10x teams

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As I've written before, I've seen teams work in incredible burst of productivity. We achieved 10x productivity for a week or so at a time. I've always been fascinated by it. Wouldn't it be great if we can get closer to these peaks in our day-to-day? Having now seen dozens of teams in various situations, I think the ingredients for having the perfect storm of productivity are:

  • Team wants to work for someone who cares about what they do.
  • There is focus and clear priority for the work to be done.
  • The team has the right resources at hand.

You probably can't achieve 10x performance consistently, but most mission-driven startups get very close. If you have the feeling that something is wrong with your team's output, you can use the following flow-chart to find problems.





Here's a PDF version.



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