matthew r mottola, the momentum manifesto

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HOW TO SURVIVE A PIVOT WITHOUT

SHATTERING MOMENTUM

The Momentum Manifesto

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http://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewmottola

https://twitter.com/matthewrmottola

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M a t t h e w R M o t t o l a P r o p r i e t a r y 1 | 29

The Momentum Manifesto

How To Survive A Pivot Without Shattering Momentum

Momentum: The perishable energy fueling your startup.

This is the story of how I took a startup from communication chaos to normal startup

chaos. It’s a story almost every leadership position can relate to, one that encompasses

what 99% of startups fail to recognize, and one that hopefully you will recognize and fix

before it’s too late.


Who Is This For

This book is for any manager, founder, or leader who needs to lead in extreme

uncertainty.

I used this process to lead a team on 4 different continents and a founder who

was traveling around the world. Trying yes. Impossible no.


Index

Intro

How This Book Began

What’s A Startup

The Problem

The Solution

Foundation

5 Secrets of Any System

The Plan

Conclusion

My Reflection

My Challenge To You

Where To Go Next

Click to skip

the line

Step 1

Vision Pyramid

Step 2

Values

Culture Book

Action Hours

Step 3

24 Hour Rule

Checklists

Starred Slack Channel

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click to go to index!


Intro How This Book Began

What is a Startup

The Problem

The Solution






How This Book Began

“Most of what we call management consists of making it difficult for people to

get their work done”

– Peter Drucker, Famed Management Consultant

It’s 11:17 on a Saturday, my phone receives a Slack message, and my heart rate begins

to boil. This day marks day 51 of helping lead a startup, and the day that quite frankly might be my last.

71 days ago I jumped on a startup outside of Boston to help build a scalable infrastructure. They had a

team, a sustainable solution, and product/market fit, they just needed the systems and processes to

grow.

That’s where I come in, the accounting guy who takes way too good of notes and actually enjoys

flowcharts. My job was to follow this founder, extract and document everything from his brain, then

create the scalable infrastructure.

Things were phenomenal for about 41 days. I built out an actionable Google Drive that allowed us to

plug and play both client facing and internal systems. Our team was growing and customers were ready

to pour in.

That is until day 41. That dreaded day in which a senior level member said, “So I read a book”.






What’s a Startup?

“A startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under

conditions of extreme uncertainty”

– Eric Ries, The Lean Startup

A startup is more uncertain than a teenager in puberty. One day you’re the hot shot bringing the most

popular girl to the school dance, the next your face is a Dominoes’ pizza and your peach fuzz makes you

the dreaded over-matured kid.

However, in startups, unlike puberty, there are processes to mitigate this uncertainty.

That’s what you’ll learn, but first let’s get back to “the book”.

Back to the Book

This book was DotCom Secrets by Russell Brunson, and it somehow in 200 pages held enough power to

completely throw the past 80+ hours/week project out the window.

A full strategy pivot was born, except the processes to bring the team with it weren’t in place.

That’s where day 51 comes in. It’s been around 10 days since we supposedly pivoted but no one knew

what the hell was going on.

We were still busting our ass (yes, weekends), but every time someone finished an assignment/project it

would somehow be completely wrong. Even worse, team-members were telling each other “this is

exactly what you told me to do” like it was a giant game of telephone. It was a total management

breakdown from all angles.

Do A, B, and C. I did A, B, and C. I told you to do E,

F, G






D-Day

It’s 11:17 on day 51, I’m enjoying the little relaxing time I have with friends at the beach when a slack

message pops up on my phone. “Hey man”. I respond “what’s up”. “Time to talk”. Hell no I don’t have

time to talk, it’s a Saturday, there’s nothing urgent, let me catch a wave damnt. Obviously I didn’t say

that, but my blood was boiling to the point I knew I was at a standstill with myself.

However, after cooling off with some beach pizza and a sunburn, something hit me.

This anger, this breaking point, it was completely MY fault. Just because I’m at the beach doesn’t mean

the world should stop.

You’ll learn why it was my fault pretty soon, but just remember this: the anger, the tension, the

breakdown on all fronts was completely avoidable.

If we compare it to our middle school days, we could be angry when everyone calls us King Kong or

Fuzzy Phil, or we can grab a razor, shave the peach fuzz, and go back to the stud bringing Wendy

Peppercorn to the dance.

