all.the.work.things

[corporeal blogs about corporate cogs]

Here’s Why You Should NOT Work at a Small Company / Startup.

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I recently wrote about why you should work at a very small company.  Now I’m going to write about why you shouldn’t.

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Everyone wants to work at a startup or a very small company, Or everyone thinks or feels they should want to.

Why?

Working at a tiny company can be rewarding.  Life changing. It can allow you to impact the lives of millions.

Guess what?

1) Those things are not guaranteed.  In fact, its almost a guarantee that none of them will happen.

2) You can absolutely make those same things happen at a medium or big company, or any company.

So…if you’re embarrassed because:

  • You’re working at a small company but (secretly) want to leave it for a bigger one or
  • you think you want to work at a small company because that is what you think you’re supposed to want, or
  • you don’t want to work at a small company but you’re e!embarrassed to tell people that…

why? Why are you embarrassed?

You shouldn’t be. Here’s a story from my experience to prove it.

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I got a new job at a big company. I would be doing at a global level what I had been doing previously at a local level. (This also known as a promotion)

The job was to manage the global portfolio of projects.

What does manage mean? I’m not sure, but here are some other words that mean the same thing, in this context: understand, measure, communicate, characterize, analyze.

Actually, that sums it up: my new job was to measure, characterize, understand, analyze, and communicate the global portfolio of projects.

My new job was to answer this question: we are investing many millions in projects. What are we doing? How are we doing?

I thought, surely at this big company, there are robust and established things to do this. I will inherit a system, processes, tools, etc…and administer them. Improve them. Refine them.

When I actually started the job, I discovered something. This thing I discovered has been discovered by countless people before me.

None of that stuff was in place. I was starting from the ground.

Why?

Because this complex, profitable, effective company I was fortunate to be a part of… It wasn’t built to do “portfolio management.” It was built to make things and ship them. (And it was pretty good at that)

So I had to build it. Actually, first I had to define “it” in the first place. What is “it”?

And I didn’t have a big staff, or a budget, or a manual to tell me how.

I just had to make it happen. And I had to do it fast.

Boy. Sure sounds like a startup, doesn’t it?

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My boss gave me the autonomy and freedom to develop my path forward and execute it. She trusted me to deliver. That’s why she hired me.

So I decided to approach my job like a startup. Or at least, like I was starting something up.

But there was one major difference between what I was doing and what I would be doing at a startup: I had the support and resources of an at-scale business. And that support gave me the ability to build and launch in ways that would have been otherwise impossible, or at least, much, much harder.

Here’s what we accomplished in about 9 months:

We built a network of like-minded colleagues. Suddenly…instantly…I had a team.  My team was not there because I was paying their salaries.  They were there because they wanted to help define the mission and vision for this new thing. And they committed to help realize it.

We developed and deployed standards. Sounds trivial. But capturing and reporting data on hundreds of projects across multiple locations, geographies, and sub-cultures is hard. A standard was the best (only?) way to understand what’s going on.

We developed out first quantifiable performance measures. These are also known as KPIs or metrics. This is so important.  Why?  Because it let us figure out where we, as a team of like minded individuals, needed to focus to improve our work.

Think about it this way: with our measurement framework, we were no longer carpenters fixing desks to make them sturdier, or more functional. We became carpenters that were learning to become better carpenters, so that every desk we make will be better, forever.

We built the first customized reporting package for the business. This is not some generic consultant’s reporting package based on “generic large businesses like you best practice magic quadrant tribal knowledge buzzword!”.

No.

We built the reporting package using lean startup techniques…shipping our reports, iterating, and shipping again. And once enough people saw them…

We built a platform where executives reviewed these reports, every month.

So to recap:

When we started: goose egg.

9 months later: data-driven custom reports based on a global data standard, reviewed monthly by executives, driven by a team of like-minded professionals, with a plan to constantly improve the process, data, reports, and ultimately impact the business and worldwide customer base.  We were solving problems.

Would you be excited for the next 9 months?

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Big companies have massive liabilities. We all know about them. We complain about them to our friends, spouses, co workers. They’re documented and studied in business schools. There is an entire consulting industry built to (alledgely) fix them.

What about big companies’ assets? No one talks about those.

I will. Here are a few. (Are there more?)

