Startups and Accountability

Accountability can be a powerful tool to get startup founders to perform at their best. At least I’ve found that it does for us.

I initially wrote this document for internal use. The need for it arose when we transitioned our business from consulting on a daily basis back to a tech startup. The last year we have primarily been sub contracting for one big client. Which ultimately meant that goals and targets was defined externally. So when we quit subcontracting and started Reflectly we had to shift gears. We’re really good at our jobs, which is usually enough when that’s what you’re selling. But when you’re running a startup you have to both “define the work”, “do the work” and allocate your time efficiently.

Initially this transition was rough. It wasn’t unusual for us to get so caught up in the task at hand that important tasks went overdue. The prime reason for this was that I as a CEO hadn’t set clear goals and assigned responsibilities. So things usually went overdue because no one felt really accountable for that particular task. Or because we considered another one more important.

So the first order of agenda was defining internal short and long term goals. But that only solves half the problem in a tech startup. When launching a tech startup product development, marketing and building the product are all critical tasks on the path to success. But no one individual can work on all effectively at the same time. So what I decided to do was assign responsibilities.

Culture

We have worked together as a dynamic team for the last 4 years. One thing that’s always been vital to us, is individual freedom. We want to foster an environment where everybody is thrilled to get to work every day and to a large extent can shape the way they approach a problem. Having worked together for the amount of time we have, work also flows fluidly between us. I can pick up a task, and pass it along, knowing either Daniel, Jacob or Jakob is more suitable for the rest of it. So as a team we historically tend to work as a tightly knitted machine.

And a lot of our strengths come from collaboratively defining the products we build.

“With great freedom comes great responsibility.”

And for us to execute successfully we need to keep each and one of us accountable for different areas of the business. This does not as such change the way we work. It isn’t meant as a badge to be flashed as an excuse for not helping with something. And it definitely isn’t meant to isolate us into “Corporate compartments’.

It is, however, meant to encourage each one of us to stand up and handle tasks in our field of responsibility vital to the progression of the company. And enable us to focus on getting things done, knowing that the teammate next to you will hold cover what you currently aren’t focusing on.

Big bad boss (CEO):

Accountable for overall business success. It is the CEO’s responsibility to make sure that the business overall is moving forward. It is at his discretion to make any decisions he deems necessary to achieve that. This includes hiring, firing and delegating people. It includes assigning responsibilities. It’s his responsibility to gather key information from the other team members and act accordingly. If the team Growth Hacker can’t meet requirements due to a limited budget, it’s either his job to find more money or find more qualified people to do the job.

It includes laying out the overall business and execution strategy as well as organizing and preparing both key partners and potential investors. Taking on investments and giving out stakes in the company is, however, a board decision arrived at at a majority vote of at least (75%).

When he says: “We failed because our sales team didn’t perform well enough”. He should be saying one of the following:

“I failed to set clear goals, that encouraged the team to perform optimally”

“I hired the wrong people for the job”

“I expected big league results on a junior league budget”

“I should have scaled our sales operation so we could have met our goals”

Success criteria: Business growth

Failure criteria: Business stagnation or business failure

Technology Top Gun (CTO):

Accountable for overall technological success. He is responsible for both designing and choosing the technologies that best meet both short and long term business goals. This includes meeting development deadlines, building for stability, ensuring adequate performance and maintainability. It also includes outlying guidelines for new engineers, and fleshing out hiring requirements to meet general business requirements. It’s also his responsible to keep track of potential vulnerabilities in the current stack and solutions so that benefit/risk of addressing said vulnerabilities can be met in due time so as to not risk the business.

When he says: “We can’t meet this deadline, because I’m overworked”. He should be saying: “We need to hire another backender and frontender if we are to meet these deadlines”

Success criteria: The tech stack successfully supports and empowers the business to meet its goals

Failure criteria: The tech stack obstructs and hinders the business from meeting its business goals

Product Master (Head of Product):

Accountable for overall product success. His responsibility is to ensure that the product meets and surpasses user expectations. This includes managing the design and user experience development of the product. But it also includes keeping track of and figuring out said user expectations in the first place. It’s his responsibility to ensure that designs are clearly laid out so engineering can execute on them. As well as addressing pitfalls in the product early, so they can be addressed before it starts hurting the business. While defining “what we do” is something we all do jointly, figuring out which “features” get us there and what’s most important to the user is the responsibility of this role.

When he says: “I don’t know why users aren’t using our product”. He should be saying: “Users find that our current product doesn’t do what they expected, so we need to remove this and focus on that”

Success criteria: Users are highly satisfied with the product and as a result a large amount of them are retained after they sign up.

Failure criteria: Most users are dissatisfied and leave the sales funnel after they start using the product

Master Growth Hacker (Sales and Growth Director)

Accountable for overall sales and growth of the business. His responsibility is to both design and execute on the marketing and sales strategy. This includes figuring out which channels best serve the customers that’s been identified in the business model. But it also includes reiterating on said business model based on the performance of the difference sales channels. It’s his overall job to hit the business growth targets and taking appropriate action to do so. Whether this entails hiring additional people, paying for external marketing, establishing partnerships or highlighting fatal flaws in the current business model based on current marketing feedback. It’s also his responsibility to bring down the acquisition cost (once monetization is put into place) and increase the overall profitability of the business.

When he says: “People just aren’t signing up.” He should be saying one of the following:

“Our current marketing strategy simply isn’t working. We will try to do the following instead”

“Our business model simply isn’t solid based on the overall results we’ve gotten from the following marketing experiments”

“Our conversion rates are fine, but our current marketing expenditures are limiting the througput”

Success criteria: The business is hitting and surpassing it’s user growth goals

Failure criteria: Brand awareness and user growth is stagnant.

What do you think about holding your team accountable?Let me know what you think here or on Twitter.
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