How to Turn Clarity Into a Competitive Advantage

You’re reading an excerpt of Great Founders Write, by Ben Putano, writer, entrepreneur, and book publisher. He’s the founder of Damn Gravity Media, a publishing house that inspires and educates tomorrow’s great founders. Purchase now for lifetime access to the book and on-demand video course.

Natalie is the CEO of an enterprise SaaS startup (real names have been changed to protect the guilty).

Every Monday morning, after making her coffee, Natalie checks her company’s Stripe dashboard to review their Net Monthly Recurring Revenue (Net MRR), the company’s North Star metric. It’s lower than she expected to see, so she shoots a direct message to her Head of Growth, Miguel.

“Hey Miguel, what’s the status on our Q3 Net MRR? We’re already a month in and don’t seem to be on track to reach the target. We need to keep up the pace or we’re going to get lapped. Let me know what I can do to help.”

Miguel is just getting ready for his week when he gets a push notification on his phone. It’s from Natalie. Miguel reads the message. Then he reads it again. What does she mean by “we’re going to get lapped?” He feels his adrenaline rising and his heart starts to race. As the head of growth, the buck stops with him. It’s his ass on the line if they don’t hit their Net MRR.

So Miguel copies Natalie’s message to his growth team’s Slack channel and DM’s the product team lead as well. He adds the note:

“This month is critical for us. Net MRR is our top priority. We have to keep pushing. Let me know what you need from me.”

The company’s sales, marketing, and engineering teams all read the message. Their collective panic rises.

What does Miguel mean by, “Net MRR is our top priority?” they wonder. Do we need to change our focus, or just keep doing what we’re doing?

What does it mean for Chris, the senior product manager, whose team has been working for six weeks on a highly requested customer feature? What about Adam, the director of marketing, who is halfway through a co-branding campaign with a channel partner? What does it mean for Nikki, the new director of sales, who has been nurturing enterprise opportunities but is still a month or two away from filling her pipeline?

Natalie’s message seemed harmless at first glance. She asked one of her team leads about a major quarterly goal. But in reality, she’s caused a wave of uncertainty throughout her company. Her lack of clarity raised more questions than her team could possibly answer.