Rowing in the Same Direction

One of the main challenges to scaling a team, whether in a startup or in a large company, is how to maximize productivity. I’m a huge fan of lean methods and the framework it provides for efficiencies through continuous experimentation and learning. But before lean can be effective, everyone needs to be aligned and operating within the same context via an overarching purpose, clear goals, and corresponding guiding principles.

We’ve all experienced when this is lacking to some degree or another. When someone asks for something without providing context, it may feel like the “fetch me a rock” exercise, where you repeatedly come back with a different rock only to learn a new requirement each time. Conversely, as a leader, you may find yourself course correcting the team often. In either case, people are likely working at cross-purposes. To fight that, there may be a heavy process in place that requires review and approval at every step of planning and implementation. But that doesn’t scale. The solution is to craft a purpose supported by goals, and find the right granularity of principles that gets everyone rowing efficiently in the same direction.

Purpose: What is the reason the company exists? What is the main customer value? Putting this down in a sentence or two conveys to employees the why. It acts like the North Star. An employee can check what they are doing against the purpose. This is sometimes described via a vision and/or mission statement. For example, Shutterfly’s is to “deepen your personal connections with the people who matter most with unique, personalized photo products.” It states the value to the customer and the way to accomplish it.

Don’t get too caught up in the semantics of whether it is a vision, mission, or something else. The important thing is to define the purpose for the company. There are no hard and fast rules, but choose something that is specific enough to point the way, yet general enough to allow for growth and expansion. And if it is too wordy, the message may get lost. Ideally it shouldn’t change much, but don’t be afraid to tweak it for clarity, or update it as the company evolves.

Last, share the purpose with everyone at the company often. Include it in the onboarding process, start meetings with it, bring it up during happy hour. Communication and repetition ensures everyone is on the same page.

Goals: What are the concrete objectives that the company will execute against in order to fulfill the purpose? This could be something like “research and test for the most desirable design over the next 4 weeks”, “launch a new form factor in Q3,” or “add commerce capability to the mobile app by November.”

Every company also has revenue targets, customer usage objectives, etc., which are success metrics of the company itself. Driving those key performance indicators is a positive outcome from achieving the concrete goals and meeting the needs of the customer as conveyed by the purpose.

Make sure to prioritize the goals in case there is any conflict or contention, so that people can refer back to the priority to resolve. As goals are achieved and replaced, continuously validate that the new objectives support the purpose.

And just like with the purpose, constantly communicate the goals. The leaders know the objectives by heart, and it might feel like a broken record to say over and over, but without doing so an employee may only hear the goals once a quarter, or maybe even once a year.

Principles: Once the purpose is in place, and the goals are defined, then everyone is pointed in the same direction. But it’s devising the right principles that really unlocks scale, and allows teams and individuals to operate independently.

Principles encapsulate the guidelines and constraints for achieving the goals and fulfilling the company’s purpose. It is useful to define both what a contributor should do and should not do. The trick is finding the right level of specificity that allows for freedom of operation while minimizing the need for course corrections or approvals. Examples are “spend like it is your own money,” or “we only use Python and Javascript.”

Here, again, communication and repetition is important. And there will be some iteration of the principles as you find the sweet spot that maximizes independence.

For a deeper dive, take a look at the HBR articles Structure That’s Not Stifling and Purpose vs Mission (which admittedly contradicts my earlier advice to ignore the semantics), and/or listen to This Week In Startups’ excellent podcast of Intercom co-founder Des Traynor on scaling with principles, values, and mission.

Also check out Dragonboat, a company founded by my colleague Becky Flint, that helps companies connect strategy and execution, and enables cross-functional collaboration.