Founder Series: Navigating Uncertainty & Disruption

w/ Michael Hoffman, Founder & CEO, Gather Voices

Buzzwords like “grit” and “resilience” often complicate how we talk about the psychological and emotional pressures of business building. As it turns out, you can have grit and resilience, and still have days where you—and your leadership choices—feel like a dumpster fire.

I’m always inspired by how our founders navigate uncertainty and disruption. Even better is how they are redefining what it means to build resilience and show grit...while also caring for themselves and for others. It's a pleasure to showcase a few of their stories, in their own words, in this new series.

Michael Hoffman, Founder and CEO, Gather Voices

1) Knowing what you know about how quickly and significantly circumstances change, how do you think about long term planning? How do you balance the upsides of long term planning with the need to be dynamic, in real time?

This is a tricky question. On the one hand, folks don’t plan enough and have too much wishful thinking. On the other hand, without wishful thinking we may give up too soon and not be aggressive enough to succeed. The way we balance this at Gather Voices is to have a quarterly cadence based on annual goals. We plan our projects for the quarter but check-in weekly on the progress of those projects and our KPIs. With a few weeks of data, we should see patterns to know if things are not on track or going according to plan. Adjusting when confronted with misalignments is hard, but if you don’t face it head on, you can’t make good decisions.

2) What’s your take on transparency with your team? How do you decide what to share and what to hold back?

I believe in a large degree of transparency, but not complete transparency. We don’t publish what other people make and our team doesn’t know exactly how much money we have in the bank. What they do know is what our revenue is, how our sales pipeline is performing, the gory details around churn, and other details they need to know to do their jobs. No one in our company should be surprised that we didn’t hit a goal.

3) How do you help your team navigate uncertainty? In what ways, if any, does uncertainty guide how you set and measure performance goals and other KPIs?

The weekly transparency into performance is the primary way we help our team deal with uncertainty. We’ve also noticed that some people just deal better with it than others. We set KPIs and stick to them until we feel there is a need to adjust, at which point we discuss this with the team.

4) Do you use any techniques / approaches for managing stress and prioritizing mental health (yours or your team’s) that you are willing to share?

I like to take a hike on a mountain to help manage stress. But there are times when things are very stressful. I help the team manage stress by not sharing everything with them, and holding some of the hardest and most challenging things close. We also encourage folks to take time off, and find time to just connect online and in person as humans and not just about work.

5) There’s been a lot of conversation about the importance of “resilience” in business building. What does that word mean to you, if anything at all?

In many ways, the companies that can hang around long enough will win. And to do so means you need to be able to weather a constant up and down of emotion.

6) Startup culture has long celebrated “grit” as a pre-requisite for success, but often done so in a machismo way. If you could write your own definition for the word grit, how would it read?

Being able to take disappointments and bad outcomes and keep going is what I think of as grit. Pushing through negativity, loss and challenges is grit. Where this goes off the rails for founders is when we tie our identity too much to our company outcome. We are this thing, and if this thing fails then we fail. That’s a common trap and it’s hard to break out of. While grit is great, and you have to push through, sometimes things don’t work and you have to face it, tell yourself the truth, and start again.

7) What’s your favorite way to blow off steam or recharge after a tough day?

Sitting in the sun and hiking are the ways I like to recharge. Listening to the Grateful Dead is another way for me to disconnect.

8) If you could give one piece of advice to a new founder starting out today about how to survive the uncertainty of building a company, what would it be?

Go in knowing that it’s hard. Go in with mentors that you can tell the truth to. Go in and don’t worry about the outcome, just enjoy the journey and try to have fun with it.


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Gather Voices is a no-code video platform for turning customers and employees into content creators and champions. Gather Voices makes the creation of authentic video content simple and scalable.With more than 150 customers, Gather Voices is revolutionizing company communications.

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