Ruthless Prioritization: Using Clarity, Intention, and OKRs

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Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  01:16

Amanda, welcome to the show.

Amanda Goetz  02:12

Thank you for having me.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  02:13

Yeah, very excited to have you. There’s a lot that we want to talk to you about today. You’ve obviously had extensive leadership career companies like hay bale Thunder xo group, the knot, and today you’re the founder of House of wise, and also spend some time with teal. Before we dive in and talk a little bit about the more recent experience, I wanted to start by asking you who has been your favorite or most memorable boss,

Amanda Goetz (House of Wise)  02:42

This is kind of not a direct boss, but the person that’s been most impactful on my life was actually my guidance counselor in high school. Oh, yeah, I went to a really small school. It was really boring for me because it was not, there’s no AP classes, there was nothing and so he would pull me out of class when I was just bored out of my mind. And let me his name is Mr. Zuckerberg called Mr. B. And he saw my potential, and kind of gave me a clear idea of what thinking outside the box looked like. And so I started coming up with ideas to make the school better instead of going to class, I think that was just really impactful for me to understand that there are no like constructs of what a job is, like, technically, in school, your job is to go into the classroom, sit there until the bell rings for you to go to the next classroom. And all of a sudden, this was the first time that I was being presented with an idea that what I’m being told is not actually true. And so I think I carried that through a lot of my adult jobs, even though my job definition fits in into this box. That doesn’t mean I can’t ask or start solving problems that happen over here or here. And that was a big part of who I am.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  04:07

Wow, what a great lesson to learn and so early on. That’s, that’s amazing. And so then I have to ask you, so when was the first time that you started to lead a team yourself? 

Amanda Goetz (House of Wise)  04:17

Well, I think leading and managing and influencing all have nuance to it. Because you can lead people that don’t directly report to you. It’s nuanced that people don’t understand the whole idea of influencing without authority. You can get people to do things you want to do even if you aren’t their direct manager, but I started managing people really not until later in my career when I started my first company, everything up until that point was influencing without authority like at Ernst and Young. I was managing the entrepreneur of the year program and some tax marketing stuff where you have to get people to work with you And think about things together, but you’re not their boss like their accountants and partners, and you just have to tell them what to do. But my first management experience was why I started my first company of allander, back in 2011, and started having like engineers that reported to me and it was Dallas drinking through a firehose, because now I’m doing stuff functionally that I had never touched before, like tech products, and I was managing people and different, you know, emotional needs, etc.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  05:31

Yeah, no, that’s super interesting. And so I have to ask you, when thinking back to that time, what was your early mistake, or something that you would say that you try not to do as much today?

Amanda Goetz (House of Wise)  05:43

Oh, my God, so many, when you first start managing, I think people are really hard on themselves, because they think that they’re supposed to, like, get it, right. And a lot of just growth is just learning by mistakes, a couple of things that pop out, one, not understanding how my personal needs, plans, and management style. And what I mean by that is, like, whenever I take these, like corporate personal needs assessments, I have a high need for like attention and control. And attention just means like being recognized for your work, but also a desire to be liked. And I think identifying the conflation of the desire to be liked with providing feedback, and helping someone grow are two very hard things to suss out. Like I remember, there’s a story that pops into my head where I had someone who was older than me, who I managed, and I really, really liked her as a human and a friend, and trying to keep her and I’s relationship close, while also needing her to, you know, grow and do better in her role. So I think that that’s like, number one is understanding those two dynamics at play. And then oversharing, I am a transparent human, like, I love sharing my life experiences with people. But I think in the workplace, you kind of have to be an umbrella for your team, sometimes where you’re shielding them from the chaos that’s happening above. And knowing how much to control while still letting them feel in the loop and motivated. That was hard for me in the beginning, too, because I just wanted to share all the like, sausage making that was going into certain things, or even sharing, like, I really think you can get a promotion like I think I can push it through. And then you’ve learned as a manager, all the dynamics of promotion cycles at big companies. And like, how it depends on how much budget there is total, all that stuff that I didn’t know. And so you have to be careful of what you don’t know and how much you share, because in the absence of information, there is someone who will create it. And so that is just corporate 101, where when people don’t have enough information, they’ll create their own. And so if you only give them two puzzle pieces, they’re going to fill out the rest in their head. And so sometimes it’s better not to even start the puzzle until you can give them all of the pieces.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  08:12

How did you start to balance that? Like, how did you figure out what kind of information you would share? And what information you wouldn’t share? Like, how did you hold yourself from being as transparent? 

