What are you willing to give up to change the way we work
Day 9 / 365
Large organisations and companies who have been around for a long time don’t have the reputation of putting out new projects quickly. With so much management hierarchy, things tend to get stuck in the planning and approval phase, with people working more on the PowerPoint presentations than the project itself. Compare this to startups like Netflix, Uber, Twitter who tend to do a lot more innovative work much more frequently. What do the startups do differently? And what would we need to give up if we want to apply the same techniques in our organisations?
Small Autonomous Teams
Traditional big companies have large teams for different expertise. Any project that requires multiple expertise would need a lot of interaction and handovers among such teams which tends to slow the whole process down.
Startups do this differently by creating small autonomous teams specific to a project. These teams comprise of people with different fields of expertise. There aren’t any handovers or knowledge transfer required so the process is much more fluid and quick. Such teams often have the liberty to go to interact with end users for testing as well.
Having trust in your employees
These small times are like mini-startups, and they have to be empowered as well. The leaders in the company should not micromanage, telling them what to do and what not to do. The teams should also step up and start taking initiatives
At the same time, we can’t have the teams running in different directions. The leaders should ensure that all the teams work towards the same vision, while making sure they get the liberty to make their own decisions about how to get there.
Maintaining Transparency
The teams as well as the managers need to openly communicate regarding the project. One good way to do this is for the teams to have regular sessions presenting the progress they have made. Instead of milestone tracking, a manager can simply attend these sessions and can give feedback in a more transparent way
Not everyone will be happy with such changes. Transparency might frighten some people, as it means that there’s no place to hide anymore. But that’s the behavior shift needed if we want to have some radical change.
To adopt the new, we need to get rid of the old as well.
This story is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here