Tuesday, 9.50pm
Sheffield, U.K.
Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive. – Andy Grove
Is there a point when an organisation starts to fail?
Or are there crucial points, when the decisions they make lead to success or failure?
Let me put some context around the question.
A startup run by owner founders is a dynamic and interesting place to work.
We build things for clients. As owners, we take a keen interest in how to make things work better. We hire people with fire, people that want to work on interesting things that make a difference.
And the business grows.
Eventually, we take on staff and those staff come into job roles. There is a specification, often a hastily written one. There is a niche, a box, a hole to fit a human shaped peg.
And soon, we have more pegs in holes than creative product building types because we already have a product and customers and what matters is getting customers served.
Eventually, everything we do is so structured that people who want to build new things can’t do that because the existing structure constrains them.
They’re mummified in a web of their own making.
Well, actually, they just opt out, either leaving or being invited to leave.
After a while, what you’re left with is a company full of people who know how to do their jobs but don’t know how to build products.
It’s time to change leaders at this point but really that makes no difference.
What matters is the market you’re in.
As Warren Buffett has said, a great business will do well even with average management. A great management team will not be able to rescue a poor business.
So why do people want jobs so badly – why do they want to climb ladders that lead nowhere?
I suppose some ladders do lead to big jobs and good benefits and a permanent feeling of unease.
What’s it like having a job where you don’t actually do anything?
Real satisfaction comes from being close to the ground, working on something that interests you.
Why not wrap a business around that instead?
Cheers,
Karthik Suresh
Handcrafted insight 