Interesting article by William Mougayar, looking at some obvious mistakes that people can make when scaling up a startup's team, namely by trying to reinvent the wheel of management:
What troubles me sometimes is seeing startups that re-invent tried and true management principles, or misinterpret them, or even ignore them, for a lack of interest in researching or learning the prior knowledge that already would have served to solve the issues they face.
This is a very good point. Many startups started by developers try to throw the whole of what they call "management" out the window. But the reality is that a startup is a human organisation, even at a small size, and it needs management like any other kind of human organisation. Don't accept any management tools as gospel, but be knowledgeable about what's out there, and pick and choose bits that suit your startup and context.
William makes a number of worthwhile points and links to a number of further insightful articles. Here's one that stands out for me, though:
Each startup CEO who has scaled their company ends up developing their own style or management framework.
As MD of a growing company, I am hoovering up information from every possible source - but it is abundantly clear that the GrantTree way, while taking its cues from many sources, will be fairly unique.
I'm beginning to think that this is a characteristic of interesting businesses: they're unique, different, in the specific combination of features they present, whereas most businesses are similarly uninspiring and unpleasant places to work, mostly in similar ways, all doing more or less the same things.
This is an interesting reversal of the Anna Karenina principle.
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