Gaurav Munjal, CEO of edtech unicorn Unacademy, has revealed six frameworks followed by the leadership team at the startup that help maintain best practices within the organisation.
The first framework is making time for tasks that move the needle. As Munjal writes, “needle moving tasks can lead [to] 10x more outcomes.” Since many leaders find their days to be extremely busy, it has to be a conscious effort to find 30 minutes in a day to move the needle.
The second framework Munjal advises to follow is to prioritise “outcomes over everything else.” Using the example of creating a new feature, Munjal describes the input as putting together the team to build a new feature, the output as building the feature, and the outcome as noticing that significant percentage of users are using this new feature.
By remembering to prioritise outcomes over inputs or outputs, Munjal one can “almost always lead to growth or behaviour change.”
The third framework is an intense focus on personal productivity for senior leaders. Apart from using the thousands of software options, Senior Vice Presidents and above are also encouraged to have executive assistants to free up their days for needle moving tasks.
The fourth framework Munjal espouses is the use of what he calls “iconic goals.” These are goals and targets that “help in aligning the entire organisation to a mission.”
The fifth framework is the focus on increasing your startup’s total addressable market. Launch new products, create new categories, and open up in new geographies. According to Munjal, “at any point of time there will be a few businesses which will be in stable state, few in scaling state and few in starting up state” at Unacademy.
The sixth and final framework Unacademy’s leadership tries to remember is that “innovation just doesn’t mean better product.” Unacademy Subscription was a new business model, and their YouTube channel was a new channel for traction.
As Munjal said, “When you think about innovation, do not limit yourself to Product.”