“Leadership – leadership is about taking responsibility, not making excuses”

- Mitt Romney


The Problem

We had no processes to maintain momentum through a pivot.

It was smooth sailing the first 41 days (pre-pivot), but once plans changed our momentum went to

complete shit thanks to a communication breakdown.

There were two major problems and catalysts to this breakdown.

1: There was no transparency

We were a 5 person team, and when the pivot happened it organically broke into one three person

team (team A) and one two person team (team B). Team B was all on board for the pivot while team A

had no idea how serious it was.

The result was a breach in trust since discussions in one team went one way while the other team went

another. When we would all reconvene it would be a complete shock to team A, meanwhile Team B

would be mad team A wasn’t as informed.

2: There was no direction

There was no central direction. The week would start, team A would collaborate, team B would

collaborate, and then when we reconvened we realized we were going in two completely different

directions.

What resulted was a full on war of attrition even though we were fighting for the same cause.

Shit show is right.






The Solution

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.”

- Peter Drucker

I needed to create and implement a process that could do two things.

Step 1: Bring Back Transparency

The team needed trust. Team members felt alienated and also felt disrespected. I mentioned in the

story above me getting a Slack message on a Saturday. If you want to completely trash member morale,

that is the first thing you should do.

I needed to implement a process that built back this trust while revamping and maintaining member

morale.

I leveraged both Slack and Google Apps to do this.

Step 2: Maintain Direction

We needed a centralized direction so that when we busted our ass for 60 hours those hours wouldn’t be

going in the wrong direction.

I leveraged the capabilities of Slack to do this.

I structured my solution into the following Three Step Process.






Foundation 5 Secrets To Any System






Foundation

Implementing any type of change is more of an art than a science. That’s why I’ve provided the 5

lessons I’ve learned when implementing any system, whether it be a full blown communication system

or a chore chart for your kids.

The 5 Secrets

1. The Power is in the PEOPLE

No matter what program or software you use, it’s the people who will be running it and determine if it

works. You know that lame saying, “It’s not the arrow it’s the indian”? This couldn’t be truer than with

productivity software’s.

2. It’s Nothing More Than a Pen and Paper (Offline Process)

Want to know a secret? No matter how many tools you have, or how sophisticated these tools are, it

comes back to how would you do it with a pen and paper.

Software’s like Trello and Basecamp help to streamline and provide “advanced” options, but they’re

nothing more than this offline process.

Although the technical steps might sound something like Quickmail Zapier Access Excel, the

offline process might be nothing more than a conversation with 30 people (Email) and tracking what

people say (Zapier Access Excel).

There are millions of tools out there, BaseCamp, Trello, Asana, all trying to make these offline processes

simpler. The problem is that in this arms race to simplicity, we’ve lost the actual processes to confusing

keywords and these “advanced” features.

3. Incentives Must Be Aligned

Each step/action item in the process must be attached to incentives.

Think expense sheets…how much time do you take to fill these out if it’s on the company card versus

your own? I’ll answer that for you. When it’s my own card, I’m writing that expense sheet the next

morning. If it’s the company card, most likely the day before it’s due.

Why? Because my personal incentives are aligned when it’s my own card.

Our Problem: A Communication Breakdown






We had a problem where communication had no structure. People would be slacking each other at all

times, and what seemed like a peaceful Saturday would turn into an urgent shit-show due to the lack of

communication structure.

Our solution was to use a Google Calendar to use “action hours”. These were hours you dedicated

towards the team, and they were to be uploaded by 10 AM each Monday. The incentive was simple, if

you don’t list your action hours, it’s your own fault if you’re disturbed in the middle of your flow time, or

even worse…a Saturday night.

4. Simple is Sexy

Why is simple SO sexy? Here’s why:

1: Just like a car manual, nobody will actually read the how-to’s of the software.

2: The more work, the less people will use it.

Productivity software’s aren’t directly contributing any value. At least on the surface. Thus, the process

must be so simple

5. It Starts and Ends With Management

Want to know how to instantly F it up? Exclude management or even worse, have management be lazy

with it. You must pick a process that management loves and will take pride in using.






Step 1: Take Back Direction

Vision Pyramid






Step 1: Take Back Direction – Vision Pyramid

“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn't being said.”

- Peter Drucker

Vision Pyramid

In a turbulent environment with frequent pivoting, the worst thing that can happen is people being

uninformed and feeling alienated.

