From Chaos to Consistency: Establishing Quality Culture in Startup Environments

The surge of new and innovative ideas is in no way dipping in the coming years. The readiness of the end users to try out something new, innovative, and impactful is a boost to anyone wanting to try out new ways of solving new and old problems. As startups rush headlong to make a mark, obtain and retain customers at breakneck speed they must be fast and furious on one side and agile and steady on the other.

One of the aspects of business that can facilitate this balance is how well the organization invests in building a culture of quality and optimized processes right from the start. This is not just about setting up a separate team solely responsible for the organization's processes but it's about every member of the organization understanding what is at stake and pulling their weight to get their jobs done in the best possible manner. After all, if a job is worth doing - it is worth doing well.

As an organization grows it can focus on building such a DNA by practicing below guidelines

1. As new employees join, the organization needs to communicate about the company’s vision and goals, so everyone is using the same language. This provides the employees an anchoring ‘why’ for their work.
2. As the scope of work increases the organization needs to ensure that every person sees their role in relation to the bigger picture of the organization. Each one defines their ‘what’ to support the organization goals. This reduces the dependency of decision making on one individual and builds empowered employees at each level.
3. Bring in a shift left attitude which emphasizes that each person is responsible for the quality check of their own work before it moves to the next step. The responsibility of ‘how’ is on the individuals. This brings in accountability and focus on delivering value from everyone.
4. Encourage everyone to identify areas of improvement in the current way of doing things and support new ideas and suggestions to continuously improve the processes/products/services. This keeps the organization innovative and relevant in an ever-changing environment of technologies and practices.
5. Finally, recognize the contribution of all the people and invest in their growth as they continue to build the organization.

The focus of this article is on building a culture of quality which of course is an ongoing process, but it is also a key step in starting the quality and process journey.

#startups #quality #process #people