Navigating the Chaos in an Internet Company

Navigating Chaos in an Internet Company

Hi Everyone,

As always, some context, these articles are based on my experience of having worked in an Internet Company for 20+ years, as well as extensive experience in the Pharmaceutical and Fast-Moving Consumer Goods sector, in addition to having coached a lot of Leaders both in my Corporate & Consulting environments.

Having had the opportunity of both helping to launch, scale & grow Internet start ups as well as operate within a mature Internet Company, well as far as you can call a business that is only around 28 years old, at least compared to a Pharma I had the privilege of working for that was around 200+ years old, talk about book ends.

In internet companies, something is always changing, I don’t think you can go a moment without the landscape shifting below you.?These can be small tremors or seismic shifts.

This is partly driven by growth, maturing thinking, competitors, disruptors, technology changes, financials let alone macro economic & societal changes, and the impact those have.?The list goes on, now I think these things are all relevant to every leader, across every industry, whether, big or small, traditional, or non-traditional spaces, The key differentiation in my view is the speed with which change occurs in the Internet sector, it is literally a nano second.

How you personally and professionally deal with this rate of change and how you lead your teams through that speed of change is critical.

So, what makes a Leader successful at navigating nano-speed change?

• Resilience – the ability to be able to stay focussed, pause, take a breath, and keep what needs to be done in perspective.
• Broader perspective – helping your peers, colleagues & team members maintain perspective, when it seems like everything is urgent or critical, they are bombarded by things that go wrong, might go wrong, and should go wrong.
• Focus – balance the strategic longer term with what tactically needs to be done now.
• Calibrating how much you weigh in on an issue or situation - Know when to stay at 28,000 feet and know when to hit the ground level in terms of where you weigh in.
• Being savvy enough to understand when you need the right additional insight & wisdom and try to stay away from the "I’ve got to build it internally mentality", a great segue back to my last article on both being a Fractional Executive and also knowing when to leverage a Fractional Executive (Fractional Leadership in an Internet Company).

How do you as a Leader bring clarity from chaos?

The first thing to be clear on is that in an Internet Company chaos is not a bad thing.?We often have a negative connotation that stems from those words.?There are a number of ways to think about chaos for example it could mean a state of utter confusion or disorder, a total lack of organization or order.?Cue in giggle, been there and seen that for sure.?Alternatively, it could mean the property of a complex system whose behaviour is so unpredictable as to appear random, owing to great sensitivity to small changes in conditions. The reality in the early stages of any start up, there are so many moving pieces and so much to do, with more often than not a lack of resources and the constant balancing act of developing & proving the concept, building it and doing that in a scalable way, it does seem like chaos.?However, if you take a step back and examine the blueprint that often sits in a Founders mind, you start to realise, that while it may seem like random pieces of the puzzle, in actual fact there are linkages, reasons for doing A, then doing Z, then Q, then B.?Sometimes you can’t solve the next step, without starting another step that may seem random and not connected, but actually is.

The key often is sharing this, communicating, explaining the ‘why’ and the ‘what for’ aspects to the steps that are being implemented.

As I’ve worked with various leaders going through these stages, one of the key pieces of advice that I would give, is take a breath, keep perspective, bring others on the journey, it may take time you don’t think you have, however the more successfully you do that the better you create scale & leverage out of the people working with you.?Also, it amazes me how often short term, reactionary decisions that seem tactically relevant now, later become impediments and need to be dealt with in a more complex way. For example, hiring the wrong skills now, or hiring someone that can’t scale, rapidly increasing your resources, without a view of what you will need, inconsistent decision making, promoting the wrong Leaders at the wrong time, all these simple instances may have looked right and thoughtful tactically and in the moment, however with the benefit of hindsight and a clear view, maybe the Founder or Leader might not have made the same decision.

Personally, I love being in this type of dynamic, chaotic environment, helping bring clarity during that chaotic, exciting, dynamic, edgy, everything needs to get done now environment is pretty cool.?The key in my view is taking a breath, keeping perspective, not reacting, being clear on what you need to solve for and when, being decisive and not second guessing yourself.?If something doesn’t go as planned, is that ok? Is there a real issue? if not, good, if there is, then what do you then need to do change it.

What have been a few of my key learnings playing the role of helping Leaders navigate the chaotic times?

1. Don’t lose your head, being centred, balanced and calm is critical.
2. Take a breath, don’t just mindlessly react to the situation, pause, reflect, decide.
3. Act with urgency and do that in a deliberate way.
4. Understand where you are going and know why you are making decisions today that will take you in that overall direction.
5. Help other navigate the chaotic times that all Starts Ups go through, it is a rite of passage and just another step in the growth phase.
6. Find ways to sustain yourself as well as those that look to you for guidance, sustainability is critical, as the saying goes, it isn’t just a sprint, it is a marathon that might have periods of sprints within it.
7. Prioritise, know when you need to weigh in, as a Senior Leader once told me as I was transitioning into a Senior Leadership role, you need to be able to know when to cruise at 28,000 metres and when to hit the deck and go to 5,000 metres, then when you elevate again back to 28,000.?That process is constant and needs a leader to understand the criticality of the situation, make sure they have a capable, empowered & competent team around them and most importantly trust them.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this and I hope something resonates for you in your leadership journey.

Warm regards,

Klaus

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