Our problem was once we were faced with a tough decision we lost who we were as an organization.

We didn’t agree on a vision, on our mission statement, and the result was our team of five turning into a

team of three and a team of 2 mentioned above.

I had to find a way to get us moving in one direction, and so I created a vision pyramid adapted from Eric

Ries’s book The Lean Startup.

This vision puts you back on track by visualizing a company-wide vision and mission statement.

Vision: WHAT you’re fixing.

Mission Statement: HOW will you fix this.

Vision

Mission Statement






Example: Matthew R. Mottola Holding Company

If you want to take this one step further, you can add the actual products that carry out your vision and

mission statement.

You can revisit this weekly, monthly, as frequent as you choose.

We went 51 days without it, and the result was myself almost blowing up on that Saturday at 11:17.

Vision

Mission Statement

Empower all.

Be the trusted source of education by

creating actionable content built from

studying successful people along with

personal experience.

Products

Vision

Mission Statement

Empower all.

Be the trusted source of education by creating

actionable content built from studying successful

people along with personal experience.

Book Summaries, Courses, Video’s, Ebooks,

Consulting






Step 2: Bring Back Transparency

Values

Culture Book

Action Hours






Step 2: Bring Back Transparency - Values, Culture Book, Action

Hours

“Practice Golden-Rule 1 of Management in everything you do. Manage others the way you would like to be managed.”

– Brian Tracy

Values

Transparency encompasses much more than “honesty”. It is the formalization of values, and in an

environment as uncertain as startups, the only thing certain is you’re values.

If upheld transparency results in trust. If not, it results in a blitzkrieg on momentum.

My solution was to hold a value exercise in which each team member picks out their top 5 values. This

creates a total and from that total the team (together) collaborates on which are their most important.

For a list of values click here.

Culture Book

This comes from Tony Hsieh at Zappos.

The culture book is an unedited (good AND bad) book on everyone’s thoughts of the culture. Tony

emailed everyone telling them to send back an email with what they thought the culture was, either

with their name or it could be anonymous.

He then put ALL the responses into a book. Ballsy…yes. But talk about a way to prove transparency.

Action Hours

Let’s go back to day 51. For me personally, my transparency was breached the second my phone alerted

me of a slack message. My most important value is respect, and to me that was a direct breach of it. jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj




http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2004/11/list-of-values/


However, the problem wasn’t in the action, it was in the lack of process we had. It was my fault I was

contacted at that hour, for there was no process to tell the person otherwise.

The solution is I came up with “Action Hours”. They are simply times when you are committed to being

fully present, and we implemented them through our Google Calendar.

I won’t spoon feed you how to set up the actual Calendar (Here’s a link if you need it), but what’s

important are the benefits below:

1: They are for the team members own benefit (Incentive Matching)

2: They work autonomously with each team member’s schedule.

3: They allows members to get into their flow cycle (Average time to get into flow = 45 minutes).

My Action Calendar





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2iTsxQFvQZQ


Step 3: Create & Maintain Direction

24 Hour Rule

Checklists

Slack Starred Channels






Step 3: Create and Maintain Direction - 24 Hour Rule, Checklists,


“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

- Peter Drucker

It’s 11:27 on day 43 of my consulting project. Oh yeah, it’s also a Friday, and while Snapchats full of

friends riding mechanical bulls are happening I’m using a Google Form to create a qualifying survey. We

had discussed it in our strategy talk that morning and I decided to take the lead on it, applying top notch

neuro-science and finishing it over the weekend.

Come Monday morning I’m ready to soak up the praise, but instead I receive an earful on how the

content was un-usable and not what they expected.

After blowing a few blood vessels and setting a new world record for amount of cuss words in under a

minute, I realized just like with transparency, this too was due to a lack of process. We had no systems

to bridge the gap between this disconnect.

The Problem: There was no direction, and instead of successful projects we created emotional

dartboards crushing the momentum of each participant.

Why?

Because the direction lived in managements head. Thus team members were left guessing on what to

do and there was a disconnect every step of the way.

The Solution: A platform that promotes collaboration while leveraging firm weekly objectives and

adjusting for the always changing startup environment.

X






24 Hour Rule

Some ideas and assignments just need time to settle. A huge problem I was facing was I would do

something immediately only to find out the leader had forgot he even assigned it.

On the surface it seemed like a huge waste of time, but underneath the transparency and momentum

was crashed by giving in to reactive energy.