  1. Instant access to a customer base. Startups are about building a customer base. Large companies have that already. So instead of building it, you can go straight to delivering to it. (Or build a second, or third one, I’d you want)
  2. Instant access to many types of customers. Internal. External. Vendors. Contractors. Consumers. Executives. Pick who you want and make what they need.
  3. Resources. This one is obvious.  Money, people, time. Build your business case and get what you need to do what the business needs.
  4. Opportunity. A big company needs lots of different functions to achieve its business strategy. Sales, marketing, research, manufacturing.  Dozens, maybe hundreds more. Work in all of them. Or work in one for a really long time and learn to dominate it. Just had kids? Take something low key. No kids yet? Travel 25 weeks a year.
  5. Opportunity part 2. So many problems! Every problem is an opportunity. Every fix ultimately impacts your global customer base. Pick the one you want to fix. Build your business case and go fix it. Then pick the next one. Then the next one. This is fun!
  6. Mentors. Big companies have awesome people in them. 10k people in your company? 100 of them are geniuses. That’s just statistics. Do you know who they are? Find them and work for them, work with them, work near them, around them.  Remember: you are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with.
  7. Skills. Ideas take hold through leadership. Leadership happens through influence, not reporting structure. Large organizations are an ideal place to develop and use this ability to…again…deliver for a global customer base.

That’s 7. Can you think of any more?

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A final thought: what is a theme in the things I identified above?

Customer base.

When you choose the company to work for, what you’re really choosing is a customer base. (This is true even at a startup, but the difference is a startup has a potential customer base, whereas a big company has ACTUAL CUSTOMERS)

Are you curing a disease? Transforming a consumer experience? Delivering a new technology to the world?  Are you passionate about your customer base? 

After you choose your company, you need to choose what to do. Can you link what you’re doing to your company’s strategy? To the customer base?

One thing is true: it’s human nature to want instant gratification. (It is mine, for sure)

I don’t want to wait for the customers. I want to make it better for customers, and I want to do it now.

I can do that at a big company. You can too.

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Here’s Why You Should Work at a 3 Person Company (Startup, or not).

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daisy

This is an article about why I think everyone should work at a very small company.

This could be a “Startup” or not…it could also be a small consulting firm, or a bakery, or a house cleaning business, or an online school, or a dog walking company, or an art studio, or a house painting business.

The aspect that’s important is that there’s you, and a few other people, and a common sense of purpose that binds your success or failure together.

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At my first job out of grad school, I was one person in a three-person company.

This was not a silicon valley social media crowdsourcing cloud computing venture capital backed startup. We did not have a ping pong table.  (we barely had a conference table)

We designed, manufactured, shipped, installed, and supported maritime control systems — the electronic things that control the ship’s engines, steering, autopilot, etc — for high performance marine craft (boats). Our customers were the US Navy, international Navies, luxury yachts, and commercial ferries, as well as some small high performance craft and working boats, like firefighting boats.

Our funding didn’t come from angel investors, investment bankers, or venture capital.  Our funding came from two places: the founders and customers.

I worked 90 hours a week.

I wrote code, designed circuits, and fixed hydraulic and mechanical systems to make the things work. I wrote the technical and user documents that explained how the things worked.  I assembled and tested things, and then packed and shipped those things.

Then I installed them.  I did a lot of the work myself and coordinated teams of people. Many of those people didn’t speak English very well. Most were not interested in taking direction from a 24 year old kid. (who could blame them)

Then, I provided support for them all over the world. Remotely if possible, but sometimes you have to get on a plane. (I was not flying business class.)

I had that job for about 5 years (full time and contract).

I learned more about myself than I could have imagined.

I wouldn’t trade this experience for any degree…what I learned, can’t be learned any other way.

Here is a defining story from this period of my professional life. I carry this with me today (for better or worse).

It is a story about getting the confidence to tackle the hard things in business and in life…and a philosophy on how to approach any challenge, in any size company.

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We won a new contract for a custom control system. The customer was a navy in Asia, and the application was a “special mission” boat. The system was complex and required some special software and changes to our standard hardware. It was also challenging to nail down the user requirements due to the time difference, language barrier, cultural differences, etc.