Amanda Goetz (House of Wise)  08:22

Well, I think stepping back for a second, the way I learned to approach managing a human and a team is understanding the goals. And making sure that everything lined up to meet those goals, getting my operating rhythm down, trickled down to everything. Because then you’re measuring on does this thing align? Does this piece of information align with them to hit their goals that’s bound up to this larger goal and North Star kind of strategy for the company, everything goes back to like, if you’re starting a road trip, and you have no map and no destination, you’re going to make a lot of wrong turns. I think with managing if you don’t start with that first, like, what does success look like? Are we aligned on that from a strategy perspective? And now what clear quantitative goals line up to that? And then tactically, depending on how senior or junior the person is, are we aligned on what tactics then it makes one on one so much easier. You’re not like veering off the course and URLs so zoned in on? Is this person achieving their goals or not? And do we like removing roadblocks for them to get to those goals. And if something that I’m about to say is actually a distraction from them hitting those goals and the tactics, not additive, that I don’t need to share?

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  09:48

Right, and it’s actually a perfect segue into something that I wanted to ask you Next, which is there’s something that you called the most undervalued characteristic of a leader, which is clarity. You’ve said that I’m Clear feedback expectations and management breeds chaos, clarity creates coordination and collaboration and cross functional alignment. What does clarity look like?

Amanda Goetz (House of Wise) 10:10

Yeah, so I mean, clarity breeds and everything from role definition, like somebody joins the team. And they’re like, oh, they’re working on social media. And you didn’t clarify exactly what part of society, they’re responsible for what their goals are. And so when someone joins our team now that has a wise, we’re still young, they’re only four months old, but our teams up to about 10. And when someone joins, it’s like, they, here’s what their success looks like. And here are the things that they might touch to do that. But a great example is if you’ve ever been in a meeting, and you’re talking about a campaign or a project, and everybody’s throwing out ideas, like, hey, maybe we could do this, or we could send this email, or we could put this on social or, oh, we should really talk to this partner. And a lot of we talk, and that every at least every feels really good about that meeting, and everybody leaves and they’re like, I don’t know who’s doing what, and I don’t know who’s really responsible for this campaign, we all have parts of it. And so at the knot, we really honed in on this idea of a DRI a direct responsible individual. And for every single campaign or project or even OKR, there is a DRI for it. So that person doesn’t have to do all the work, but they’re responsible for that project or that campaign. And so they’re the one that’s going to make sure that everybody’s doing their job, to keep hitting that goal, whatever the next milestone is, and the ultimate goal that’s assigned to that project. Without that kind of air traffic controller, the plane might not get off the ground, or it’s going to run into something else. And that allows you to like really, really hone in on how much workload someone has, like how many Dr. Are they you’re, I have a few projects, etc. But I think that that’s, that’s a great example of clarity.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  12:09

I like the language that you use, which is when you start to hear a lot of us talk. It’s, it’s very interesting, right? We like it, it basically means nobody’s accountable. I think that’s, that’s super interesting. And then, and then you also said that you walk away. Everyone feels good.

Amanda Goetz (House of Wise)  12:27

That was like a three conversation and then they get back to there they’re like, Wait is so and so working on this or, and then all of a sudden, it’s just so my whole life is about efficiency. Like I have three kids, you know, I’m homeschooling them right now. Like, I don’t have time for following up after a meeting to triple check if you’re sending that email, or I’m sending that email. And that’s why I think COVID helped us get better at, like operational excellence, you have to be so clear now of who’s doing what and recaps after a call, and even just more asynchronous work. Like, I would much rather send an email ahead of time that’s like, you know, a TLDR. But like, who’s doing what, here’s the goal, and start assigning out project plans to people and then putting a touch base on for 20 minutes to say, Come if you have questions, otherwise, you have your deadline. It is this idea of like what when is a really good frame like what do you need? And by when so it’s very clear.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  13:34

I like that phrase, who, what, by when? What about clear feedback? What does clear feedback look like? What should people really consider?