This adjustment is simple but powerful.

Take 24 hours before starting any assignment. Don’t be scared to extend it to 48 too!

Checklists

It’s 8:30 and the computers open on day 45. Opening my computer this morning was especially hard.

Not only did I have no idea if my efforts would actually mean something that day, I didn’t even know

what I was supposed to do.

I opened up my email, slack, and searched something like “what should I do today” hoping Google

would give me a sign.

But no sign popped up nor would any in the future, because we had no process to give us any clue what

we should be doing.

We were relying on what teammate a or b said, expecting we were all on the same page like that giant

game of telephone talked about earlier.

The process we needed was a checklist.

Checklists seem so simple, yet they are single-handedly the most powerful tool if used correctly.

Atul Gawande in his book Checklist Manifesto shows us how success in the operating room, aviation,

and seemingly any field of complexity relies on the ability to use a checklist.

Why are they so powerful?

First let’s look at why they’re needed by examining the two major reasons for failure:

1: Ignorance – We just don’t know

2: Ineptitude – knowledge exists, we fail to apply it correctly

That giant game of telephone fails victim to both of those.

What exactly do they do?






Checklists protect us from ourselves. They provide a systematized process that telephone simply will

never have. Below are my top 5 reasons for implementing checklists, and if you don’t believe me, ask

people who saw a Boeing pilot pummel into ashes with 5 of the highest ranking air force generals on

board.

1: Promote Communication and Collaboration.

From creation to implementation to using, collaboration must be met at every direction. You can also

establish points in the checklist where communication is necessary. For example, I’m currently co-

authoring a book with 2 other authors. The other authors are highly regarded and experienced, while

I’m just starting my journey. Because of this, I’ll be writing the content under their direction. We’re using

checklists the whole way. To start, we wrote a checklist of the writing style. We also wrote a checklist for

actually writing it. The checklist starts by doing research, then drafting an outline, approving the outline

(communication stop), then writing the content, editing the content (communication block), all for one

draft of one chapter. Notice the communication checks?

2: Lights The Path

Without checklists the direction is found in the founders brain. This means not only does it change every

time, but like we mentioned above it uses a telephone game instead of a set process. Checklists don’t

allow this. If you look at my above example of writing a book, you see the detailed path leading me

every step of the way.

3: Start Systematic Change

The scariest part of checklists is having to actually know what you’re doing. Ignorance is bliss right?

Checklists force you to evaluate each step of the way, forcing systematic change in the inefficiencies

along the way.

4: The 2 A’s…Accountability and Automation

Once processes are documented, accountability can accurately be monitored. Without a set process or

even documented process, each problem turns into a he said she said here say.

They also automate the process, turning your company into a lean mean scaling machine.

5: Your Own AI

AI stands for artificial intelligence. If you haven’t heard of it go to buzzsumo.com and type it in.

It is why robots are smarter than us.

In a nutshell, robots brains are all in the cloud, and when one robot encounters something the

experience and learning objective is sent to all. This means each computer is as smart as the collective

instead of just that brain.

It would be as if our brain had the power to learn from everyone’s mistakes, making our brain

technically as smart as all the population (Even your GMAT scores from that!).

Checklists do this! They combine the collective experience of everyone involved in it without you having

to experience the actual lesson. jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj




http://buzzsumo.com/


Boeing Example: A Checklist Really Won World War II

Boeing in 1935 made their state-of-the art Model 299. Even though the U.S. Army was already planning

to order at-least sixty-five of these models, it set up a competition to promote them. At the start of the

competition, when the plane was climbing sharply to 300 feet, it stalled, turned one wing, and crashed

in a fiery explosion, killing 2 of the 5 crew members.

The investigation revealed nothing mechanical had gone wrong, but rather it was a “pilot error”, and

dubbed “too much airplane for one man to fly”. What happened was the pilot forgot to release a new

locking mechanism, something he knew but merely forgot.

The ARMY still bought a couple planes, but instead of using them with highly experienced pilots, they

rather created a checklist that was “simple, brief, and to the point”. The result was phenomenal, and the

ability to use these Boeing planes gave us a precise advantage over the German Lutwaffe.

How do they do this?

For more, check out my executive summary on Atul Gawande’s book here.


Its day 45, a Wednesday, and I’m sitting at my desk, staring out the window watching kids run for the ice

cream truck, wishing life was that simple.

