to speed up the transition, because when you make decisions that impact people's role, manager or compensation, every moment employees spend thinking about the change is a moment when they are not being productive. Be as inclusive as possible in the decision‐making process and people will embrace change more readily. Common thinking is that the primary role of a manager/leader is to make decisions about people. That common thinking is limiting and defines the “command and control” model of leadership. If at all possible, it is more effective to make decisions with people, to be inclusive and collaborative. An inclusive approach takes longer and can be more difficult and it is also much more effective, more motivating, and leads to better results in the long run. People are more engaged, the more they are able to co‐create their environment and success measures. The leader's role can be to ensure that everyone is aligned and moving in the same direction.
Alongside the organizational design, you'll want to work with the CEO and leadership team to create a company‐wide operating system. By “operating system,” I don't mean a bureaucratic structure that serves to control people or burden them with reporting requirements just so senior leadership can be informed. I mean a transparent process that shows how often, where, and when your team will meet, how they will determine and prioritize their work, how they will communicate and connect with other teams at the company, and how they will hold each other accountable for results. A strong operating system that changes as the business changes helps ensure that all teams are aligned and working toward the same goals, and holding each other accountable for results.
One of the most impactful changes we managed at Return Path was a company‐wide agile transformation project. For years we used agile methodologies in our engineering department, and in December 2013, the week before my sabbatical, Matt challenged us to shift the entire company to agile practices by June 2014. When I returned in mid‐January, a team of four of us from the People and Program Management teams ran this project (along with our normal roles!). This was one of my favorite and most impactful cross‐functional teams so I'll call out my team: Mike Mills, Caroline Pearl, and Jane Ritter, with support from Dan Corbin. By June 2014, we had completed pilots with 12 teams, developed a framework for five team types to leverage agile practices, and trained 50 facilitators in how to effect change in their team's operating practices. In addition to the individual team changes, we modified the entire company operating system to leverage agile practices. We increased productivity by 13% in one year; we measured this by looking at a number of different metrics, the most relevant to other organizations being revenue per person.
Along with a company‐wide operating system, help to build your leadership team operating system. When you are small, this may be as simple as a tactical leadership team meeting twice a week, a strategic meeting once a week, and a company‐wide meeting once a week for everyone to share progress on goals and hold each other accountable. Patrick Lencioni's book, Death by Meeting, is a good resource to help you think through the different types of team meetings and how to run them.
You can also help establish these norms across the company. I recommend helping teams leverage agile practices: build a strategic roadmap, engage stakeholders in your work, align on prioritization, remove roadblocks in real time, collaborate on big projects, and keep a backlog so you aren't just responsive to every request that comes to you. It's really easy to fall into the trap of working on the most urgent rather than the most important. There are always fires to put out and having a strategic roadmap and a good operating system is critical for success.
Your operating system is not fixed in place for all time; you'll need to evaluate it periodically, and test to see whether it still serves its purpose, and redesign as appropriate. As you grow and change, your operating systems will need to be updated for your new organization structure. At the startup stage you may be able to pull everyone into one room for an informal company update. But when you grow beyond the one‐room company stage, you'll want to partner with your marketing/corporate communications team to develop more robust communication practices to ensure alignment.
At Return Path, we had an operating system that changed every year, except for the annual “un‐Roadshow.” The un‐Roadshow was a company‐wide kickoff to help everyone understand the final output of the annual strategic planning. Each team contributed to the plan, and no teams had seen the full and final plan. The un‐Roadshow always included in‐person time with the full leadership team for people to ask questions and have unscripted dialog to ensure they fully understood how their roles fit into the strategic plans for the year. The format was changed every year to keep the programming as unique and engaging as possible. The rest of the year included quarterly planning and retrospective meetings with all team leaders, distribution to all employees of the Board Book, and all hands meetings to discuss progress against goals. We followed up with roundtable discussions with leadership team members. It's a lot of work to maintain a strong operating system, and requires partnership with the CEO. It may not be your responsibility, but you'll definitely play a role in its creation and maintenance. See www.Startuprev.com for the final company‐wide operating system at Return Path.
Chapter 28 Team Development
Almost all companies require collaboration within the team to get work done. Even if cross‐functional collaboration isn't required for each person's primary responsibilities, teams still need to collaborate on effective practices and processes to achieve their shared goals. Many companies only focus on team development at the leadership team level, and then on team “building” for other teams. All teams benefit from having support and intention around how they operate and interact. Skills built around team development for the core team also help each individual be a better team member when they work cross‐functionally.
At startup level the most important team is the leadership team, as they impact the entire company. It's absolutely critical that the leadership team build a high level of trust and the ability to have productive conflict. There's always going to be conflict; it's unavoidable. But it doesn't have to be debilitating or result in damaged relationships. If there are high levels of trust, conflict can be extremely helpful to the team. There are many tools and assessments you can use to help with team diagnostics, and the most impactful, and simple, tool I've used is Patrick Lencioni's book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. (Lencioni's book, The Advantage, combines his thinking in both the prior books I mentioned (Death by Meeting and The Five Dysfunctions of a Team), as well as introducing an annual planning framework that we adopted and modified at Return Path with great success). Do yourself and your company a favor and take the 5‐minute assessment every quarter, evaluate the results as a team, and agree to the development you need to make the team successful. The type of development the team requires depends on the results of the survey: if you score low on trust, work to deepen relationships. If you score low on conflict, understand the underlying reasons, and then offer coaching or development on conflict. Having a highly functioning leadership team sets the stage for having a highly functioning organization. Without that, it's very difficult to keep teams aligned and working together effectively.
In addition to building an effective leadership team, you may also facilitate strategy development and planning discussions or offsites. Some of the most impactful work you do will be to help your leadership team have deep conversations on business strategy. Strategy development discussions are not just straightforward conversations and it's crucial to build an agenda that helps drive toward your goals. It's often helpful to partner with someone outside the team to help build agendas and facilitate offsites, so that you can participate fully. At Return Path, we worked with executive coach Marc Maltz for almost the entire lifespan of the company. Marc helped us to build and adapt the leadership team over time, coached our CEO, individual team members, and the team as a whole.
Once you have a high functioning leadership team, it's much easier to build high functioning teams who report to them. Teams at the startup stage are often very cross‐functional and the more you can help all individuals build the skills and practices to work effectively as team members, the faster