So we spent most of a month designing, building, testing, redesigning, rebuilding, retesting.  And when I drove the 75 pound box of stuff we had made to FedEx at 9pm on a Tuesday, I knew it would not be the last time I would “see” this system.

It took three months for shipping and installation…just long enough for me to have forgotten all the weird changes I made to get the system to (theoretically) work.

2am on another Tuesday, my boss called me. I knew he wasn’t calling to say that everyone was just! going! great!

Nope, the boat wouldn’t turn left (“port” in maritime speak). They were about 3 miles out to sea in the Pacific.  No way to turn left.  He really wanted to turn left.

He said, Rich, why won’t the boat turn left?
I said, well, I’m not sure.  It SHOULD turn left.
He said, well, we need to turn left. There are 15 people on this boat and we would like to no longer be on the boat and that requires us to turn left.
I said, OK, but I don’t know what’s wrong.
He said, Rich, sit up in bed. Look all around you. (I remember actually doing this.) If you don’t fix it, who will?

…Who will?  

I thought about that.  I had no engineering department, or quality engineers, or vendors or contractors or suppliers to lean on for help (even google wasn’t much help because this was 2004).

I had me.

So…

I went to the office, set up the test rig, fixed the software, emailed the file to the ship yard.

They sent a motor boat to the ship with a USB drive.  (I slept for 2 hours while that happened)

Then I walked an officer through the fix in very broken English. It would be unfortunate if the software patch didn’t work after all of that.

But…the boat turned left. They were able to dock the boat and everyone was able to get off. (Phew)

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I made one observation immediately:

The horribleness of causing the problem was matched only by the elation of fixing it. I don’t know of any other way to get that feeling. (If you do, please let me know)

During my time at this job, I had several other experiences like this one.  As I thought about these experiences, I discovered something else…something that has been a prime mover in my career and life:

I developed the confidence that I could figure something out, even if that thing was unfamiliar, complex, and important.

I learned to be self-reliant.

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OK, I’m now going to get on my soap box. (Please indulge me)

People say “big companies should act like small companies!” “They should act like a startup!”

What does that even mean? “Big companies” are not people or cats or chimpanzees that have the ability to “act” like anything.  The way big companies “act” is the sum of how all the people within that company — and especially leadership — act.

I think what people mean is: people in big companies would (or could) be more effective if they BEHAVED like they were in small companies…and specifically, if each actor in a big company was more self-reliant.

Self reliance is a trait that is ingrained deeply and celebrated in the American value system (probably many other value systems too).

We romanticize it: the farmer that can fix anything on her farm, the cowboy that builds civilization in the wilderness, the entrepreneur that pulls an idea from thin air and simultaneously makes a billion dollars and changes the world.

In a company, you may know self reliance by another word: accountability. It means you tie your personal success to the company’s success. It means the success you enjoy (or failure you learn from) is tied directly to the decisions you make.  It’s on you, and you’re cool with it.

Here’s what I believe: there should be one approval on a document. One owner of a decision. A single point of accountability for the things that drive the business (or fail to).

I certainly don’t mean that this accountable person is not the only one with input into making the decision. But they are accountable for getting all the input, assessments, analysis, data, and consensus needed to make the best possible choice…and they are accountable for the business result.

In this model, the company relies on a person to deliver something. That person relies on her team to choose the right thing, plan it, monitor it.  And that person relies on herself to deliver it.

This requires trust…the company leadership must trust employees, and employees must trust each other (and their subcontractors and consultants and vendors). It requires commitment, and delivery.

But I believe this model of the “empowered individual” can deliver more for less than any bureaucratic decision by committee ever could.

I don’t have a raft of scholarly articles to back up this claim.  All I have is my own personal experience.  And this claim has been proven to be true for me over and over again, at 10, 1000, and 100,000 person companies.

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Is self reliance revered in your company? Do you value it in your daily work? Do you strive for, and advertise, your own personal accountability with your colleagues?

I’m not going to tell you that you should. I wouldn’t presume to know what the result would be. But what I do know is that if everyone in one group, or one department, or one entire company approached their work from a place of self reliance…the work would be better, and the results would be too.

Because if there’s one thing I look for in someone I rely on, its that I know that person can rely on herself.

Can you be that person to your colleagues?  Try to be.  See what happens.

I predict only good things will come to you.

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