In front of me is my computer, slack’s open, I’ve been direct messaging Team B now for 45 minutes

before opening up Skype and a Google Doc to start collaborating on a “target market” assignment.

We’ve worked 40+ hours on this doc and are ready to present it at our strategy talk on Friday.

By now you probably know what happened, the doc was a complete waste of time, one party was livid

they wasted 40+ hours for nothing, the other was pissed that what was in their head wasn’t what got

done.

However, each parties were to blame because no system organized the direction effort.

That’s where I looked for something that would develop the simplest possible process anyone could use

with little effort. Thank god for Slack!

I implemented a system to solve this by leveraging star channels. The strength is two-fold:

1: It utilizes the power in checklists.

2: It provides a firm foundation while allowing creativity to be endless.

AND it’s free! jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjj




http://matthewrmottola.com/resource-list/


The strategy is a top-down approach that breaks down each pain point into 3 interdependent channels.

They work together to establish the direction, collaborate on the direction, and adjust. They are broken

up into the following:

#weekly-objectives: Here the leader directs objectives for the coming week. I suggest posting them

every Saturday/Sunday and finalizing them Monday.

#idea-board: This is for cross-functional discussion of the daily and weekly objectives. Upon posting of

weekly and daily objectives, team members use this channel to discuss which ones they’ll tackle and

CHANNELS

STARRED

CHANNELS

DIRECT

MESSAGES

How To Star Channel: When you click on a channel, in the top left

you’ll see a clear star. Click this to star it. Each member must star it

on their own Slack.






which ones they want to collaborate on. For example, if an objective is to create a strategy document,

team-members may want to collaborate or take the lead.

#hot-board: Optional: This is the daily version of the weekly objectives. Like the #weekly-objectives,

conversations flow back to the #idea-board.

It’s that simple. The Leader posts the weekly objectives, the team members discuss how to tackle them

in the idea board, meanwhile the hot board adjusts for the daily changes inevitable in startup world.

The hard part becomes using the 5 secrets I listed above in your implementation.

My best piece of advice: Every organization is different, talk to everyone on your team and try to make it

a collaborative effort in all aspects of implementation.

WARNING: If discussions start happening on the #idea-board, they must be directed into the #direct-

messages section to avoid clutter. If not, the channel is lost to the Slack hoarders.

Example: Literally 5 hours into implementation (Can’t make this stuff up), one of our executives

started slack hoarding in the #idea-board starred channel. After a couple hours to cool myself

down, I directed him to the #resources-channel, which for us houses all the research we come

up with.






Conclusion

Conclusion

My Reflection

My Challenge To You

Where To Go Next






My Reflection

There is only one way I made it through, a deep breath and ice cream.

Startups are a trying beast, and this project was specifically challenging. I mentioned the founder was

traveling around the world and our team was on four continents. I didn’t mention what this actual

meant.

On top of travel, the team was as diverse and busy as you get. On one hand we had proven and

experienced executive board members. On the other we had straight out of college warriors looking to

make a name for themselves. Add cultural differences and serious communication challenges, and you

have the perfect storm.

There was one weekend specifically I remember that was especially trying. On a Friday night from 10-12

PM I sat and documented the data input/out process from our team in India, then had an early skype

the next morning with the founder in Europe for more documenting and note taking.

However, through all the late nights and projects that seemed like a complete waste of time, I learned

something I could have never learned in any other experience.

I learned people. As irrational and unpredictable as we are, we are all people, and all tick to a certain

clock. I learned if you learn people, everything else can be built around them.






My Challenge

My challenge to you is two-fold.

First, learn your people. Not their “skills”, but everything besides what they put on a resume. Learn their

past, their present, and their future. Learn what drives them, what gets them out of bed morning. Learn

why they’re where they are. Why they live where they do, why they do what they do, and most

importantly, why you have the opportunity to know them.

Second, don’t just listen, but act. Build. Embrace. It is a beautiful journey when you know who it’s with.






Where To Go Next

This system isn’t rocket science. In fact it is one piece to the massive pie called a startup.

If you need help in implementing beyond this book, contact my team here or learn about our services

here.

If you’re simply a student of knowledge, and want to learn from the most successful industry leaders,

check out my free database here. I provide actionable content I wish I had when I started my journey.

If you simply want to connect, I’d love to meet you on any of the following platforms!

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mailto:[email protected]?subject=Momentum%20Manifesto

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