This is the second installment of Supporting the Team that Builds Your Dream. In this post, I discuss creating, documenting, and sharing a vision of your company’s operations team and taking the first steps towards building it.
Got care?
The first step in building a good workplace? It’s giving a sh*t. You’re successful. The reason for that success is the talented team you have building your dream. At this point, you’re a bit overwhelmed with managing everything, but instead of continuing down the workplace-spiral-of-death, you need to commit yourself to doing what’s right for your team and business: getting help. But before turning this into a hiring exercise, let’s first step back and take a look at things from a familiar perspective: that of building a new company.
You see, the team you’ve built thus far has been hired primarily to build a product or provide a service to clients. Thinking of this initiative as creating a mini-company helps frame the new team’s mission as though it had real customers. From networking, to onboarding, to stocking the fridge, to running payroll, this new company’s sole purpose is to service the people that have made your business so successful.
So, as with any start up, there are a couple of fundamental exercises to go through to ensure you’re getting things off on the right foot. We’ll start by talking with your prospective customers: you and your employees.
Document your job and talk with your team
Consider yourself your first customer. A big goal of this initiative is to make you happier and confident that you’re doing what’s right for your company. So, your assignment is to document all of the operations-level tasks that you take care of which are no longer core to your function as a founder. Write the list as though it’s a job description because in a while you’ll use it as such. Also, do yourself a favor. In that list, write this down: Provide weekly debriefs on infrastructure and people-ops initiatives with founder(s).
Next up is to talk with your other customers by hosting an an open ended discussion in the office with your existing team. Order some pizza, get some beer, and take an hour to discuss what’s working and what’s not at work. Remember, these people are working at your small company for a reason: they don’t wanna work at a big place. They should be ready and willing to talk, and you should be ready to shut up, listen and take good notes. Not only will you get an inventory of improvements you can make, but you’re creating an open dialog between you and your team. Different than the typical project-centric meetings you have, this one is emotional and directly tied to your team’s sense of self-worth at your company. Listen with wide-open ears.
Now you’ve got two lists and an audience. Great. They’ll come in really handy for the next exercise, as well as when you actually start interviewing the people you need to hire.
Your ideal company
The next exercise sounds esoteric if only because the word to describe it kind of is: visioning. The process of visioning is creating and documenting a plan, goal or vision of the future. In our case, we want to envision what our company’s workplace would look like if we do absolutely everything A+. The point? If we don’t know where we’re driving, we’ll never know we’ve arrived. Having a coherent vision helps us know what the ideal is and, in turn, it helps us set milestones and measure our progress as we travel towards it. Kind of new age, yes. But also critical to us making good on our promise.
So, do this: Take 20 minutes and write down what your company looks like in 5 years on the inside. Imagine some of the jobs you’re doing today and how a stellar operations team might service your employees even better than you have. Is there an equity plan, benefits, paid time off, or any other perk at your company that keeps people happy to be there? How big is the company, and what are the reasons everyone wants to stick around? What do you do to promote your business’ vision, culture, and well-being?
This isn’t the time to think about the practicalities of getting there. This is pure, free-range visioning with no strings attached.
Here’s an example workplace vision:
In 2018, our company will have 35 people on the roster. While we have a central office in Chicago, seventy-five percent of our team works remotely. Three are even abroad. Our workplace is efficient and proactive. The operations team knows that reacting quickly to problems to keep the tech team productive is job #1. Likewise, our quarterly 1:1 check-ins with employees have helped everyone, including the company, meet or exceed professional objectives 5 years in a row, which has helped our retention rate stay above 90%.
Sit and ponder
The final step is to let this all sink in. Take your (written) vision and list, and hide them. Come back in 3 days, review them, and consider the crossroads you’re at right now. You have a team that needs and deserves a higher-quality, disciplined approach to operations and a vision for building it. What’s your next move?
I realized 10 months ago that our own workplace was at this crossroads. Our company had grown to the point where, if we didn’t solidify our vision as a workplace, we risked losing the energy and momentum we’d built over the previous years. So, with everyone’s involvement, we spent a lot of time cleaning house. We’ve made progress, but we’re not there yet. We know where we’re headed though and see a bit of progress every day.
Here’s what our workplace mission and vision looks like in a bit of a mish-mash:
Our workplace mission at We Are Mammoth is to service our production team like they’re pro-ball players on the court playing a championship game. We react quickly and accurately to ensure there’s as little interruption as possible to their ability to play. Our 5 year workplace vision is to have a team of 35-50 people who are 100% on board with our company’s mission to build better tools for the workplace. Our team is a progressive, heterogeneous group of designers, developers, and operational folk who experience first-hand that We Are Mammoth cares as much about its workforce as it does about building stellar tools and services.
Next steps
Next week, we’ll dive into designing the team that’ll help you get out of the weeds and get your company on course to the workplace vision you created above.
{Craig Bryant is founder and product manager of Kin, and cofounder of We Are Mammoth, a web consulting firm in Chicago.}