Reframing "do more with less"

It sounds like a question of discipline, but it's really a coverage frame.

Lots of teams are asked to “do more with less.” Companies and leaders have been asking this for years.

Don’t just maintain activity and output with fewer headcount, do more.

I used to read that as a question of discipline. It makes sense that way:

Ruthless efficiency and getting sh^t done for 8 straight hours results in greater output, more work done.

But what sounds like a question of discipline is more a matter of framing.

Fewer people, greater output is a coverage frame

When a support team, success team, marketing team loses headcount without losing any of the responsibility or “OKRs”, they’re being asked to cover the same surface area with fewer resources.

Be everywhere, just thinner.

What if it’s a leverage frame instead?

Smaller teams have smaller surface area. There’s only so much work that can get done. When the work thins, it’s still the same amount of work, just spread across objectives.

And that’s what teams try to do. Cover the same area. That means being at all the events, on the same platforms, in the same discussions, across the same channels…

It’s a garbage way to work.

What if the answer isn’t to try to cover as much surface area, but to cover only what compounds?

One frame increases outputs without burnout

A coverage frame on the “do more with less” requirement means throwing a bunch of balls in the air and trying to catch them all, frantically dashing from here to there grabbing like someone in those flying money booths at a conference.

You’ll get a few wins, but you’ll leave a ton of value sitting on the ground.

A leverage frame changes that. It’s like going into that flying money booth knowing that all you need to do is grab the $100 notes to make a big score.

Here in Australia, the money has different sizes and colors. A $100 note is the only green bill. For my fellow Americans in the US, tough luck eh?

Reframing customer success

Not enough teams are tiering their customers. Playing favorites. Whether your company has a CS team or not, you’re spending some time on it.

If you’re currently operating like all paying customers are created equal, they all deserve to be treated that way and to feel like they’re special — you’re in the coverage frame.

That means you’ll spend hours helping the $500 ACV customer while the $50,000 ACV customer quietly plans their exit. It’s not deliberate or negligent. It’s just how it works when every customer that makes noise (the small ones make more noise) gets attention and care.

Shifting to the leverage frame puts value front and center. Customers are tiered. The sparse resources you have are focused on Tiers 1 and 2, because that’s where your real revenue base lives.

You sort out how to manage and keep happy your Tiers 1 and 2. You build systems that see your NRR go up, even while making do with less.

What the leverage frame looks like in practice

If anyone in an org is responsible for looking after paying customers, the leverage frame looks like this:

- Tier all customers based on value

- Be realistic about how much capacity and time can be spent on each Tier

- Use manual processes to learn how to manage Tier 1

- Build systems that leverage your learnings with Tier 1

- When NRR is going up even with a small team, look to Tier 2

The 80/20 rule applies to everyone and that means you can get a lot of value from focusing on the 20% that drives 80% of revenue.

Heck, for a lot of companies the math gets into the ridiculous, like 95/5 or 98/2. Look after the denominator and things will be ok.

You don’t need tough math to start doing this. It can be done by looking at the top 10-20 customers that pay the most, that use your product the most, that you value the most. Find them, write them down, and make a plan to engage with them.

Measure the impact on NRR and GRR. If you see positive movement, do more of that and then think about how to scale it with tooling, process, or people.

The answer isn’t always to do more

That’s the biggest fallacy of work. Doing more gets you more. True sometimes, but not always.

What always works is finding the highest points of leverage and exploiting them. If you have customers paying you, your best customers are your highest points of leverage.

Don’t forget about the rest of your customers, but do optimize your work and your focus for the few that really make your business a business. Go from there. Don’t complicate things that can be simple.

Ok, </rant> from me.

If you find yourself feeling spread thin trying to hit revenue targets, maybe it’s not the workload that needs rethinking. Maybe it’s the frame.

Au revoir, y’all.

Peter