#CheatCodes: HyperWork Principles
It’s interview season for law students and hiring season for us at HD, so I thought it’d be fun to share a little bit of the secret sauce…
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It’s interview season for law students and hiring season for us at HD, so I thought it’d be fun to share a little bit of the secret sauce that makes our team great. Here’s what we send all of our new recruits:
On behalf of the HyperDraft team, it gives me great joy to formally welcome you to the team! After having had a few conversations with you, I’m confident that you will be a great addition to our team and our culture.
With that said, I want to share some principles that we live and work by:
1. Fail fast. Fail openly.
We make a lot of mistakes around here. That’s not to say that we don’t think and plan out what we do, but we take a scientific approach to failing. We form hypotheses and formulate the best approach to take, whether that means doing something faster or perfectly. We are a startup, so we don’t have the pleasantries of drawn out pontification of simple tasks. Sometimes we just need to get the clay on the board to figure out if things work the way we intended.
Additionally, we fail openly here, which means share all of our failures for the rest of the team to learn. We all wear a lot of different hats and it would be absurd to suggest that we’re all experts at everything we do. The only request that we have when you address a problem or task is that you think critically about the problem, and try to propose (without spinning your wheels) ANY POTENTIAL solution. That gives us a place to work from when the rest of the team thinks about the problem.
2. Over communicate.
This is one of our key advantages as a startup team — we can communicate more than a large bureaucratic organization. Whether it’s your ideas/input or trying to gather facts or potential solutions from other teammates, please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask. Consider Slack the twitter of your professional life, share everything. As we grow, we’ll develop more structured reporting structures, but for now let’s use this as our advantage.
3. GL HF NR20 (“Good luck, have fun, no rush 20”).
Just a reminder that what we are doing has elements of difficulty that may seem insurmountable. In those times, I like to remind the team that what we’re doing hasn’t been done (at least our way) before. This is a good thing. Every time you run into a roadblock, just remind yourself that when (not if) we solve a problem, the solution is our competitive edge, which makes our company that much more valuable.
Note that “HF” references the fact that what we are doing impacts the actual lives and experiences of people. Have Fun and introduce a little whimsy to what you do and take some creative freedoms with the design elements (just don’t feel bad if we don’t use ’em).
4. “Tell me what you need, and I will go get it.”
Lastly, a common phrase you’ll hear from me is “tell me what you need, and I will go get it.” One of my roles on the team is to facilitate the growth and success of not only the company, but of each team member, so if you think something is getting in the way of you achieving some goal, you should let me know.
At your service, Tony