Success starts with caring. Give a fuck — about customers, tasks, and urgency — is what separates top performers from everyone else.

Success is everywhere.

On social media.

At dinner parties.

In staff memos about promotions.

Yet, success is not that simple to achieve. On one hand, you have to learn to live with frustration and setbacks to be successful. On the other hand, you have to stand out from the masses who don’t give a fuck, but by actually giving a fuck.

Giving a fuck, how does that work?

I am the Founder & CEO of Yonder, a B2B SaaS company, and I explained the concept of giving a fuck in our last town hall meeting.

Giving a fuck means solving the pressing issues of a business. If you solve the pressing issues of your business, you’ll be successful. If you focus on your personal benefits, complain about things you can’t influence, or simply enjoy the easy life, your business won’t be successful. It’s so simple.

So, what are the pressing issues of a business? For our B2B SaaS company, here are some pressing issues for which we have to give a fuck.

1. Customers have a problem

If our customers have a problem, we have to solve these problems. No matter if it is a service request, a bug, or a simple question, giving a fuck means solving these problems as quickly as possible. Being quick to solve these problems is one aspect, but the other is the attitude towards the problem: If you think, “Oh, not that customer writing again”, you most probably don’t give a fuck. If you think, “Hey, I have an idea how I can help that customer, I’ll place a phone call immediately”, you do give a fuck.

2. Get work done immediately

Most of the delayed tasks are not because you’re short on time, it’s because you deliberately or indeliberately delay them. Because you don’t give a fuck. You’re not burning to solve that problem. You’re rather burning to check social media, procrastinate, or reply to some irrelevant emails. So what do you do? You’re either postponing the task, or you’re assigning the task to somebody else.

Giving a fuck means burning to tackle and finish the important tasks, at the expense of irrelevant tasks.

3. Don’t push tickets around

Assigning tasks is done easily in companies that use ticketing systems. And most IT companies do. Therefore, lots of people who don’t give a fuck push tickets around — with devastating consequences on the time to ticket completion. In my view, everybody who touches a ticket needs to add value.

Giving a fuck as a leader means setting up ticketing systems and structures in a way that tickets can’t be assigned to teams that can’t add value for a certain type of ticket.

4. Unblock those tasks

In many cases, tasks are blocked because an important piece of information is missing for the work to continue. A clarification from the customer side. A bug fix from a framework provider. A reproduction recipe for that bug.

Giving a fuck as a leader means to make sure blocked tasks get unblocked as quickly as possible. It’s easy to use blocked tasks as an excuse why stuff can’t get done. It’s less easy to unblock the tasks for the good of your customers and your business.

Conclusion

Giving a fuck has a lot to do with developing a sense of urgency. While it is wrong to claim everything is urgent all the time, and it is also wrong to celebrate an “I-need-it-right-now” culture, often urgency is needed to build a successful business.

Building a business means starting small. And in a small company, the work of each and every individual has a large impact. In big companies where there are hundreds or thousands of employees, the individual’s work has little impact.

Although it’s natural for small companies to be inspired by big companies, giving a fuck and understanding each and every individual’s impact is something small companies desperately need to survive and thrive.