Introduction

Are you chasing deadlines? Finding yourself looking at the Monday to Friday cycle every week and feeling like sheep in an economic system where people are the products? Believe me you are not alone, this is all too common. We set hard goals and spend crazy amounts of energy in trying to achieve them, then burnout and loose so much of our lives, then start the same cycle again.

But if you think this is not a good way to deal with work then you can sure make it better. I have been involved in a number of startups, been extremely low, sprung back up again, and repeated the cycle a few times now. When it is high it is great, you are on top of the world, things are working. You are achieving unbelievable targets, and everything is shiny. Then before you know it, issues start catching up. People feel stress, or worse, lack of motivation. The vision is either not clear anymore or is not aligned with the efforts or we simply feel that too much needs to be done to achieve the vision. That is when negativity creeps in, spreads quickly throughout the team, and pulls us into a downward spiral.

Teams are as fragile as we are

Teams are made of humans and we humans are not good with understanding long term plans, managing expectations, seeing hidden obstacles, swallowing our ego, cooperating with others, doing what we preach, confrontation, and a bunch of qualities needed for good teams. When we set our goals and expectations we rarely make a list of our negativity and put them on a wall in the meeting room. Doing a SWOT analysis at a personal level is very important, but we do not do that since we are very uncomfortable discussing our personal weeknessed.

Our work is too deeply connected to who we are at our workplaces. It is our identity. Thus when we fail at achieving goals, we go personal about it, which causes shame, guilt, and constant stress.

Reduce personal burden

Once we realize our shortcomings as individuals, we need to figure out how we can tackle them as a team. Personally I could list many reasons I should not be a team leader. I am excellent at certain things and totally suck at others. But once I decide to be aware of them, I can look for team members who will help be bridge the gaps.

This is the ideal time for the team to have a NO burden (or blame) policy. It is no one’s fault, it is the team’s learning. If things could have been done better, it would have. If you question that, then you question the trust between your peers. And if that is so, then you have a deeper problem - I suggest having transparent talks about that. Remember, teams must behave as one organism, full trust within themselves.

Break the big picture into a roadmap, no deadlines

It is great for a company to have a big picture, something to look up to. Make sure you do not make your big picture a short agenda. By nature the big picture will have many details left out. Things will get clearer as you move towards it. Once you have approximated the big picture, break it into tangible and achievable sections like in a roadmap.

Do not, please do not set deadlines to them. The important thing is that the nearer sections of the big picture should be very precise. The farther you go into the roadmap, it will be less clearer and that is how it should be. At some point you may not have enough clarity to jump from one section to the big picture, because of lack of knowledge at this moment. That is absolutely fine, leave it that way.

Processes to improvement

Communication is your best tool. Have transparent meetings, set clear agendas. Have an open chat policy (something like Slack can help). Share progress within the team and across the company. But also share defeats as learnings. Try to not take decisions single handedly. Some form of agile development will help build a process. The processes within each company will be slightly different, build your own. Processes depend on your culture, they have to fit well, so it is okay to differ from the book. The one thing that I have realized to be most important (although I do not push that often) is to reflect or retrospect the process itself. Processes themselves can change to fit new needs, so question and discuss everything. Not just the work or goals, but also the process itself.

Motivation, ownership, good spirit

Instead of thinking on behalf of the intelligent employees that you hired, motivate them to be owners of the roadmap. Enable them to come forward and take decisions. The difference between a motivated employee and one who works only for salary is immense. Giving up control is difficult, but if you truly want to scale your business and grow, then you need new levels of leadership within the organisation.

Daily results, transparency of changes across company

Coming back to deadlines. As I mentioned earlier, your roadmaps should not have deadlines. To get results, take small chunks out of your short term roadmap and use them as tasks. These can have deadlines, but do not pressure yourself into having deadlines even if there are things uncertain - you will shoot yourself in the foot. It is more important to improve daily than to chase some agenda with deadline. Figure out where the business stands at the moment. What would improve the business by little bits? Try achieving them, give cookie points when you do. Do not blame someone when things fail.

Personal happiness has chain effect, relations also work in similar ways

Go smash it!