Having worked in a few startups that hired rapidly, I have noticed that there is always this first moment when someone would exclaim that some department can no longer fit in the largest conference room. It would be said aloud, sometimes with a subtle chuckle, but always with some pride in the acknowledgment that “this is how far we have come everybody but never forget I am Employee #17.”
This is how far we have come everybody but never forget I am Employee #17. — Employee #17
(I must admit I was that guy once.)
I have also noticed that it is also around this time when we find ourselves wanting to start formally creating specialized teams with narrower scopes but more well-defined responsibilities. Will Larson explains this in Weak and Strong Team Concepts.
This “scale point” makes sense: for any concern x∈ᶓ, if the set of peopleWhoCareAbout(x) can no longer fit into the same room, decision-making can be tedious. In that case, let us start figuring out who should and should not be in peopleWhoCareAbout(x). Let us also partition ᶓ by identifying related concerns to be colocated to minimize communication overheads.
The first cause of friction will be immediate: the early employees who used to care about everything will abruptly find themselves with a smaller scope and having to let go. (I recall working with a software engineer who used to really care about the messaging in our YouTube ads and wanted to make sure Marketing spoke with them before each new campaign. Fortunately, their wish was not granted.) For most, I have observed that after a short transition, they come to appreciate the reduced context switching and newfound mental space.
The second cause of friction will no doubt be from alignment. Even the most flawless partitioning of ᶓ will require different groups to come together from time to time to collaborate and negotiate. We have to figure out how to construct a joint roadmap for the business or rally smaller roadmaps against a shared vision and a set of common goals. While we can expect there to be some prioritization silos, the trickier challenges tend to come from some form of tribalism.
Even after witnessing a few of these, the shift from a mode where everybody does everything to competition and rivalry remains jarring. I have heard several variants of the following:
- Nobody cares about x but us.
- x is ours, not yours.
- x is not ours.
- We don’t want to work on miscellaneous.
Some of this misalignment can be adequately addressed by revisiting the partitioning of ᶓ from time to time. More insidious forms that can sow distrust are, “the other teams don’t care enough about x (and we think they should)” and, “we had to clean up after them (and we feel resentful about it).” Such sentiments must be nipped in the bud and not allowed to fester. Otherwise, a culture of suspicion can be very hard to fix.
I don’t want to see us becoming a dumping ground.
— Burnt out Employee #17.
Borrowing a few ideas from The Map is Not the Territory, I have learned a few tactics that help to tame this culture of suspicion.
Tactic 1: share your map. Publicly and loudly share your understanding of the business context and priorities, and where you see your teams fitting into them. Make your roadmaps and plans public, and document in detail your rationale and prioritization methodologies, so that others outside of your immediate circle of influence can begin to understand your decisions. If you are not working on something that is important to somebody, they should be able to learn why from these documents.
Tactic 2: be curious about others’ maps. Question your assumptions, seek out others’ roadmaps and plans, and learn to understand how they arrived at their decisions. Compare your maps with theirs, and observe where your interpretations of the business context and priorities differ. If another team is not working on an issue that you care about, learn their narrative and how their perspective differs from yours.
Finally, acknowledge that the map is not the territory, and lookout for opportunities to update the maps and improve the prioritization silos. This is the process of alignment and is not only reserved for executives. Hypothesis: by making sure that our maps agree with each other, we can foster a culture of trust and curb tribalism, even after repeated re-orgs.
