Don't water the weeds at your startup.

Don’t Water the Weeds at your?Startup

The last week of July 2022 was my last week at Accenture. And my last week in the consulting world. Here’s some of what I learned over the past 13 years.?

I can say that in my entire consulting/agency career the folks at both Clearhead and Accenture have been some of the most driven, analytical, future-focused, and empathetic people I’ve worked with.

I was honored to start the strategy practice at Clearhead (after being part of the start of another strategy practice at Ant’s Eye View) and to be part of the exec team that sold it to Accenture, and have had the pleasure of watching it develop into a premier eCommerce practice inside Accenture over time.?

And I’ve been equally proud of my time lately as part of Kates Kesler’s (another Accenture acquisition!) organizational strategy fellowship. I was honored to get in, and what a fantastic group to learn org model/org strategy from.

This last week we closed that chapter and start writing a new one.

So what did I learn?

1. Starting a new department/function in any agency/startup is rough.?

You may think to yourself, duh, David. However think of the 90% of folks reading this that just get hired in an already up and running HR, Finance, Sales, or Marketing department. For the rest of you reading this, I’m sure you understand. If you don’t catch my drift, imagine coming into your current job and being the first person to do it. You are suddenly the classic intrapreneur that Randal Moss and I talked about in our books. You are building something new inside an existing machine. Albeit a small machine at the time. It takes a certain type of person to build the strategy, execute it, write the job descriptions, hire the people, figure out the financials, scope the projects, and even write the contracts! Remember this as you add a new department or function inside your agency or startup. And let’s not forget actually doing the work before that person hires anyone.?

2. Have management that doesn’t water the weeds.?

As I reflect back, you can imagine that was not an easy road. I was asked to create an entirely new practice by folks like Matty Wishnow, Brian Cahak, Ryan Garner, and Sam Decker inside an existing agency. And I faced some cliquish personalities in my own company who didn’t want to see that happen for various reasons. Now imagine all that headwind and still going out and pitching a brand new concept to clients whom we knew (kinda) would want to buy it. However, under the strong leadership of those same people, I saw those internal people leave over time and clients start to really buy in. Looking back I made some mistakes. I should have done even more to educate people on what we were doing, how it benefited them, (maybe a lean canvas would of helped), and who the audience was for our practice. Our practice was a fantastic door opener (with great margins) for the core business. Be sure to support your new leaders like this, or look for this quality from a founding team when you interview. Remember, when you don’t water the weeds, they wilt.

3. See something, say something!?

Our entire organization was based on the idea that eCommerce operators like Nike, Adidas, L.L. Bean, Office Depot, Lululemon, and dozens more wanted to understand what the biggest points of friction were with their online and offline experiences. How could they debug what they had? And they wanted to find out what would solve these customer problems using A/B and MVT testing. That led us to develop Problem Solution Mapping. However, along the way, we learned to eat our own dog food. Do people still say that? Maybe drink our own champagne? Either way out of that sprang the idea that we should use Problem Solution Mapping on ourselves. We did yearly objectives and FAST goals and once a month on a Friday would get up and discuss what we logged as problems. Anyone could enter an idea in Asana and get up and discuss a problem they saw in our startup around accomplishing our objectives and goals. You can imagine this caused some angst among teams. Still, this radical transparency was vital to our growth and airing our problems (and figuring out our hypothesis to solve them) which were usually around people, process, tech, culture, and strategy issues.?

4. Selling your agency/startup is hard, and so is what comes next.?

Once you sell your agency or startup to a larger organization some really hard work follows. Who will stay? Do they want to stay? What do your new career ladders look like? What about people who never want to do sales? Can you align metrics and passion to get them to stay??

It’s quickly a culture of cultures, and do your employee want that? These are all hard questions I would challenge founders to think about as they sell. And only you and your employees have the answers. Having been part of two acquisitions, for now, I’ve learned all I can and am ready for a career change. However, if you need advice from a person who’s done it twice, please contact me. I’m happy to help.?

So what is next? All I know is it’s not big consulting (no more PwC or Accenture), and it is spending more time with my family and my one-year-old son in the short term.

No more RFPs, RFIs, MMS/MMD, wacky internal systems built in the early 2000s, Pinging for WBS codes (if you know, you know), or navigating internal compliance trainings like hacker land.?

For the data-minded out there, I’ve spent over half my career in consulting, with 127 chargeable codes charged at Accenture, and traveling over 436,311 miles. That’s 195 trips, 12 countries and 95 cities with almost 100 US and International clients.

I’m going to make a high-risk, low-data decision to take a two-month sabbatical and let the fields lie fallow.

Stay tuned to see what sprouts next.

@daveiam

Medium

[email protected]

As is the style of the times on LinkedIn, here are some of my favorite quotes on change.?

I am not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.

-Louisa May Alcott

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson