![]() ![]() Otherwise, you might end up with a homogenous organization that a single virus could knock out. Everything at a startup - its vision, people and leaders - is dynamic, can change and should outgrow where it once was.” Founders wonder why there are people among their hundreds of employees who aren’t doing precisely what they once wanted exactly the way they envisioned. They need to get the hell over themselves! I’ve seen it happen at companies of all sizes. “But here’s what often happens: founders continue to see their companies as a physical extension of themselves. They noticed some inefficiency or gap in a market and stirred something up,” says Blount. After all, the founders are the first troublemakers. “It’s the specific cases of troublemaking that you want to troubleshoot, not the role or presence of troublemaking abstractly. If a startup’s first goal is survival, that means evolution. The more common take on troublemaking is that it disturbs the harmony of a collective, but an equally concerning symptom is the prevalence of homogeneity if troublemaking is absent. ![]() Here are her three tenets on troublemaking: Your founders are the first troublemakers - don’t make them the last. I’d have a list of my reasons ready in case I had to back them up.”īlount has gathered some guiding principles around troublemaking that are less to vindicate troublemakers and more to put their actions into perspective. “I, myself, would get very attached to the idea that my way of doing something was the right way to do it. “It’s super common in many companies, but especially among people in tech: we have this idea of what we believe is the one true way to do things - whether it’s how to design, collaborate or ship,” says Blount. Instead of focusing on how someone was going to get something done for me, I should have been figuring out how we were all going to do something together.”īroadly speaking, technology companies produce a special flavor of troublemaking. I thought my job was to get people to do stuff for me. “When I first started managing engineers, I became a different kind of troublemaker. I was on the the receiving end of what I felt like was not enough data or context to make good decisions,” says Blount. “As an engineer, there were times when I was very meddlesome, pissed off and never feeling as if my managers were doing enough. In fact, she’s gathered as many insights on troublemaking from others as she has from reflecting on her own actions - both as an individual contributor and manager. It Takes One To Know Oneīlount’s insights into troublemakers didn’t start with managing them she was one herself. Any company that seeks a lifeline when employees cross the line will benefit from her guidance. She offers general principles about rabble-rousing and outlines the four main troublemaker archetypes that she’s come across as a manager. In this interview, Blount tackles the complexities of troublemaking and how to frame, diffuse and redirect it in a startup environment. On many occasions, leadership transferred troublemakers to Blount, introducing her as their new “mentor.” Quickly she transitioned from debugging code to debugging coders. Over her career, Blount’s seen both sides of the coin with troublemakers: supremely talented and opinionated people who can also be brash and bullheaded. She was recently the VP of Engineering at reddit and has founded two companies: Cathy Labs and MailRank, which Facebook acquired. Blount’s managed and worked with each one of them.įor the last 20 years, Blount has led technical teams at a range of companies, from tech titan Facebook to Second Life creator Linden Lab to music recording company EMI. The person whose interactions with colleagues sends them all to your desk five minutes later? Yes indeed. The dev who won’t share any of her code while it’s in progress? Seen it. That guy who decides to rewrite an entire system in his off-hours in a new language without telling anyone else? Know him. But unlike Taken’s Bryan Mills, her ability as a “fixer” extends to corralling troublemakers at technology companies. Bethanye McKinney Blount has a very particular set of skills, skills that she’s acquired over a very long career. ![]()
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