Whatever gets results
“Are we changing our way of working, again?…”
One of our early employees at Funk-e, my previous company, stares at me with big surprised eyes.
I respond somewhat hesitant “Eh yeah.. we thought splitting all our goals up in teams would be better”
“But just one year ago we started working with a 3 year strategy with all the goals and milestones, what happens to that now?” He says.
Somehow I was stubborn to push through with the change, and six months later the 25 year old entrepreneur that I was, was very wrong.
I was looking for a holy grail of a way of working, but in the end, the best “Operating system” for a startup is just: whatever gets results.
Flexibility vs. Structure: A Startup’s Dilemma
In the pursuit of the perfect way of working, many startups, including ours at Funk-e, explore different management and operational strategies.
We tried everything:
Low independence – ex. Top down planning
What it is: clearly defined milestones and projects 3 years ahead, like a corporate would
Works best for: Long term strategy and meticulous planning (ex. Medtech or deep tech company with very long development cycles)
Benefit: Everything you put on paper looks clear and follows a clear logic and sequence
Downside: If something major changes 3 months down the line, everything will stop making sense and you have to start over
Medium independence – ex. OKR’s
What it is: Objectives and key results (still my personal favorite), which lets teams make their own 3 month plans while fitting to overarching year objectives.
Works best for: Pushing forward on short to medium term objectives in a quickly changing landscape (ex. Tech startups with quick go-to-market timelines)
Benefit: Relatively easy to get started with in a small team
Downside: Not great for long term goals, can become more confusing in bigger teams as the OKRs between personal and teams can get blurry
High independence – ex. Holocracy
What it is: Eliminating Hierarchy all-together and giving the complete freedom for teams to set their own goals and execute at their own pace.
Works best for: Operating a fast paced organisation that has a stable product market fit. (Ex. Creative agency, small consulting agency)
Benefit: High shared ownership and everyone can solve collective problems
Downside: If you do not follow the system and rituals religiously it will be absolute chaos
Start small
The counterintuitive conclusion for me was that more strict top down planning is actually the easiest to execute.
The seemingly free and open systems that put more power in the hands of the team and remove ownership of goal setting from the executive team are actually extremely hard work to implement and require lots of discipline.
Before implementing a very complex Operating System, think and look at what is bringing you results right now.
If it is a monthly whiteboard session with 10 team priority TO DO’s, stick to it.
If it’s very detailed planning because you work with a factory that needs everything far in advance, go apeshit on that excel file or workday project.
Implementing these fancy operating systems at their highest level is a skill of its own. A few online articles will not cut it.
So focus on developing small simple rituals that you grow over time, rather than ripping your whole team out of their flow.
Once you start seeing more overlap with a more sophisticated Operating System, learn more about it, and evolve your whole way of working.
Because the best Startup OS, is not the fanciest one, but the one that brings you results.
