Dear corporates… it's time to be more startup

"Disruptive", "innovative", "nimble". We've all been guilty of throwing buzzwords around from time to time. But if you're working in a business that has employee numbers in the thousands, the reality is often spending more time justifying work internally than looking outwards to think about building solutions quickly that really work for customers.

"How do we present this proposal to get it past department X or Director Y?" - it's a sentence that you’ve probably heard (or said) a hundred times before. The battle through layers of sign off is just one of the dragons many people working in large corporates must slay daily. "That's just the way we do things around here" is the beginning of the end for any company looking to shake up the world around them.

But that's not to say that corporates can’t be a beautiful thing - they have the heritage, scale and insight to create truly magical moments for their customers with the right tools in place. But to really adopt the principles of a disruptive and innovative business, there's one big job to do - think more startup.

I’ve spent a lot of my career working in businesses that I like to call startups within corporates - businesses that have the backing of a global company but behave like a startup. And as I’ve gone on that journey, I’ve seen time and time again the employees falling into common pitfalls that hold them back from really adopting that agile startup mentality.

Of course, there’s no one-size fits all, or easy answer, to a challenge like this, but I’ve found some really simple solutions that have helped me make sure my teams stay true to where they started…

Build your policies for the 99%, not the one

When writing policies and guidelines, do it for the 99% you trust rather than the 1% you don’t. They should be written to get the best out of people, not to try and fix problems. We need to start from a place of trust that people are going to do the right thing, not from an assumption that we have to use our policies to block bad behaviour. From the beginning, we need to trust people that if we give them these opportunities they won’t take advantage of them, but use them to make sure they’re getting the healthiest work-life balance and being the most effective employee they can be.

If there isn’t that level of trust from day one, then you’re not going to create a culture that leaves people feeling supported and fulfilled in the future.

Give your processes a retro

If you work in the world of product, you’ll be very familiar with the retro meeting as part of your ceremonies. In the same way that each project needs a moment to pause and reflect on how to improve future performance, so do your internal processes and systems.

No process will be perfect if it’s just left to run and run, it needs to be assessed, adapted, amended or killed if it’s no longer working. And if you’re too close to it all yourself, you could even ask product and user testing to sign off on any selections, just like you would a product testing process .

There’s a real balance to be struck when it comes to security too - of course you need to have security processes that protect the business, but make sure they don’t place huge burdens on people at the same time.

Care about your employees’ software like you care about your customers

Yes, overhauling an existing software system can be a long process - it requires a lot of work to get buy-in but in the long term, it’s so much better than sticking with an old, inefficient application. Think of it this way, if we overlook the usability of our internal systems, then what message are we going out to our employees about how we value them? We wouldn’t dream of doing this to our customers, so why should the rules be any different for our employees? In a business full of product people, designers and developers who are helping create amazing applications for your customers, why do you then ask them to work with sub par tools? Don’t expect your team to build a Rolls Royce if all you can offer them to build it with is scrap metal…

When evaluating how internal software applications are working, it’s important not to just focus on cost but reliability, ease of set up and usability as well. If it scores highly on all those fronts, great, but if not, you need to start over.

Don’t just say you’re agile, live it

In the startup world, teams are deliberately lean. Everyone has a clear, specific role to play, and in my experience, that’s what makes people feel truly valued in what they do. The issue that often crops up when corporates try to mimic a startup mentality comes when they copy the structures, but not the sentiment of a startup - which means you often find too many people in teams that have generic skill sets, not the specific skills they need for the task.?

If you hire too many people without a clear purpose, that feeling of being integral to a team is quickly lost - and people are much more likely to wonder “why am I even here?”. Employees left feeling disconnected quickly fall into that self-preservation tactic of finding a reason to make something take longer in an effort to keep themselves busy - a tactic that wastes both time and money. A startup has no time for anything that doesn’t deliver an outcome, so keeping your teams lean and focused is absolutely key - both for employee satisfaction and team effectiveness. If you don’t need a marketer or a designer, don’t have one in your squad.?

The reality is that building a real startup culture isn’t done in a day. It takes months, even years to get the right balance of communication, culture, process and fun (this last one is particularly important - the best businesses I’ve worked in are those where I’ve felt I can grab a beer with my boss) . But I really believe that if you can nail a few key things from the start, you’re really setting yourself up for success.

So, I’ll leave you with four parting thoughts…

1. Write policies that answer the questions “how do I want to make people feel?” and “what is the outcome I want to achieve?”
2. Keep on top of your processes - if they don’t serve their purpose, find new processes and supporting applications] that are designed to work for your staff
3. Give your staff software and services that are well designed... not just because they are cheap or the “easy” choice
4. Focus on building a lean, agile team with trust at its core