Believing traditional weekly 1-on-1s are inefficient and repetitive, V0's leader eliminated them. He favors discussing shared topics in group settings (like a Slack huddle) and reserves direct 1-on-1 time for specific situations like onboarding, rather than a fixed weekly cadence.
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To fix a failing process like cash collections, the CEO should hold a daily 8 a.m. meeting with the team. By repeatedly asking a direct question like, "Where's my money?", you force the rapid resolution of small, overlooked blockers and create an unscalable but effective communication channel.
The pandemic's urgency forced Walmart's leadership to accelerate its meeting cadence from a weekly/monthly rhythm to a daily one. This faster pace necessitated greater delegation, revealing the high quality and speed of decisions made by empowered associates throughout the organization.
After a group discovery call, don't just set one follow-up. Schedule brief, individual breakout sessions with every stakeholder. This creates multiple parallel threads, uncovers honest feedback people won't share in a group, and builds momentum across the entire buying committee, dramatically increasing deal velocity.
The V0 team operates with minimal product management oversight, empowering product-minded engineers (often ex-founders) to make 95% of product decisions directly. This sacrifices potentially "perfect" choices for a dramatic increase in development velocity.
To move beyond static playbooks, treat your team's ways of working (e.g., meetings, frameworks) as a product. Define the problem they solve, for whom, and what success looks like. This approach allows for public reflection and iterative improvement based on whether the process is achieving its goal.
Instead of scheduling rigid, three-hour co-founder check-ins that often get canceled, adopt a 'counter-puncher' mindset. Keep important topics top-of-mind and seize spontaneous opportunities—like another meeting getting canceled—to have those crucial conversations. This fluid approach is more effective in a chaotic startup environment.
The host uses a "30/30" rule for her marriage: 30 minutes of play and 30 minutes of intentional conversation. Co-founders can adapt this to build rapport and tackle strategic issues. This structured check-in prevents important, non-urgent conversations from being postponed, ensuring long-term alignment.
To maximize speed, V0 operates with a "no handoffs" philosophy. Everyone, including designers and product managers, is expected to contribute code and submit their own pull requests. This "full-stack PM" model minimizes the coordination costs and wasted cycles of explaining changes.
The V0 team dogfoods their own AI prototyping tool to define and communicate new features internally. Instead of writing specification documents, PMs build and share working prototypes. This provides immediate clarity and sparks more effective, tangible feedback from the entire team.
To prevent resentment in high-pressure teams, implement a scheduled forum for fearless feedback, like a "Sunday SmackDown." This creates a predictable, safe container for airing grievances—personal or professional. By separating critique from daily operations, it allows team members to be open and constructive without the awkwardness or fear of disrupting morale, thereby preventing small issues from escalating.
