People, Process and Product

You cannot win every battles. Choose yours wisely. — Rawad, a good friend.

We have been working for all these years and yet many of us couldn’t find the perfect environment to grow. We do have our justifications though. But can we group these unhappy moments, see where exactly the problem lies and give a little push to fix it.

A system / company / environment always has three entities. There is a bunch of people using some process to make a product successful.

Now the product could be community services, an app or a chair and success could be about building an audience or providing services or making money.

People — My daily commute happens with three friends who work in HR. From the conversations we’ve had, I realized one mandatory basic rule to hire people. Be humble.

Process — A series of actions or steps taken to achieve a particular end. It brings people together so that they can achieve their product goals.

Product — The stuff that becomes successful when we do what we you love to do. That’s it.

Here’s three main scenarios why we’d cultivate a negative attitude while working in the system.

Bad People, Good process, Good product

Imagine after working for 6 months, you get an email suggesting places for your next vacation. Applying for leave, requesting documents and buying new things happens without any waiting.

The process understands you completely.

You also love working for the product because it motivates and challenges you. But your teammates are no skilled enough or they are not humble to listen. There’s nothing to learn from them.

Good people, Bad process, Good product

Here we have the most skilled team with the right attitude. But if they’ve to get things done, they’ve to wait. Like a day to get a leave approved.

To be honest, this situation is quite rare. People always drive the process and the best team will never give room for bad process.

Good people, Good process, Bad product

Even though the best team drives the best process, they might be working on something that’s not challenging. They may not have exciting problems to solve and the growth of the product becomes stagnant.

All the above scenarios will lead you to the road of frustration. The key is to find the one you’re in and try to fix it. It’s quite impossible for a company to keep all the three entities in balance. i.e having the best team make the best product with the best process.

There are even situations when two of them are bad. During those times, maybe leaving the system is the best way. But before that try your best to solve it and go to extreme limits to awaken that positive culture.