3 Steps To Startup’s Productivity
Management Loop that will tie you to the right track
In last 2 years UXPin has grown from the initial team of 5 to the crew of 20 and we’re not fooling ourselves that this is over (by the way — we’re recruiting growth hackers to our US office). We’ll need to scale our organization beyond the conveniently small size. Why? We aim high.
If you think about our mission of democratizing design, it already feels like something huge and ambitious. Now multiply that by 100. That’s where we want to be. Nothing else will satisfy us. Design deserves redesign and we’re here to do it.
It comes at price though. Working in a team of 20 feels different than working in a team of 5. It requires completely different methods of managing the company and managing ourselves. We can only imagine what we’ll happen when there will be 100 of us at UXPin, or 500… That’s almost scary.
Running UXPin taught me that whenever there’s a shadow of a scary monster hanging over the company there’s just one solution: be proactive — work on the solution to a problem before it’ll hit you and smash your startup
And this is exactly why we’ve decided to apply certain management methodes to the company before we’ve started to be really big. We’re all creatures of habits. Establishing the rules early on will certainly help us transform into a bigger company when the time comes.
We’re designers and we like to simplify things. That’s why the basic principle that we live by has 3 steps. 3 steps that have boosted our productivity and can certainly take your company to the next level.
Ready?
Here we go:
- Start with understanding
- Observe to react
- Always assess results
Whenever we start any work we’re making sure that all the parties involved are on the same page. The initial misunderstanding might be fatal. Going further down the road — we frequently monitor work to make sure that everything is going accordingly to the plan. It requires lots and lots of personal contact between all teammembers involved in certain project. Finally, we’re alaways assessing results of our work. Including assessment of the process.
These steps form a loop. Assesments leave us with a list of changes that we’d like to include either in a product or the process. These changes needs to be well understood before applying, monitored during execution and assessed at the end of the process, which gives us new ideas…
It’s evolution baby. Act, learn, adopt or… die.
