These common approaches can strain teams and lead to misaligned expectations.
May 10, 2024
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In their work with more than 10,000 startup leaders across 70 countries, the authors identify three common management myths among startup leaders looking to grow their companies: the myth of scaling without hierarchy, the myth of structural harmony, and the myth of sustained heroics. By understanding why entrepreneurs fall for these myths, founders can better calibrate their own maverick impulses and instead rely on rigorous evidence about what actually leads to success.
“Engineering is easy. People are hard.” This well-known line from Bill Coughran, a partner at Sequoia Capital who cut his teeth at Bell Labs and was later an executive at Google, recognized that most tech startup founders believe that three factors will make or break their success: technology, market fit, and sufficient capital. But this widely-held assumption ignores another key challenge. According to a piece of classic research from the Harvard Business School and McKinsey & Company, 65% of new ventures fail because of people issues — and specifically issues with senior executives. This and another recent study align with our experience: it’s not flawed technology, a misguided product, or a lack of cash that causes most failures among new ventures; it’s an inability to get the right team on board and collaborating effectively.
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Martin Gonzalez is a principal of leadership and organization development for several of Google’s AI research and engineering groups, and is a frequent lecturer at Stanford, Wharton, and INSEAD. He’s the creator of Google’s Effective Founders Project and co-author of The Bonfire Moment (HarperBusiness, 2024).
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Josh Yellin is an operations leader at Google, and the cofounder of Urban Rivers and wildlife.ai, two nonprofits working towards wildlife conservation. He co-leads Google’s Effective Founders Project and is a co-author of The Bonfire Moment (HarperBusiness, 2024).
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