Define your Roles

Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble by Dan Lyons, has to be one of the best books I have read this year. Dan Lyons goes in great detail about the year he spent working at Hubspot. The book is downright comical and really opens your eyes to the Start-Up environment.

This book provided me with plenty of topics to write about but the one that really resonated with me was that during his time at Hubspot he never really understood his role within the organization.

I believe that having defined roles is one of the most important things a founder can do for their organization. I have been challenged on this belief, on the importance of having defined roles, how they deter employees from taking on new tasks and that innovation on the part of the employee declines. However, I feel the opposite. When employees don’t understand their role and what they are doing they tend to become uninterested in the job, they stop asking questions and wait to be told what to do next. Not because they’re lazy but because they just don’t understand how their work directly relates to the organization’s product or service and ultimately its success.

What most organizations fail to see is how having defined roles have direct effect on the company’s ability to achieve its goals and objectives. By communicating to the employees their role and the company’s expectation of them, how their work makes the organization succeed, will result in employees taking ownership of their work and have a sense of purpose in their place within the company. But above all they will be more productive.

Having defined roles should start the minute the organization is born, founders should have a defined role for themselves, they should ask the following questions and continue asking them for every position that is required:

• Why do we need this role?
• What does this role need to accomplish?
• How does this role allow us to achieve our goals and objectives?

Founders should be planning the long term structure from day one because there will be no time to figure it out as the organization gets bigger, other things will take precedent and the focus needed to develop defined roles will be lacking. By not having defined roles organizations tend to hire additional employees because they feel things are not getting done or terminate ones they feel are not doing their job.

Sit down and list every position that you may require someday, map out their defined roles so when the time comes you are ready and your new employees will be able contribute from day one.