Questions

I've experienced working at very structured companies which things move really fast and projects are closed well (lots of MBAs, VPs and project managers), that company was not a tech company, but I've noticed that the output of the work in terms of quality and innovation really sucked. People had a "factory worker" mindset, just keep doing the same stuff even if things were failing until someone at the upper management decided a different thing. I came back to a company that I worked a few years ago which I love, that has lots of engineers and makers (designers, tech support with technology background). They create a lot of amazing things, but things move very slowly and we are not growing fast enough. I've watched this: https://vimeo.com/34081566 and I was really surprised by Mailchimp's culture. How can slow company move faster without hiring stupid people that just put pressure and make people's lives miserable? Can a company move faster using more analytics? Note: it's not Saas but hardware and offline software.

I think ideally you would want smaller teams with bigger responsibilities, and accountability. You want them focused on the projects that provide the highest return.

The trick is to hire attitude and train for desired skills. Many places seem to do it backwards. They want a specific skill and forget that humans perform the work.

Teams will figure out their own dynamics and make things work. But you need to ensure that there is enough cross team interactions to ensure everybody is pulling in the same direction.

Also make sure the space is conducive to information exchange. At Tech Group, we used completely open spaces. No walls. So anybody could simply raise their head and communicate with anybody else. Conference room used for collaborative in-team tasks.


Answered 9 years ago

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