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1-Page Summary of High Growth Handbook

Overview

Elad Gil’s High Growth Handbook is a reference guide for founders and executives of fast-growing new technology businesses. It draws advice from some of the leading minds in Silicon Valley.

Startups have unique needs because they’re growing rapidly. The founders are working hard to get the startup off the ground, but soon everything will run on systems and protocols. If a CEO doesn’t address certain problems at this stage, it will be much harder later when the company is larger. For example, many companies face human resources issues as their companies grow bigger. They could avoid some big problems if they addressed these issues earlier in their growth cycle.

The CEO is ultimately responsible for the company’s success. The CEO should learn to delegate responsibilities and time management, as well as work with the board of directors. A good board will help grow the company and make sure it runs smoothly.

As a company raises more money, it’s important to hire new employees. To begin with, high-level employees should write job descriptions to keep expectations for candidates clear. When hiring staff, companies should ensure their applicant pool comes from diverse backgrounds and that they take diversity seriously. Hiring managers shouldn’t consider diversity an optional luxury; research shows that when companies have a more diverse staff, they’re better at solving problems and generate higher returns. Nevertheless, at a fast-growing startup, CEOs must recognize the need for flexibility in organizational structure because of rapid change within the company. For this reason, a CEO shouldn’t commit to rigid structures or processes; instead he/she can change them up to two times per year as needed based on changing needs of the company during periods of rapid growth.

As the company grows, it will need to hire people in new areas. This includes PR and marketing. The most important thing is that they both serve the same purpose: promoting the brand of a startup and creating opportunities for growth. Rapid growth will create more business opportunities, such as getting financing or buying another company. Throughout this phase, CEOs must pay close attention to these areas because their success depends on them. A successful CEO needs to manage all of these changes with great skill so that his/her company can grow successfully without any problems along the way.

Key Point 1: Good CEOs are constantly delegating tasks to other people.

A good CEO sets the pace for a company and gets employees back on track when they go off course. To do this, CEOs have to delegate work to their team instead of doing it themselves. When CEOs obsess over every detail in the business, they risk burning out or losing sight of a larger strategy for the company. In order to improve interoffice communications at companies, executives should write down instructions for how people should interact with them in a guidebook that everyone can read.

Even though they think that they’re good at delegating, most executives can still improve this skill. To figure out what jobs should be delegated, Jenny Blake suggests sorting tasks into six categories: tiny, tedious, time-consuming, teachable (meaning the person can learn to do it), terrible at (the person is not capable of doing it), and time sensitive.

There are various types of work that people do. Some jobs are small and insignificant at first but become important when they accumulate, such as data entry or other small tasks. Other jobs involve a lot of repetition, like weekly presentations to employees. Still others require a large amount of research and time to complete; in these cases, executives should let someone else handle the bulk of the work while they supervise it from afar until it is nearly finished, then give their final approval before moving on to another project. Terrible jobs are projects that someone else can do better than you; by delegating them out and giving your subordinates some guidance on how you would prefer them done, you can free up more time for yourself over time without doing all the grunt work yourself. Finally there are time-sensitive projects which compound one another if not attended to promptly; many executives find themselves overwhelmed with these kinds of projects because they try to address each individually rather than prioritizing them appropriately so that only those most pressing need attention at any given point in time.