When I’m getting involved with something new I ask myself “does this need more horsepower or more torque”? I’m sure other people have different terms for the same set of considerations, but that comparison has worked well for me. Is the team already locked into something and cranking along well? Then this is a horsepower issue. Or do we need to establish a new practice and get get everyone aligned to it? If so we probably need some more torque.
As a startup person I tend to be a bit more torquey by default. But of course it’s not a completely black and white thing. While I tend to do things that need torque more often than horsepower, I try to be able to operate in either mode. When I do get the opportunity to just line up with the rails and let it rip I try to do that. It can be pretty hard to do at times. Picking at the edges of how people handle situations outside their default mode is one of the ways I try to separate really senior people from senior sounding people.
Being high torque isn’t just about setting up a new process. It’s about being able to make progress when there isn’t already consensus. And what you do when you’re in a situation where the team is moving counter to some opinion you’ve voiced is a great measure of that. When I’m interviewing someone I very often hear something like “I told them it was going to be a bad idea, and sure enough it didn’t work.” Hell, that’s something I used to say myself while I was still an angsty upstart. But that’s not a high value insight at all. Especially in a startup, where statistically speaking it’s easy to just say that nothing will ever work - you’re going to be correct a vast majority of the time.
My measure of your ability to contribute torque is based on what you did about it. This is something I try to dig for during an interview. Very often when I ask someone what they did when the team decided to go another direction after they gave their feedback, they frequently will say they just put their head down and tried to execute as well as they could. That’s alright, but it’s not a great indicator of torque.
I think generally people agree, especially in technical circles, that one of the marks of a great team member is someone who can voice a dissenting opinion, but then put that opinion aside and line up with the team once a decision has been made. But how you handle putting that opinion aside and line up with the team is the difference between a great team member and an amazing team member.
What am I looking for (and what do I try to do myself) in lining up with a team that’s executing on a plan that I consider less than ideal? It’s not just doing what you’re told to do. It’s trying to find the areas that you expect to be a problem and actively trying to mitigate the issues proactively while staying lined up with the overall direction of the team. That to me is the sign of a true senior operator and a fantastic team member. And it’s much more what I’m looking for than any detail about some technology you’ve used before.
I wanted to share this one both because it’s a useful tip for people to include in their hiring and interviewing. It can be hard to get a feel for someone’s attitude when they’re interviewing. But something like this, how they’ve handled their team doing something other than what they recommended, can be a great topic to have ready.
It’s also a great team dynamic issue to have a mental model for. This is one of those things that happens more frequently the higher performing your individual team members are. If you get a whole bunch of A players together it’s very likely at some point they’re going to butt heads. When that does inevitably happen make sure the “consensus” isn’t just lack of dissent. If you can instead drive for actual alignment it’s a game changer. And helping folks understand how to be a high torque contributor is a step I think can help.