Hubspot’s Bold Move: Revamping Performance Reviews

👋 Welcome to Elite Team Tactics, where we share insights from the world's most successful teams every week, to help you become the best leader in your industry!

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✍️ Coming up in today’s edition:

1. One quick win: How the San Antonio Spurs embraced their “heritage” to win championships

2. One proven system: Hubspot Cofounders’ unique system for performance reviews

3. One million-dollar question: A question to combat burnout in your team

You might have spotted the shift in this week's release timing. With the UK enjoying a long bank holiday weekend, we wanted everyone to relax and recharge, and this week's email to hit your inbox just in time to power up your workweek 🙌

1. HOW NBA HALL OF FAME COACH USES “HERITAGE” TO BUILD WINNING TEAMS

Greg Popovich is renowned as one of the greatest coaches of all time.

He won five championships with the San Antonio Spurs - 1999, 2003, 2005, 2007 and 2014.

But his tactics to get the best out of his team were unique to say the least…

He sought every opportunity to discuss the history and heritage of his players, outside of the basketball court.

A great example of this came during the 2014 NBA finals. Instead of analysing game film, Pop used an entire session to facilitate a team conversation around Mabo Day.

This Australian day of celebration was in honour of the great uncle (Eddie Mabo, often referred to as “the Martin Luther King Jr. of Australia”) of one of their players - Patty Mills.

Patty’s great-uncle spent a decade seeking official recognition of his people’s ownership of Mer until on 3 June 1992, the High Court of Australia agreed; rejecting the doctrine that Australia was “terra nullius” (land belonging to no one) at the time of European settlement.

That one discussion made “hairs stand up on the neck” of many players in the dressing room and made millions of Spurs fans aware of Patty’s ancestors' plight.

If you are leading a team, be curious about the cultures in the room and use your influence to spotlight them.

A single team conversation about each other's heritage can transform how included people feel and unite them in your mission.

Seeing the world through new eyes is so important when diversity is at the heart of your team.

2. HUBSPOT FOUNDERS’ UNIQUE APPROACH TO THEIR PERFORMANCE REVIEWS

Hubspot is one of the fastest-growing tech companies in the world:

• 100,000 customers

• $2+ billion annual revenue

• Pending $30 billion acquisition from Google’s parent company Alphabet which would be their largest-ever acquisition to date

But how their two cofounders created a new method to gain a steady stream of feedback is what interested us the most.

Brian Halligan and Darmesh Shah both came from engineering backgrounds so wanted to change up how the traditional performance reviews worked.

As you would when building tech products, they created a unique process called “Features and Bugs” for their feedback.

Steal this process next time you are in review season 👇

1. Select someone to write your review

2. That person then picks 15-20 people who they think will provide the most varied yet accurate features and bugs

3. Ask them open-ended rather than specific questions about your person’s features and bugs

4. Summarise all feedback they’ve heard and add their own feedback in a 10-15 page review

5. The recipient is then given space to respond in written form using this structure:

   1. Here’s what I heard from the feedback

   2. Here are the things that I’m going to tackle over the next year

   3. Here are the things I’m not tackling

If you choose not to tackle a particular bug, it’s important to explain why.

A good example of this is a bug that Dharmesh received about employees not seeing him enough in the office.

He responded to the whole company, sharing that he valued in-person interaction but the cost of fixing that bug was exceptionally high emotionally for him as he is an introvert. Simply explaining that two hours of meetings would mean his energy was zapped for the rest of the day which ultimately wouldn’t be good for Hubspot was enough for thousands of employees to not worry about that bug.

On the flip side, Dharmesh received a bug that people weren’t aware of what he was working on so he started a series of internal blog posts called “Dharmesh’s Ponderings”, covering everything from web3 to why they made a particular decision in the company.

What are your “features” and “bugs” and how can you show your team which ones you are prioritising this year…

And if you can’t fix a problematic bug in the near future, make sure you have someone in your team who has a feature that others would consider your bug.

It is better for you to take a 10x feature of yours to 100x than get your bug fixed so its up to a baseline zero.

3. HOW CLOSE IS SOMEONE IN YOUR TEAM TO BURNOUT?

Brad Stulberg is a phenomenal author on health, wellbeing and sustainable excellence and we found his recent work on “identity diversification” fascinating.

As a father of two toddlers under five, I’ve learnt that life will continue to serve you ups and downs. But this concept has helped massively.

Similar to investing, if all your eggs are invested in one basket (work) and that investment was to fail, you are likely to view yourself as a failure.

This is the same for your team.

Find out about their hobbies and activities outside of work.

Encourage them to diversify their identities based on the areas of their life that give them energy: family, sports, arts, travel, charity, fitness, cooking - the list could go on and on.

This strategy helps people keep going when work or certain projects might be hard, as their other identities will still generate energy.

BEST LINKS OF THE WEEK 🔗

For your productivity:

• Productivity expert Ali Abdaal beats procrastination using this tactic (Link)

• Take advantage of Google Slides levelled up features (Link)

For your team:

• How the Hubspot co-founders build culture like a product (Link)

• Harness the power of neurodiversity in your team (Link)

For your health:

• The 20-20-20 rule to reverse eye health deterioration from screen time (Link)

• New coping mechanisms for financial stress (Link)

Thanks for tuning in this week! If you would like us to cover any specific topics or challenges you are facing then please reply to this email and we’ll get to work.

See you next week 👋