The Monday Thought

HOW TO KEEP YOUR COMPANY FEELING SMALL AS YOU GROW

In the lifetime of a business, managing the startup culture as the company grows can be risky. The company culture begins to strain because the elements that make a startup feel intimate and coherent begin to spread around the organization. Decision-making processes stretch beyond their initial, intimate boundaries among team members. Branding decisions now cannot be made on the fly, but require careful consideration now that people are actually paying attention outside of the initial confines of the startup hothouse environment.

As new people are added to the team, the feeling of 'this is our little company' does not seem to spread to the new hires, who come to the company (justifiably) filled with the expectations associated with an established, salary-paying organization. New hires make demands that 'older hands' may resent as they went through the process of building the initial company without a safety net, a process that new hires can no longer participate in.

Here are 5 ideas that you can apply, as the manager of a department or even the entire company, to maintain the startup feeling as you increase sales and grow your staff to keep up with the needs of the business:
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1. Do remember that your business succeeds or fails because of its employees and the quality of the work they deliver. The first thing to remember is that this is a real process, with real problems, and that the viability of the company, outside of whether you have a viable product, is the culture that your company/department builds. In a way, a company always creates two major products: an external one, sold for transactional purposes to create and distribute revenue, and an internal one, the company culture, created for relational purposes to create and maintain teams over time.
   
   
2. Communicate the need for process management without sounding like a robot. Process management is a vital part of any living organization. Without some process organization, your internal communications may begin to feel and look like the old-fashioned stock market floor, with everyone running around doing their part with yelling over everyone else. However, imposing a process management process without good, human-centered communication, can lead to failed adoption and cynicism on the part of the employees. This can happen with any size organization, not just large, faceless conglomerates. Avoid this situation by taking the decision at the human level, not at the level of "we are buying a tool so we can communicate effectively with each other." 
   
   
3. Distribute ownership of vital processes to individuals within the organization. And let them distribute vital processes to individuals best suited within their teams to control and manage them. Not everyone you hire is dedicated to create a transactional surplus of value with every activity in which they engage within the business, and not every activity within an organization can be transactional-value-plus. Judging every employee and every activity with a transactional-value yardstick is a sure sign of processes congealing around a fixed structure instead of becoming the infrastructure of a living organization. Distributing ownership of processes to individuals who are likely to flourish through them is a way to create centers of enthusiasm within the organization, and by doing so, you are preserving liveliness within the organization as it grows. 
   
   
4. Ensure organizational flexibility by example. Every three months, examine the results of the programs or ideas that were evaluated for application in the previous three months. Communicate results quickly and directly. It isn't enough to set up a scorecard or a passive screen to 'tell employees how we are doing.' It needs to be done at a human scale so it can be respected and so individuals can see the effect on the business by seeing the effect of the change on its management.
   
   Smaller companies allow their employees to give and apply ideas to the areas of the company that are still growing and changing. Problem solving is a cherished aspect of a startup organization. As departments grow, ideas become scarce because people don't feel they can apply them anymore. Structures have bDecome too complex, and frankly, the risk of changing things may be perceived as too high. An organization needs to build safeguards around building monolithic systems and processes that cannot accept small, incremental changes without 'an act of congress and legislation.' This flexibility needs to be built-in from the start and will ensure that, as new problems appear in the horizon, everyone will feel they can pitch in to propose solutions.


5. Treat your employees as employees, not as family. There is an organization where everyone is considered a member of the family. It's called The Mafia. Organizations require employees and managers and their roles need to remain within those boundaries to be successful. Give people space to be themselves, both physically and mentally, and respect their individuality as decision makers. Avoid open-plan offices to increase face-to-face activities. Families are notorious for getting in each other's faces without regard to the individual needs of its members. For an organization to remain flexible, intimate, and cooperative, it is important to give its members enough room to be themselves, that way, they can feel like they are part of a larger whole while still remaining true to themselves.

These suggestions are a place to start building a company that will have a high probability of remaining productive if these principles are followed and if they are re-evaluated on a regular basis. As with any living organization, ideas can become obsolete and the only way to time proof them is to re-evaluate them against the needs of the business on a regular basis.

Sources Consulted (Highlights):
Open Plan Offices:
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-01/everyone-hates-the-open-plan-office-it-doesn-t-have-to-be-that-way

Entrepreneurial Spirit as You Grow
www.forbes.com/sites/jacquelynsmith/2013/10/22/how-to-keep-your-entrepreneurial-spirit-alive-as-the-company-you-work-for-grows/#31b11df4c0d4

Don't treat your team as a family
www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/should-you-treat-your-employees-family
​www.inc.com/kevin-daum/9-reasons-not-to-treat-your-business-like-a-family.html