Define Your Minimum Viable Administration, And Stop It Right?There
My favorite color is grey. This helps me to limit the impact of rigid administrative rules on my?company.
As an energetic entrepreneur, I put doing business before anything else. At the same time, I am an engineer at heart and have a keen interest in all sorts of software and technology.
Oh yeah, and then there is that cumbersome monster people call administration that wants to be fed to keep a company running.
How do tech entrepreneurs best juggle these three hats, and what does this have to do with shades of grey?
Doing Business Is An?Art
Having the best solution on offer might be a necessary condition for closing a deal, but it is seldom a sufficient condition: Lose your cool in the final negotiation, say the wrong thing in the wrong situation, stick to the requirements too rigidly, and the deal is gone.
Doing business is a highly non-linear activity. Often in my sales career, the tide was turned within a split second. Come up with that great idea that you know somebody in that Middle East country who could help you find a local partner. Suggest switching procurement channels, and offer your solution as a sub-contractor through an integrator. Make bold concessions or feature promises in exchange for a strategic advantage in the long term.
I could go on forever. I love those discussions.
What can go wrong whilst performing the art of doing business? Enter administration. You need to register in that tender portal, but access to the tender documents is only granted days later. You need to submit your answers as an Excel sheet, even though procurement gave you a Word template. The contract clauses are strictly specified, even if they don’t make sense. Black or white, my dear supplier.
I’m stopping it right here. I hate administration.
Engineering Is An Art,?Too
Like in business, there is always more than one possible solution to a technical problem. Put aside style and personal preferences, and dive right into tech talk. Native or cross-platform? Centralized or decentralized? Discuss advantages and disadvantages. Fight for acceptable trade-offs and best ways forward. Talk about throughputs, bottlenecks, and core components. What do the log data say about user behavior? What’s the desired outcome, and what are the required steps to get there?
Again?—?no right or wrong. I love it.
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Stimulus and?Response
Any tech product is worthless if you can’t sell it. And that’s what I love about being involved in business and engineering?—?you have to connect the dots between different disciplines: sales, customer success, product, engineering, and operations. On both the business and the engineering side of your team, people need to be comfortable with being stimulated by the “other” side?—?and quick about finding smart responses to those stimuli. Stimuli aren’t threats, they’re opportunities for advancing things.
Approach Administration with A Tech Entrepreneur’s Mind
No matter how good you and your team are handling stimuli and responses between business and engineering functions, there is always a fair dose of administrative tasks that need to be taken care of in a company.
Administration is the prototype of a linear activity: do this, don’t do that, follow these guidelines, fill in that form. Report back within 5 business days, or you’ll be in trouble. Black or white, my dear subject. Compliant or non-compliant.
Let me tell you a secret: I’m not complying with most administrative guidelines. I barely make sure we’re staying out of jail?—?getting accounting, payroll, and taxation right. The rest of administration is optional. I don’t think any tech company ever earned a single extra dollar just because they printed out all their expense receipts (yes there is a law in most countries allowing the electronic storage of expense receipts). Why do you need to return a form physically if you can send it back by email, signed through DocuSign? People will tell you if they still need a physical version?—?but most people won’t say anything when they receive your reply by email. Most contracts can be set up without a lawyer?—?lawyers have an interest in creating long contracts, whilst most things can be agreed on the back of a napkin. My favorite color is grey.
To use some user story lingo:
Define your minimum viable administration. And stop it right?there.
(and that’s the key difference between product management and engineering!)
Enough said about administration now. Please allow me to go back to my team?—?I need to craft a business model with my CBO and discuss refactoring with my CTO.
Growing a company ?? in troubled times ???? is a marathon.
As a tech entrepreneur ??, active reserve officer ??, and father of three ??????, I can help you with ?? practical entrepreneurship and resilience advice for all aspects of life. To the point ??, no fluff, because entrepreneurs are busy.
When I’m not busy, I get my rest and inspiration in the beautiful mountains ??? around Zermatt ????.