and what we can achieve and get feedback from users instead of overthinking, over analysis, over, you know, thinking about a strategy and being afraid to make mistakes. So this is one example of how you as a leader can, you know, show the next step and helping that person achieve, you know, their goal. And I think a few details to that is that from the first conversation we had until we released the first episode, it took two weeks. Exactly. And there were so many ways to try and get away with it. You know, I remember asking you, oh, let's first have a list of 10 ideas before we record the first one. And you were like, oh, no, let's just record the first one. And I'm like, I don't have mics. OK, go buy mics. Like, I don't know how to start. OK, just listen to it. Like, there was an answer for every problem I invented. Yeah, but you knew exactly what you need to do, just creating the momentum, right? Yeah. So I think with Skarsgård you can apply to your startup, you can apply to your company, you can apply to your team, you can apply to yourself. To personal life. Yeah. And what's holding you back is you. And it's a mental game. And whenever you feel you don't have time, things are complicated, things are taking a long time. It's an excuse. And you figure it out and put traps to yourself and use all kinds of techniques just to move forward and achieve that perfection you want to achieve in the fastest way possible. And I'll add one final advice. I think that the best way to do that is to surround yourself with other people that understand this is a mind mental game. And so that you remind each other that it's a mental game and you're not alone, like trying to overcome it. It makes everything easier. Yeah, I agree. Which is why we're sharing this information. It's also selfish. This information is brought to you. Okay, so I'll finish by saying that we are open for follow up questions if anyone has any. And you can find us on our website startupforstartup.com alongside information about events, playlist, a weekly founders column and so much more. And that would be it for leadership driven by impact. Thank you, Eran. Thanks, Lior. Thanks for listening. Startup for Startup. Startup for Startup.