Amanda Goetz (House of Wise)  13:41

Hopefully, everybody that’s listening to this knows, like, if you’re going to fire someone, right? It should never ever, ever be a surprise, all goes back to that foundation of like, what is their goal? And what are they doing to okrs? What’s the objective? And what’s the key results? Meaning, okay, I want to grow the brand’s awareness, as measured by PR impressions, social impressions, and X amount of email, open rates or something like that, whatever, whatever it is, or sight impressions. Those are quantitative things that you can measure by and then so that’s your OKRs. And then you have tactics, tactics are like, I’m going to pick out these three stories and you know, post this on social, whatever it guys it goes into the tactics. If those are all clear, then you can spend your feedback time on like, how are they thinking about things and how can you grow them in the way that they approach their OKRs and then the cross functional stuff and the day to day stuff. And one of the things I learned very quickly in my high desire to be liked is having safe words and safe parameters to allow for a non emotional attachment to feedback at the knowledge We started bringing in this idea of start, stop, continue. And it’s a two way street. And so when every single one on one, obviously, you go through the laundry list of like, I’m working on these three things, and I need your help with this one. But there should always be at least 15 minutes for a start, stop, continue. And that is just simply, if you and I are having a one on one, and I’m your manager, it would be you coming to the table with a start, stop, continue for me, what can I start doing to support you? What should I stop doing that’s preventing you from growing or doing your best work? And what should I continue doing? And that starting up continues just provides this safe spot for you to give me feedback and me to give you feedback. So I need you to start, you know, like, being proactive about new social ideas versus meeting, were you waiting for me to come give you something to execute? That’s a start, I need you to stop seeking approval for every single tactic or whatever. And so that’s just like Safe Zone takes the emotion out of both ways. Because sometimes it’s also hard to get feedback up to get your manager to give you a better working environment. So you can do your best work, too.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  16:19

Yeah. And you know, the interesting thing about frameworks like that is that, you know, if you stop someone, this isn’t as easy anymore. But if you just stop someone randomly and say, hey, what should I start, stop, continue? It’s not the sort of thing usually that they can just, you know, just tell you Oh, yeah, well, of course, it’s all these things. It almost requires this, like an active thinking mindset. But it’s nice to know that like, if that’s the thing that is expected to talk about, then you can be thinking about it for a while. And it’s a great prompt. And like you said, managers typically don’t get that stuff that upward feedback unless they proactively ask.

Amanda Goetz (House of Wise)  16:56

Yeah, and as a new manager and a one on one going from, like laundry list to dues to be like, Okay, we got to talk about something that’s, you know, a little bit of a feedback piece and all of a sudden, it becomes really heavy. Like, no, it doesn’t need to be like that. We’ve now reached this, this portion of our weekly one on one where we’re always talking about feedback. Feedback is a gift whether you subscribe to a Ray Dalio radical transparency, like paradigm, or, you know, just helping to care about the people that you work with to make them continue to be better. Either one, it’s like, you need to be giving feedback because it just helps everyone.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  17:35

Yeah. And that’s an amazing kind of tactical tip, right? Like to actually have a spot for feedback that you know, it’s coming every week. So it doesn’t seem like a surprise shift. I really like that. Hey, there before we get to the next part of the interview, quick interjection to tell you about one of the internet’s best kept secrets, the manager TLDR newsletter. So every two weeks, we read the best content out there, the greatest articles, the advice, the case studies, whatever the latest and greatest is, we summarize it, and we send it to your inbox, we know you don’t have the time to read everything. But because we’re doing the work, we’ll summarize it and send it to your inbox once every two weeks. And the best news is completely free. So go on over to fellow dot app slash newsletter, and sign up today. And with that said, let’s go back to the interview. You know, there’s this other thing, you talk a lot about this concept of like, you know, you measure everything, but you also measure, you talk about measuring things in terms of impact, and effort. Can you clarify like, you know, how those two things are different? And what are examples of measuring each?

