I was speaking with the CEO of a 50 person startup in Los Angeles last week, and the topic was creating processes to streamline operations across the company. The problem was clear from the executive leadership level, when the CEO told me “I can’t sleep at night wondering if something is getting dropped.” I’ve heard this sentiment from several companies, so I want to address some potential solutions to getting a good night’s sleep as a founder.
Taking a step back, we’ve known for a long time that a successful business has the ability to scale. If your business is focused on one person’s efforts (the Hero) then your growth opportunities are obviously limited by what that person can dream up and accomplish. If she or he gets sick, hit by a bus, or makes a mistake then the entire venture could be at risk. Removing dependencies on the founder opens up the ability to “make money while you sleep”, because the founder could be on vacation or retired, but the business can run itself.
This is one of the key reasons investors are attracted to software companies (once the software is built, each incremental sale requires little new investment), however I want to address an overlooked aspect of scalability - employee engagement and ownership of the final product. When your entire company understands the goals and shares in the rewards of company success, it’s much easier to implement new policies and procedures and make them stick.
Let’s talk about a concrete example, in this case implementing a Project Management process to keep alignment across divisions and drive accountability. A company that has been successful without any organized process (a series of Heroes making amazing efforts to regularly push work across the finish line) realizes that depending upon superhuman efforts to reach the stage of company growth. Executive leadership can agree that change is necessary and they need to put in some (hopefully) lightweight processes.
Your first inclination will be to put out a job ad and find a senior level Project Manager. After all, a person who specializes in tracking projects should be able to come in, inventory all the projects, and set up some processes that run projects from start to completion. This works from a tactical viewpoint, but strategically it ignores larger problems that cause new processes and procedures to fail.
The key to making new procedures stick long term is to get buy-in from the entire affected organization. I’m talking about real, honest discussions about what is working and what is not working, before change starts happening. There is a reason why your company has succeeded until this point without processes, and some people inevitably like how the company runs. Adding process changes the job for people, even in something as simple as “I used to spend a bunch of time dealing with chaos, but not I have to spend 2 hours a week implementing a new process.”
The truth is that a new two hour process is very noticeable, compared to generalized chaos, even if this chaos is 4 hours, spread out over several days. Suddenly accountability exists where none was before, the “hero” mentality is not rewarded as much as consistency and predictability. Recognizing that you will face challenges in coming up with new processes for your company is a great first step, but ensuring that the changes are adopted with minimal pain and eventually championed and owned by your employees is where you will see the benefits to your business.
This is the kind of work I do. I’d love to talk to you about ownership cultures, the transition, and what I can do for you.