What Do You Learn in Entrepreneurial and Fast-Paced Environments?
Transforming an idea into a bulletproof business model with a large client base and proven profitability is a journey full of learning, wins, losses, storms and sunsets. In the process of moving from 0 to 1 or starting a new cycle for a business that is mostly financed with private equity, one can face several challenges that are capable of equipping, strengthening, and building resilience. The more the industry is digitalized, competitive, and in a state of growth, the faster the pace and the uniqueness of the challenges encountered on a daily basis.
Managers in fast-paced environments are required to make quick and right decisions within a short period, in order to survive in this highly competitive environment. Both the success and the survival of a company depend on the decision-making of the managers to promptly allocate organizational resources to meet the customer's dynamic needs and desires.
Since 2019, I have had the privilege of working in three types of organizations during the COVID-19 period, reporting to C-levels and executives and trying to start or internationalize existing businesses from different sizes in the e-commerce sector. In this article, I will share my experiences and best practices for taking advantage of and how to deal with fast-paced environments.
Let’s take an overview of a fast-paced environment.
Introduction to Fast-Paced Environment
I remember working at a rapidly growing international start-up and we clearly had a strategy, we knew what we aimed to achieve and how to achieve it. The founders had set up a vision, we had the support of large investors; everything was already set up, we grew at a stellar speed, but plans are made to be maintained when there are no challenges to the plan. We have seen competitors pushing hard, politicians’ reluctance to adopt our model, neighbors not being happy with the noise we made, and finally, Mr. Putin has decided to push the Western World into an economic crisis. Of course, we were still learning how to live with COVID-19 and many other restrictive measures in effect. This situation led the company to switch from a growing to a more conservative strategy, and the changes had to be made the same week. Changes in strategy led to changes in operations, and all the models had to be updated. You don’t have the time to think about it or ask why, you just adapt. This is a great representation of a fast-paced and constantly changing environment; nothing prepares you for this, you learn by coping with the occurring situations.
Adaptation
As the Chief of Staff to the General Manager at a leading e-commerce company in France, I was mostly in charge of any urgent topic that could appear during the week. A good example was the day my GM called me; at that time, I was working on connecting a new transportation partner to our logistics system for several weeks, and he said to me, “From tomorrow, you will be leading a commercial effort and coordinating a team of 20 sales people, can you prepare a strategy and actions to increase the utilization of our solution?” It felt like a new mission for a special agent, but it was real, and this kind of situation happened frequently.
In the case of small urgencies with new projects appearing, this experience taught me to be able to have a constant overview of my workload, prioritizing my work by urgency and importance, and being conscious that each task could be handed over to someone else. Knowing this, I kept a clear record of all the steps and discussions of each project to make it comprehensive for any other team member.
Sometimes, the changes that you must adapt to are more transformative in terms of how your company is willing to approach business. In this case, what is helpful is to stick to the vision and connect what you are doing to your business strategy; it will make more sense, be easier to adapt to, and switch from your current way of doing things.
领英推荐
Resilience
Resilience is one’s capacity to recover from a tough situation. Your company will face tough times as well as your team. You can read about it, but the best way to gain it is to be in trouble several times. You sometimes fail and sometimes succeed until you become confident. You know you are resilient when you can face any stressful or complex business situation and still think strategically enough to make clear decisions. I knew I became resilient when I saw myself smiling when facing a tricky situation. It didn’t mean I was underestimating it or overestimating myself, but it meant I knew everything could happen, I was confident enough to deal with this, being well surrounded to get strong support. So, the best way to become resilient is not to run when you see a complex situation.
Problem-solving & Creativity
Imagine you have a set of skills and knowledge, and you are repeatedly presented with tricky situations where there are none or several constraints, such as time, money, operational capacity, legal rules? and knowledge. Here, you can rely on two things to get out of the labyrinth: your capacity to analyze the situation and your creativity to solve it. Analyzing a situation with a holistic vision, considering all the aspects and implications, will help you get a clear diagnosis. For instance, if you are asked to reduce the cost of marketing in your company by 10% within a year, you will use your analytical skills to get an overview and answer the basic questions: what are we spending today on marketing? Why? How? Then you will be challenging each line, and then you will see nothing that you can quickly cut or diminish. Here, you will show creativity, and most of the time, you will have to answer the following questions:
Here, it gets fun because you can organize brain-storming sessions with your teams and start thinking about doing your marketing differently. Most of the time, you come across something unexpected, which is the product of your teams’ creativity and your capacity to organize the process of “getting to a solution” by setting criteria such as: it needs to be done within a day, shouldn’t cost more than 1k€, and it should be done by someone internally. Working in changing environments will make you encounter those situations many times and will sharpen your problem-solving ability and creativity.
Working in team and leadership
A good work is teamwork! I have been lucky and amazed to work in teams with people coming from different backgrounds. Also, most of us already had different entrepreneurial or corporate experiences, and everyone came with their knowledge. The great thing about those entrepreneurial environments is their horizontality. Everyone was at the same level, and there is a non-written rule, acknowledged by everyone, saying that a great idea can come from anyone. I developed an ability to listen & challenge. When someone came up with an idea, I questioned him. Most of the time, it would bring new questions from the team, and we would come to a collective conclusion without frustrating anyone, because we all had the same goal and vision. Apart from the listening capacity, working in teams will teach you humility. Getting to know each member of your team and their previous achievements will show you how people can be driven and what value they can bring to your team. When you can listen and learn from everyone, you can be comfortable leading teams and projects, knowing that your role is to bring the team to a goal, not to provide all the answers. This was a great learning from those environments.
A leader is the one that knows his qualities and is capable enough to coordinate a team with a lot of talents, by setting a goal and creating a working environment where everyone is comfortable and driven.