Amanda Goetz (House of Wise)  18:49

Yeah, if you’re going to put out like, an axis of effort and impact, and you have four quadrants, right? top right, it’s like, high effort, but high impact mean, this thing is going to take a lot of work and a lot of resources, but it can really move the needle all the way down to lower left quadrant where low effort but low impact, obviously, the Holy Grail is low effort. High Impact means it doesn’t take a lot of work, and it’s gonna move the needle. And people are like, always wanting to know quantitatively, how do you distinguish but it’s t-shirt sizing, right? Like small, medium large. Do we think it’s going to take a small amount of budgets, small amount of resources, small amount of effort? And how much impact really think it has. That’s where its impact gets a little more quantitative, because sometimes social media is a great example. It’s like this thing might have medium impact. Well, let’s quantify that. Like, if we’re partnering with another brand, let’s look at their following their engagement rate, how many people could click on this thing, and then how many people could get to a landing page If you start to do it really back of the napkin math quickly get down to like 12 people might see this thing, is it worth creating a full landing page with UTM codes, etc, or, you know, changing tack and dev to their roadmap to add this in, so they can program this button into this thing, like all of those things are important. But at the end of the day, you just do it on a quick axis of how much effort will this take? And how much impact will it have on the OKRs? Does it go back to the okrs? What are we trying to accomplish?

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  20:37

Yeah, like that. And I think that that fits very nicely into this concept of ruthless prioritization. Like, it sounds like it’s a really good framework to figure out what to spend your time on. I guess, like, where else does that apply? I assume you apply that to more than just marketing campaigns.

Amanda Goetz (House of Wise)  20:55

I mean, it’s everything. It’s how I approached my like, Time, My Time management, email is the worst use of your time, like when you’re just sitting in your email, inbox playing defense, where it’s like, people are emailing you, I ruthlessly prioritize how I approach my days. And usually, that means no meetings before 1130, I get that time to push things forward, that takes my brain power, and I’m on offense. And I try to tell my team like, you are in charge of the calendar, my non negotiable with, like exceptions when we need to, like do podcasts and stuff, but like, we have internal rules of like, what’s your best thinking time and prioritize it. Meaning that time where you can reach that kind of flow state of thinking and ideation and coming up with ideas or going into the weeds on something, defend that at all costs, because that’s what’s best for my this company, is that you maximize your flow state. If you’ve ever seen those charts of an engineer’s calendar, it’s like three meetings. And an engineer’s calendar basically, is the idea of losing like two days or something of productivity for them, because they cannot get into their flow state. I think it means the same way for anybody. And so we do very little meetings at our company, because I want more people feeling like they’re in their flow state. And so that means prioritization of does this meeting need to happen? I know it’s a meme, like, could this meeting but have been an email, but there it’s a meme for a reason did that meeting and I think we’re going to talk about this, but like, Did that meeting have an outcome associated with it? I loved my old boss at the time that he came from Google, Mike Stein, he’s now over at artsy, he came up with this idea. I don’t know if he came up with it. But I’ll give him the credit. But this idea of this one slide meeting, because how many times I’ve been in a meeting, where the person is trying to pitch me on their idea. And they spend like 35 minutes telling me why and how they got to other examples of it, when I have enough context that they would have just said, in order for us to reach our social goals, we want to do this strategy. And we need this resource to execute it. And if I agreed with all that, I would have just said, Yep, we’re good. Go forth and conquer. But we spent 45 minutes on them trying to sell me on something. And so Mike had this idea where one slide meeting with an appendix. And so if I don’t, if I have to ask questions, like, here’s your recommendation for this thing. And I’m like, Oh, can you can you give me a little bit of context on this, this and this, they can go to the appendix. But so many times people just agree with what your recommendation is. And that meeting could have been five minutes, and everybody goes back to whatever they need to do.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  24:10

Yeah, that’s, that’s a super interesting, interesting concept. There’s a bunch of stuff that I do want to dig in on and just wanted to start with this prioritization. Super tactically speaking. When do you prioritize? Like, is it a no, some people have a Sunday night ritual, or do you do it in the morning? Do you do it the night before each day? Just walk us through your routine of how do you figure out how to spend your time, the night before or? 

