While interviewing for a manager position recently, we asked candidates to prioritize the following:

• Achieving KPI targets (that’s “key performance indicators” like programming milestones or good ticket ratings)
• Helping customers succeed
• Influencing product development
• Managing internal stakeholder relationships
• Having predictable, stable processes
• Having fun as a team

This sparked some really great conversations, and I wanted to share my own thoughts.  I’d encourage you to take a few minutes to think about your own ranking before reading on.

Insert quick break for contemplation

Done? OK, here’s how I think those six things should be prioritized: 

1. Helping customers succeed.  

This is the reason Archon exists, both philosophically and financially.  If we stop helping small businesses succeed, we lose our soul, and soon we lose their subscriptions and our paycheques.  This is the guiding True North principle we should look to when the direction is unclear.

2. Having fun as a team.  

I don’t know if this being so high can be fully justified from a purely rational business perspective, although you could certainly make a good case, like happiness leading to better customer service, creativity, and employee retention.  

But luckily, I don’t think it needs to be fully justified. It’s OK to value happiness for its own sake. This doesn’t mean goofing off (notice that this falls below helping customers succeed), it means laughter and groans from bad puns and wall-sit challenges while being productive and wowing our customers.

3. Influencing product development.  

The software and hardware products we offer are the central tool in helping customers succeed, so improving them is super powerful.  The way you influence things may depend on your role and personal strengths, but let’s take customer support as an example.

The support team is our best link with customers, and the more deeply we understand customers, the better we can shape the software, hardware, services, and knowledge that we provide to help them succeed.  Sure, we do research, track stats, and so on, but nothing beats hundreds of direct conversations a week.

4. Achieving KPI targets.  

Numerical goals are useful when they point us towards helping customers succeed more, and they’re harmful when they don’t.  Most of the time (hopefully), they point in the right direction, and serve as a reminder and motivator to focus on what’s important.  They can help steer you away from things that might be personally satisfying but not useful to customers.

But when you know something outside of the numbers is more important, just do it.  And I only rant about the following because I know it’s rampant in many companies: please don’t game the system by doing useless or harmful things that make your numbers look good.

You might feel clever (look how many lines of code I wrote by copying and pasting blank lines trololol) but life isn’t a video game, and if it were, your reputation and integrity stats would go down.

5. Having predictable, stable processes.  

Documented processes are like railroad tracks.  They are easy to follow, prevent most mistakes, and make things more consistent.  On the other hand, if an expert has a map and an all-terrain vehicle, they can probably get where they need to go faster by choosing the best route depending on conditions at the time.  

The expert can also choose better destinations if they don’t feel like eating at the same restaurant near the train station every damn time. Sure, processes can be changed and improved (with new EZ-RELAY tracks), but it’s still way harder than letting the expert be free and flexible.  

It is a trade-off though, if you have lots of people who are far from expert and/or mistakes are particularly costly, you want that predictable process.

6. Managing internal stakeholder relationships.  

This mumbo-jumbo was originally (jokingly) written as sucking up to people.  In a toxic work environment, it can be agonizing to finagle colleagues who hate you into being mildly cooperative.  

In a healthy work environment, decent working relationships should almost come for free when you have fun together and share the goal of helping customers succeed.  By the way, the best way to impress me is to keep focused on what matters and not care too much what I think.

What do you think — would you have a different ranking?  Do you want to see something else ranked?