When Making Decisions in Stressful Times, Think Like a 5 Year Old
I took over a SaaS company that was struggling. No metrics going up and right. Revenue declining YoY. Burn rate high. Stress rising.
Any change you make seems wrong and incremental rather than transformational - where to start?
What is the bedrock principle you should cling to in challenging and stressful times?
Sometimes, the metrics just confuse you.
Here's what I did. I ignored the metrics for a while completely. The marketing and sales volume was too low for them to provide any guidance anyway.
Instead, I focused on one thing -- are we proud to demo the product to prospects and to onboard new customers?
In my case, the clear answer was no. For me, the answer was simple. Fix this first. Nothing else matters.
- What good is bringing in a new lead if they aren't going to convert?
- What good is bringing in a new lead if your sales team isn't proud to talk about the product?
- What good is signing a new customer if they are going to have a bad onboarding experience?
In tough times, my advice is to think like a 5 year old. Find the hugest obvious problem that everything else depends on, and put most of your energy behind that.
Let everything else slide for a while, and give yourself the mental freedom for that to be OK, knowing that you are working on something very important.