Amanda Goetz  (House of Wise) 24:38

For me, it’s not the night it’s like at 4:45 before I log off, because I have three kids and so from five to eight is like a good time and then I am downward sloping to my 9pm bedtime. So by 4:45, I’m putting together a list of three things I need to push forward the next day. They’re not really granular to dues. It’s like, think about new packaging designs and specs, that is like a meaty thing that like, I’m going to need an hour and a half for but I’ll come up with two to three things that the next day during my blocked off time from, sometimes it’s like 8:30 to 11:30 is like my block of flow state time. And that’s what I do during that time. I also, on days where I, my emails have backed up, I use my 5am to like 7:30 when the kids wake up, that’s just emails getting ahead of it, getting all the things out while people are sleeping. So it’s not caught, like, um, you get a pingback and you feel like responsible for responding to them. I do that during like five to 7am. And then my flow state 8:30 to 11:30. And then from 11:30 to four is all just meetings being on other people’s calendars and timelines and projects, and then I get a workout in and then back to the kids.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  26:09

Cool. No, that that sounds thanks for sharing that. I mean, that sounds very regimented. But I like it because you’re taking into consideration your almost like emotional energy at various places to figure out to plug in the right thing in the right place. You know, it’s interesting, you talk about, you don’t want to be sending emails when other people are also awake. I highly agree with this. One of the things that I found myself doing is I don’t want to get responses because I want to get as close as possible to inbox zero. So I’ll schedule the sends. And I’ll say, send it when they’re sleeping. So let’s talk about this meeting hygiene concept then. So you talked about like the one slide meeting, I think that makes a lot of sense. Are there other things that you do that kind of like to result in better meetings? Or like how do you know that a meeting is going to be good? Or like what are things to watch out for?

Amanda Goetz (House of Wise)  27:07

I stopped going to meetings if there wasn’t an agenda. And there are no optional attendees. And I think optional attendees are really, really important, because it’s like, not everybody needs to be in this meeting. But sometimes people need to know what’s happening so that they can follow up with the right person afterwards. Once I got senior enough in my life career where my schedule was bonkers, I truly would not go. And if they needed me, then that was on them. And I would say Oh, I didn’t see an agenda. And why I needed to be there is because I was like tough love, but also just so important to people. And I started to say to my team, like, hey, there’s no agenda, you didn’t, it’s you don’t have to go to the meeting. Because all of a sudden, it makes people realize that they have a responsibility. If you put a meeting on someone’s calendar, that is a costly hour for the company, because not only are you not doing work, but now two people are sitting in a meeting or 20 people one time, we calculated the cost of this, like 90 minute brainstorm session that was put on us if you calculate everybody’s hourly rate, and you added it up because they had included executives and, you know, managers plus their direct reports, and then added an opportunity cost of like what work they could have moved forward. It’s like that was a $30,000 meeting. And when you think about that, it’s like, I’m responsible if I put that time on the calendar, and so am I going to push this forward is the ROI there for $30,000 with the company’s time and money, and resources. So meeting hygiene is so important. So it’s just an agenda, check and recheck who needs to be there? Who are the decision makers that actually need to be there and send a recap to everybody that was on the invite options included, to say, here’s what was discussed. Here’s what was decided, so I really knows what the decision was coming out of that meeting. And who’s in charge of pushing it forward?

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  29:17

Yeah, and I like that concept of it. It’s almost like a check on how powerful this organizer has been. Are there any optional attendees? And if they’re not, maybe they haven’t really, maybe that’s a cause for alarm for you to dig deeper and ask more questions. There’s this phrase that you’ve used avoiding to feel guilt. Where do you think when it comes to leading with intention, where does guilt come from? And like how can you avoid feeling that guilt?

