Map the People: A Simple 5-Question Survey to Transform Headcount Planning
Welcome back to Cook’s PlayBooks, where we bring you impactful strategies for leadership and planning.
This week, I’m sharing a story from my time at Mozilla, inspired by a recent conversation with James Cham of Bloomberg Beta Ventures. He reminded me of a unique approach I used years ago to gain clarity on headcount allocation - and it all started with one simple question: “What are you working on?”
In 2014, during Mozilla’s annual planning session, I found myself frustrated by our inability to see how our people mapped to our core strategic initiatives. With 1,200 employees, knowing what everyone was working on seemed impossible—until I tried something unconventional.
The Solution? A 5-Question Survey:
This two-minute survey provided the transparency we needed—revealing surprising insights, like engineering resources that had remained on legacy projects a year after we thought they'd shifted focus. The results? More effective headcount planning, better alignment, and fewer requests for additional resources.
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All the Best Ofs!Jim
Finance | Strategy | Business Operations
4 个月Thanks for the tip and approach, Jim Cook. I actually used this approach recently with great success but with a much smaller business (~50 employees). One lesson I've learned that has been crucial at times is how important it is to have a complete list of initiatives that can be included in the time allocations. A category for "Other" could help but it doesn't give you the information you need. The "Business Support" category in your Mozilla example seems like a good solution too (not surprising it's #2 on the list). Similar to your MathML example, I once discovered that the engineering team needed months of time to finish rebuilding a legacy platform with new code, but that time allocation wasn't discussed in strategic planning meetings because it was effort in the background. This work was not listed as a "Strategic Initiative". The result was that some strategic initiatives had to be postponed because they needed the Eng bandwidth working on the platform rebuild, and new strategic technology needed to be built on the new platform.
CyberSecurity Venture Capitalist | 3x CISO Twitter, Mozilla, CoinList | Founder(acquired) | Former OWASP Chairman
4 个月I remember this activity! Awesome to see the behind the scenes on the value it provided. Hat tip to Rob Tucker & Winnie Aoieong from Jim's mention!