Scaling past “Get Shit Done”

Get Shit Done is the mantra that litters every organization when it starts. We want people who have a can-do attitude who can get shit done. This makes sense when the very thing you are trying to do is launch. However, hopefully your product is gaining traction and it hits the growth and/or scale phase.

The problem with “Get Shit Done” is you end up with a lot of “shit”.

Often when an organization is execution focused, corners are cut and a lot of re-do/iteration occurs. Not to mention that this mantra can create a culture that biased against women, and other minorities that can help make your company diverse. Striking a balance between executing quickly and diversity can mean a slow death or a prolonged life. While, striking the balance between re-do and iteration can really become quick death or instant growth for any startup trying to scale out of the founder stage and into the growth and/or scale phase.

How do you make sure your company will choose the path of life over the path of death?

Focus on mission, vision, and values.

When the organization is small , nothing is written down, it is all by osmosis — much how a family has values but no need to write them down or communicate them explicitly. That is because people learn culture by watching others.

Culture is caught, not taught.

Begin to write and codify the organization’s values, communicate them, hire against them and reward behavior that is in line with your values. Create rituals and practices that will reinforce your values, building your culture based on them. Ultimately it is more important to behave in line with your values than write them down.

As your organization grows, culture will be at the core and you want to make sure that the core is strong permeating all that the organization does. By definition of the organization growing, means diversity will occur. Have diversity as part of the core will enable an organization to withstand the changes and types of people it will need to grow and scale. (Note: I recognize culture is a fuzzy subject and will devote more articles in the future to this. )

Allow room for Management.

As an organization grows and scales, the most difficult thing is getting everyone “aligned” or working on the same page. I never had a need for project managers (sorry for those PJMs out there!), until we grew to a certain size. At that point, I realized these people were integral to helping an organization avoid re-work and move towards iteration. Also as we got larger, our mistakes were costlier, so getting shit done was not something that was effective. The greatest of tech companies all come to realize that execution looks different at a larger stage and the mantra Get Shit Done does not scale. Google needed to change from a 1:150 manager ratio, while Facebook had to move past their mantra of Move Fast and Break Things. Realizing and embracing a little bit of time upfront for planning, then everything can be smoother.

Management allows balances the two strategies of cutting time short, like the tortoise and the hare. The hare will move as quickly to get shit done as possible, pushing builds daily, but you might need a hot fix every couple of hours. The tortoise moves deliberately planning each step, measuring and confirming over and over before telling the team to move forward. Pushes move to weekly and no follow up hot fixes. If the hare moves to fast, many things are broken and have to be fixed. At some point the hare is just re-working and not learning. If the tortoise spends too much time planning, the hare wins. Management allows for the balance between these two strategies on how to best execute in each unique situation. [adapted from Before I Go]

Ditch the Warring Factions.

One of the largest hinderances to a culture that prevented us and still holds us or any organization back is the warring factions. The #1 reason startups fail is the co-founders cannot get along. The reason why is because how can an organization continue to fight for market share, against apathy or against its competitors if its fighting against one another.

Silicon Valley is littered with Type-A competitive behavior, that is very sadly testosterone agro filled. Execution is wonderful, but not when it is done against each other.

At one point in one we had duplicate organizations, and within one organization we had two VPs of the same function with two teams. When I pushed the president of that organization why he had two teams of duplicate functions, he felt that “iron sharpened iron” and he wanted competition to bring out the best in each of them. However, I was always left wondering if both of the groups were to be combined into one team and not waste their time one-upping each other how much more ground could have been covered.

I am for friendly competition and understand some organizations completely justify duplicate organizations at given times; however, think carefully about the ultimate end result and if it is really what you want. In our case, the end result was a dissolution of both the groups; however, even before the dissolution, the VPs spent much of their energy trying to hold onto their status rather than working together to make it happen. While I spent many conversations hearing about “the other” group.