Start-up /ˈstɑːrt.ʌp/ (noun) – a great challenge and a rewarding opportunity if you are bold enough to face the obstacles and take risks.
Are you?
Intro
Starting a company often begins as an exhilarating experience, but once the initial excitement subsides, things get complicated really quickly. Challenges pop up like a jack-in-the-box, since bringing an idea to life, be it a product or a service, and then taking it one step further is easier said than done.
Some of the most common start-up challenges include defining a unique value proposition and developing a scalable business model around it, securing funding, navigating the market maze, overcoming competition, building a strong team, and the list keeps on building up.
In this blog post, I’d like to share the challenges I’ve faced during my start-up journey with DreamProIT. I will follow up with separate blog posts about the opportunities I unearthed when helping to build and manage DreamProIT’s backbone – team – and the lessons learned since I was promoted to the COO position.
My background
As COO, I manage business operations, from strategic planning to developing policies and practices for a growing and distributed team.
As a Customer Experience Lead, I ensure seamless customer experience for our software projects by translating customer business needs into actionable goals, coordinating teams, and optimizing processes.
So, being deeply involved in DreamProIT’s operations, I have hands-on experience managing people in a changing work environment and quickly responding to arising issues.
Challenges of managing people in a start-up
Throughout my career in IT as a Project Manager, Customer Experience Lead, and now COO, I’ve always been people-centered. Adopting a people-first approach allows me to facilitate my colleagues’ work and help them be their best professional selves. Although this approach sounds like a win-win, it exposes me to many challenges on a professional and personal level. However, it’s only fair to say that it also presents many opportunities.
Flexibility
When you start a company, you start from a blank sheet that you gradually fill with company policies, expectations, and work culture. You shape the company as you see fit while trying to make everything work for your colleagues. The risk of floundering into quicksand is very high at this point. Crossing the line between doing what’s best for the company and accommodating your team may be fatal for a start-up with limited resources.
At DreamProIT, we strongly rely on mutual accountability. Company management clearly communicates the expectations for every team member’s role, promotes a healthy work-life balance, and discourages overtime. These are fixed in our policies and reflected in the way our day-to-day operations are set up. In return, we expect our team to deliver a certain amount of high-quality work.
Boiling these down to the essence, here’s what you can do to make sure you are on track:
- Document everything. Create clear policies for your company’s most important aspects and describe the principles your team members must follow. We went with the core:
- engagement types, along with roles and responsibilities, to communicate what we expect from our full-time and hourly team members;
- financial policy paired with payment procedures to make sure our team knows when, how, and what they are paid for;
- time off policy to fix the terms of paid and non-paid time offs team members can take;
- wartime policy to support our team if need be.
Later, we added more policies and descriptions, such as a recruiting guide, onboarding procedures, performance review, experiments and innovation policy, and others. However, defining the core was just enough to kick off.
- Take your time when hiring. Be clear about company resources and requirements from the start and implement the probation period for newcomers. Observe how a new person collaborates with your team and whether their values contribute to your company’s culture. It’s important to remember that you’re not just looking for people who can do the job today, but who can grow with your start-up. So try to see if the person is coachable and has the potential to take on more responsibility in the future.
In the long run, it’s better to take longer to find the right person, especially for a full-time engagement, than to look for new candidates for the same role every couple of months.
Resources, feedback, losing control
At first, resources, feedback, and losing control may seem unrelated, but all three lead to losing people and, in most unfortunate cases, company.
Resources
A limited start-up budget prompts you to cut expenses and choose the cheapest options to save money. However, your team can’t be expected to deliver good-quality work if they don’t have the resources they need to do their jobs. This includes the right tools and technology, access to the right people, and fair compensation.
At DreamProIT, we balance what we can pay with the value someone or something brings. As in many start-ups, it’s sometimes a trade-off between what we can afford now and what we get in the long run, though we are extremely careful with such decisions. We prefer clear budgeting and taking calculated risks.
