The rituals of great teams | Shishir Mehrotra of Coda, YouTube, Microsoft

1. Prioritize Reference Checks

Value reference checks over interview signals in hiring, as they provide deeper, long-term knowledge from people who worked with the candidate for years, offering insights that short, artificial scenarios cannot.

2. Identify Eigenquestions

When facing multiple complex questions, identify the ‘Eigenquestion’ – the single question that, when answered, automatically resolves the most other subsequent questions, simplifying decision-making.

3. Use PSHE for Talent Evaluation

Assess individuals based on their ability to identify problems (P), devise solutions (S), determine the ‘how’ (H) of implementation, and execute (E), recognizing that senior roles involve more P and S, while junior roles focus on H and E.

4. Establish Golden Rituals

Implement core team rituals that are named, known by every employee by their first Friday, and templated, as these act as a mirror of the company’s culture and drive desired behaviors.

5. Apply Dory Pulse Method

For meetings and write-ups, implement ‘Pulse’ where everyone writes their thoughts before seeing others’ to ensure unbiased contributions, and ‘Dory’ where questions are upvoted to prioritize discussion topics.

6. Eliminate Share Friction

Design your pricing and product to remove any friction, especially monetary, at the point where users share content or invite others, as this moment is crucial for viral growth.

7. Map Product Growth Loop

Recognize that almost all products grow through some form of loop, not just a linear funnel, and actively work to understand and map out how your product’s growth loop functions.

8. Develop Reference Check Guide

Create a specific guide for reference checks that outlines targeted questions designed to uncover insights into a candidate’s PSHE capabilities, as this is more important than the interview guide itself.

9. Employ Contrast in References

When conducting reference checks, ask questions that draw contrasts between different skill sets or ask about the best person for a specific skill on the team, allowing the referrer to provide honest feedback without feeling like they are directly judging the candidate.

10. Perform Early Reference Checks

Conduct reference checks as early in the hiring process as practically possible to avoid a negative candidate experience of being dinged at a late stage and to quickly identify potential mismatches.

11. Incorporate Work Exercises

Include real work exercises or candidate presentations at the start of the interview loop, allowing candidates to demonstrate their skills in a practical context and ‘upper bound’ their abilities, providing a strong signal after reference checks.

12. Balance Interview Question Types

Structure your interview questions to balance ‘home court’ (your company’s problems), ‘away court’ (candidate’s past work), and ’neutral court’ (hypothetical scenarios) to get a comprehensive and unbiased view of the candidate’s abilities.

13. Include Candidate ‘Brag Session’

Allocate a portion of the interview process for candidates to present whatever they want, encouraging them to ‘upper bound’ their abilities and share what they believe is truly amazing about themselves, ensuring they don’t leave feeling unheard.

14. Define Decision Roles

In decision-making processes, clearly define and pre-fill the expected decision or input from each participant (e.g., approver, decider, informed) to avoid consensus-building to a fault and ensure clear accountability.

15. Prioritize by Leverage

Instead of ranking your to-do list by importance or urgency, prioritize tasks by which ones are most likely to create leverage, effectively eliminating or simplifying other items on your list.

16. Apply ‘Switch’ Framework

When trying to implement change or new rituals, use the ‘Switch’ framework: direct the ‘rider’ (tell people what to do), motivate the ’elephant’ (appeal to emotions/incentives), and shape the ‘path’ (make it easy to follow).

17. Name Team Rituals

Give your team rituals a specific name to help people anchor ideas, form identity around them, and make them more memorable and shareable, which aids in adoption and cultural integration.

18. Templatize Team Rituals

To ensure ritual adoption, templatize them and make them as easy as possible to follow, integrating them seamlessly into daily workflows so they become a natural part of how the team operates.

19. Practice Eigenquestions Frivolously

To improve your ability to identify Eigenquestions, practice this skill in low-stakes, even frivolous, situations (e.g., hypothetical scenarios, everyday observations) rather than only in high-pressure, real-world contexts.

20. Optimize Onboarding Experience

Focus on improving your product’s onboarding experience to quickly and reliably guide users to their ‘aha moment,’ as this is a high-leverage opportunity for both sign-up conversion and long-term retention.

21. Embed Best Practice Sharing

Design your product so that users can easily create and share content (e.g., templates, documents) that others can copy and adapt, embedding the sharing of best practices directly into your product’s growth mechanism.

22. Promote External Writing

Encourage employees to write and publish content externally (e.g., Coda docs, blog posts) to help them understand the tools, learn how the system works, and potentially drive product exposure.

23. Implement Writing Review

Implement a review process for your written work, allowing others to provide feedback and help improve the framing and content, especially for complex topics.

24. Visualize Business Ecosystem

Draw a diagram of your business’s ecosystem to visualize how your product spreads and grows, helping to understand its dynamics and identify growth loops.

25. Refine Pitch with Candidates

Use conversations with job candidates as an opportunity to refine and clarify your business’s core purpose and growth strategy, as they are discerning investors of their time.

26. Adopt Platform Mindset

If building a platform product, understand and embrace that your connection to the end-user is often indirect, mediated by creators or other users, which changes how you manage your team and product.

27. Start Meetings with Reset

Begin meetings by randomly selecting a team member to play their personal one-minute ‘Reset’ video (a breathing exercise with personal elements), which helps everyone achieve a Zen state and learn about each other.

28. Involve Interviewers in Offer Calls

When extending a job offer, have the entire interview panel join the call to share why the candidate is amazing and should join, creating an exceptional candidate experience and signaling the importance of hiring.

29. Ask Missed Questions

Conclude reference checks by asking the referrer, ‘What questions should I have asked that I didn’t?’ to uncover additional, potentially crucial, information or perspectives.

30. Read ‘Switch’ Book

Read ‘Switch’ by Chip and Dan Heath to learn effective strategies for implementing change, particularly when change is difficult, by understanding how to direct the ‘rider,’ motivate the ’elephant,’ and shape the ‘path.’

31. Read ‘Understanding Comics’

Read ‘Understanding Comics’ by Scott McCloud to gain insights into the art of visual storytelling and diagramming, enhancing your ability to communicate complex ideas effectively through a hybrid of art and writing.

32. Dashboard/Me-Too Product Interview

Ask candidates to design a one-page dashboard for a product they don’t own, then challenge them to design a ‘bare minimum’ me-too version with limited resources, and finally, identify one differentiation point, to assess their PSHE thinking and prioritization skills.

33. Evaluate ‘How’ for Seniors

For more senior roles, shift evaluation focus from the scope of work to how the individual performs their job, assessing their ability to identify problems and devise solutions rather than just managing larger projects.

34. Co-Edit Projects Openly

For large projects like writing a book, consider co-editing in the open by sharing chapters with a ‘brain trust’ or community, leveraging collective feedback for improvement and broader engagement.