Amanda Goetz  (House of Wise) 29:49

Guilt to me, in just in a work setting usually means you have not been intentional about your calendar or your day or your workload, and guilt, if I zoom out in my life, like, I want to give 100% of the thing that’s in front of me, and not feel guilty about all the other things I could be doing with my time or my energy, so that when I give it 100%, and I move to the next thing, I no longer feel guilty, because when we try to do like two things at once, where you’re like, I’m trying to, you know, play with my kids and do work, I feel guilty on both sides, I’m not doing either one well, so I’d rather do 30 minutes here, switch, 30 minutes here. And I think the same goes for work and leadership. Sometimes, as a founder, I can’t focus on my team as much because I need to fundraise, or I need to be doing pot like media circuits, etc. The core of that, though, is communication and expectation management. And leading with intention. And so I will be very, very clear with my team of, Hey, guys, this week, we’re going to stick to our 30 minute one on ones to touch base, if you need anything from me, here’s how to reach me. And just so you guys know, my head is down for these things. So that they know, if I’m not on slack every single moment of every single day giving timely responses on things they know, I’m sitting in meetings, pitching investors, or you know, talking to people. So leading with intention and not feeling guilt has kind of that third component of you needing to communicate and manage expectations of the people around you. And then they all flow together, you don’t feel guilty, by not responding to slacks in a timely manner is because they know why. Again, it goes back to in the absence of information, someone will create their own narrative, people start to say, Oh, this person is not responding to me, they must not be working very hard. And thus I don’t have to work very hard. And no one cares about this company. No one’s looked like it spirals so fast, and employees’ minds. And so just being very, very clear about what you’re doing, and why it’s important. And then not feeling guilty.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  32:15

There’s so many interesting things in that. I think like when you think about ruthless prioritization, in general, you’re right that when you’re doing things like that, and if you kind of mix it with, with a feeling of wanting to be liked, you can just create this scenario where it’s really hard to ruthlessly prioritize because you don’t want to upset people who may want you want your time in in a certain way. But I really like that framing. And it’s so important to just pre frame it and tell people that you’re in a different headspace people actually become more self reliant during those times to oddly enough,

Amanda Goetz  (House of Wise) 32:51

There’s a parenting skill that I learned when I became a single parent that was called planned ignoring, which basically means Mommy’s going to be really busy. For the next hour, I have to all of a sudden, do the dishes, mop the floors, you know, like, I’m going to be busy. Every single time mommy has that busy time, the kids magically find something to play with on their own, and come up with like a creative, imaginative game. It’s true people become reliant, when you don’t helicopter and you don’t show that every single time you’re going to be there to solve the problem. They start to grow and they start to think outside the box.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  33:32

As a parent, I can totally relate. Amanda, this has been super, super insightful. One of the questions that we ask all the guests on the show is for all the managers and leaders out there, who are constantly looking to get better at their craft of managing and leading teams, what tips, resources, words of wisdom would you leave them with?

Amanda Goetz (House of Wise)  33:55

The more self aware you become, the better you’re able to help others for me when I started to go to therapy, that made me a better manager, because when you’re managing people, you’re managing them as humans, their careers and their emotions on a day to day basis when I can start to say and see patterns just because of having gone to therapy now for years to be like, are you triggered by this? Or is this truly something we need to fix and like you’re not a therapist, but I think it’s important for you to understand this person is emotionally reacting to this. And it probably has something to do with X, Y and Z. You don’t need to go into that but it allows you to manage them. Okay? This is maybe a bit of triangulation or you’re projecting onto this person like let’s let’s rethink this a little bit. Therapy gives me a stronger understanding of not only how to approach a problem, but also how I’m dealing with my stuff, because if you’ve ever managed someone that pings your like inner child stuff. Like maybe they’re a little narcissistic, and you’ve had a bad experience with a narcissist and you are being pinged by them just because of how they are. That is really hard to manage a person. And emotionally if you’re not aware, and so, especially as you grow in your career and you start to manage more and more people and more senior people, I think understanding those kinds of EQ dynamics is important.

Aydin Mirzaee (Fellow.app)  35:29

Yeah, no, those are amazing words of wisdom and a great place to end it. Amanda, thanks so much for doing this.

Amanda Goetz (House of Wise)  35:36

Yeah, this is awesome. Thank you.