Feedback
Healthy, non-destructive conflicts where everyone remains respectful of each other help surface different perspectives and ideas. Ultimately, this leads to better decision-making and growth. However, providing feedback and constructive criticism may be challenging for a start-up, as the company may not have as many professionals of diverse levels on board. This can hinder professional development and become a problem because team members tend to leave when they feel they do not grow professionally.
As with policies and procedures, we made sure DreamProIT covered the core first – our engineering teams – and plan to hire more people – for tech and non-tech activities and administrative work – as we grow. Also, we encourage open communication and debate. Everyone can address anyone to discuss their ideas or concerns.
Losing control
It’s easy to keep team members on the same page and moving in the same direction when the team is small. However, it becomes challenging to make sure they do not go off track and do their own thing as the team grows. Losing touch with individual team members gradually leads to losing control over the team and the direction of the start-up.
At DreamProIT, we follow best communication practices to make sure we stay a team even when not seeing each other in person and working on different projects. We have regular semi-formal all-hands meetings to exchange news, ideas, and jokes. Also, we have catch-ups with individual team members to check if they are doing well personally and professionally. These meetings are our way of finding out if our team is okay, responding to issues if there are any, and offering help if need be.
Tips
The meat and potatoes here are:
- Budget everything and document every expense. Having a budget for the core payments and documenting the unplanned expenses are extremely helpful in keeping track of the money going in and out and, more importantly, in analyzing and adjusting the efficiency of the company operations. This also allows you to identify the expense patterns and plan out the most cost-effective strategies for providing your team with fair compensation, the right tools and technology, and access to the right people.
- Identify the key players and make plans for the future. Whether you are a product or a service company, you have a list of roles you need to staff to offer your services to clients. These are the key players who will keep your company running. When the start-up grows and has more resources, you will be able to take on more roles. To make effective hiring decisions, you need hiring plans paired with a budget and good recruiting strategies.
- Set company communication channels and regularly catch up with your team. Make sure your team has communication channels to address anyone on board, and regularly check if these communication channels work. Also, do not underestimate the power of regular check-ups, even if your team is small. By scheduling meetings, you give your team a safe space to share their concerns and discuss ideas with you.
Leadership over friendship
When you work in a small team, you tend to get close to each other. Small talk can gradually turn into really caring about how your colleague’s day is going. Also, it sometimes happens that you hire your friends because they have the necessary qualifications and you like how they do their jobs. I was hired by a friend and hired my friends in turn, and the rule here is leadership first, friendship second. When doing business, professionalism goes before personal preferences.
Here are some principles we follow at DreamProIT:
- Set the ground rules. If you plan to hire a friend, discuss your collaboration beforehand. Be sure to talk about your expectations openly and agree to immediately inform each other if the relationships get uncomfortable. You are not obliged in any way to work together if you are not okay with managing or being managed by a friend.
- Work comes first at work. Friendship, new or old, should not be discarded, but make sure that work gets done at work. Set clear boundaries and do not mix personal and professional when working on company objectives. It’s hard on both ends, I assume, but it’s not impossible.
- Don’t play favorites. Some people are great friends but terrible workers. Don’t promote or reward people just because they’re your friends; assess their qualifications. Don’t be afraid to correct or remove someone from the team because you are friends, either.
Bottom line
Managing people in a start-up and maintaining a delicate balance between fostering a supportive environment while driving company success encompasses many challenges and uncertainties. However, investing time in establishing clear policies, hiring processes, budget planning, and nurturing effective communication channels for discussions and feedback helps overcome resource limitations and support evolving team dynamics.
Disclaimer
The solutions I adopt and the points I share may not necessarily be textbook approaches that will work for your case, so do not take everything you read at face value. Be critical, do your own research, and remember that sometimes it’s not the most obvious options that really work.
I am also open to ideas, and you can reach me at ulianakhmel@dreamproit.com or here. Let’s chat!