One for the low fuel LED!

You are never too busy to refuel your car. Fortunately there is a low fuel indicator in your car. However in a start-up, there are no such clear indicators. You may end up facing an unexpected halt in your journey if you fail to observe any of the following key indicators. You may be too busy to look at these blinking LEDs, but keep an eye on these indicators before they halt or delay your journey unexpectedly.

Hiring delays

Imagine a situation when your start-up has bagged new customer orders. Your initial product has got good response in the market. There is some budget to get couple of guys on board, but you and your team members are fully overloaded with work. You should utilize this opportunity at the earliest. Plan to get some good guys on board. Most of the rock-star performers (including you) are solo contributors and get scared with the idea of assigning a crucial piece of task to someone new. They don't trust anyone to do the critical job. Some of them are just too busy to lead the lengthy hiring process. Yes, the hiring process is a tedious one and often leaves one frustrated. But there is no substitute to this method. To grow, you will need to increase the team size. Delegate your work to someone, prepare your back-up and most importantly trust other people. Get out of this hiring fear before you loose the opportunity. 

The hiring process should be kicked-off immediately. You should always be in the hiring mode and keep looking for good candidates. Unless you prepare to grow, the chances are bleak that your dream of growth will ever succeed.

Too busy for team meeting

Imagine another situation, you have got a team of talented people to complete the project in the limited time and resource. Every one is super motivated enough to work sincerely. There is no need of micro-managing your team. Moreover, you are too busy running from one customer/investor meeting to another to develop strategy or meet new customers. In all this frenzy, it is easy to assume that the work keeps going on even without a sync-up. Obviously, everyone understands the need of the hour and is capable of handling it.

It is a fatal assumption that can derail your growth prospects. A regular, may be weekly or monthly, sync-up is needed within as well as across the teams. In the fast changing dynamics of a start-up, things change frequently, priorities are revised and expectations are redefined. Develop and maintain a mechanism to have regular sync-ups at all levels to ensure an aligned growth. Without clear direction all your efforts may go waste.

Overlooking quality & documentation

Finding critical bugs in a product requires testing hundreds of test conditions. Every bug fixing triggers another round of testing. In most of the cases, up to 40% of the product development time goes into quality control. Apart from allocating time in your product launch plan, you need to allocate some budget for test set-ups, bug tracking tool and dedicated testing team. In a cash starved start-up, this budget is very hard to justify. However, you can not afford to have unhappy customers. Setting up a separate quality process, bug tracking tool and testing team go long way in securing satisfied customers. To start with, define a minimum quality guidelines and adhere to these guidelines.

Apart from bug tracking and quality guidelines, documentation is another way to improve quality of your process and products. In a rush of creating MVP, documentation is generally overlooked. As the product evolves, some pieces of code/features just stick with the design because no body remembers the logic behind it. The small piece of code written for a quick PoC soon becomes a messy architecture with several loop holes. Testing such product becomes a mammoth task. The testing and development iterations keep delaying the product launch and ultimately you end up having frustration across all the teams. It is very important to maintain proper documentation at all the stages.

Postponing unproductive chores

Having sufficient support staff is a luxury that generally no start-up can afford, at least in the initial days. While you are assigned to develop a critical product, you also need to worry about several other unproductive chores. Setting up networking, fixing wiring/networking issues, paying bills, collecting payments, clearing bills, buying office stationary/furniture/grocery, maintaining lab, buying tools, book keeping, scheduling interviews, appraisal etc. The list is quite long. Your to-do list of unproductive chores have the tendency to getting filled very fast. You are over qualified to do most of these tasks. However, there is no way to keep pushing them under the carpet.

The best way to handle these unproductive tasks are to clear them regularly. Keep you desk uncluttered. Never let those unnecessary bills piled up on your desk. Find a slot in your schedule to complete these tasks on frequent days. Delegating these tasks to your team is another way to share burden as well as responsibility.

Ultimately it doesn't matter what car you drive or where do you want to reach, you can't keep ignoring that blinking low fuel LED...

*Image courtesy of supakitmod at FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

One for the Aging Stars!

Unlike a stable organization, dynamics of a start-up work culture keep changing. Product development strategy, hiring strategy, operational objectives etc are revised as a start-up moves from a single customer to more numbers of customers. Like any other transition, this transition may cause friction between internal teams & employees. The proper internal alignment as well as calibration in work-culture are required as a start-up moves from 3P stage to 4P stage*. Here is one example based on the observation on a growing organization.

We have been working with a small company for past couple of years. Its progress has been spectacular over the years. Recently we have started collaborating on a new project. Our joint customer was very happy with the first presentation by our partner company, however the situation was completely different in the second presentation. The main difference between these two presentation was that the founder of the company was coordinator in the first meeting, whereas the second meeting was coordinated by one senior employee. The senior employee couldn't handle the assignment as effectively as the company founder could have. 

You may see similar examples in your growing start-up. A employee or co-founder who has played very critical role in wining the first customer or making the PoC of the product, may not be playing the same kind of role when the customer base has changed. What should you do with the star performer of your company who is not able to cop-up with the changes? Should you fire the person or wait for him to adapt the new culture? 

The literature on start-up cultures suggests on slow hiring and fast firing. Before you take the ultimate decision of letting go your aging star, try the following tricks.

Communication, Communication, Communication:

A proper communication channel is the holy grail of smooth transition from one stage to another. As you grow, maintain a communication channel with your employees, customers and all other stakeholders. Due to the changing dynamics company policies, focus and objectives may change. It is very important that the internal team is at least aware of these changes. Organizing a monthly all-hands meeting or sending out a monthly status email can be very handy way to set the right expectation all across.

As for the star performer who is not performing up to the mark now, talk to him in person. Try to explain the new role and change in the work culture. Listen to his concerns and then decide the next course of action.

Measurable KPIs:

This otherwise obvious fact remains neglected in case of the hectic life of a start-up. Letting everyone know about your yard-stick is essential for others to meet the performance criteria. In a small scale operation, you and your team may focus on completing the MVP or PoC at any cost. You don't have time to define KPIs for your team members, however when you grow, these KPIs are very much needed to ensure that everyone understands the new process & expectations.  

Investment in People:

The best investment one can make is in the real persons. Your core technology, product features, product development strategy, customer base and business priorities may change from time to time, but most of the time, you will be working with the same set of people. These employees have put faith in your organization and have been given their best since joining. If you see any gap in the performance, try to find out the new tools/courses etc that can give them adequate opportunity to learn and excel in their field. Their excellence is the true measure of the success of your start-up.

Reorganization for new business priorities:

In the early stage, there are no clear work boundaries. Your software developer may be directly interacting with the customer or the sales person may be creating the marketing collateral. Let them freely work & focus on the getting MVP out and acquiring the first few customers. As the company grows, you may also want to shuffle roles of your employees. Understand their strengths, weakness and career aspirations and change the job description if needed.

Exposure to Customer Interaction:

There is no better teacher than a real customer. A hands-on experience is always the best learning tool. Keep exposing your key talents to the customer. Give them the role to understand the change in customer demands, hence the change in company policy. They will be able to appreciate the changes in the company policies, as they will experience the reasons behind the changes. You may not be able to assign every employee of the company to interact with the customers. In this case, monthly all-hands or status emails can have summary of customer interactions.

After trying all these options and giving enough time, if your early employees are not able to cop-up with the changing dynamics of the company, you may consider the last option. Even so, handle it very professionally. 

Notes:
* Please refer my last blog-post on 4P theory of start-up
http://howstartupworks.blogspot.in/2015/02/4p-theory-of-start-up.html