Wednesday, October 20, 2021 / 02:50 PM / Sponsored post by staspodshivialo / Header Image Credit: stas

A start-up is a wayto develop and find new goals. As long as the company considers itself astart-up, it is not afraid to try new things, is ready to act outside the boxand make mistakes. As soon as stability and maximum squeezing out of net profitbecome the main aspiration, the company begins to go into stagnation.

The wider the fieldof activity of the company, the further its founder moves away from operationalwork in the field of strategy, ideas, and abstractions. The main task of aleader is to manage people to achieve the company's goals effectively. The onlyworking training of employees is a personal example. The leader must change asthe start-up grows or change oneself for another person.

How Do You Succeed?

Often, 95% of allstart-ups are fundamentally wrong about creating new companies and thereforefail. Here are some rules that will help you succeed and get into that 5% ofprosperous projects.

Step 1. Define Business Processes

Often, especially atthe initial stage, business founders take over the project management and keyoperational tasks themselves. At the initial stage, this is a normal and oftenthe only possible practice. But already now, you should organize your work sothat in the future you will be able to transfer this function, like any other.You need to create an organizational structure as early as possible with roles,goals, and responsibilities. Do this even if the company only has twoemployees.

Step 2. Create Job Descriptionsfor each Employee

To do this, it isnecessary to divide the identified business processes into specific positionsand write job descriptions, as well as a training plan for new employees. Thejob description should include general provisions with a list of what a givenemployee should know and be able to do: from internal labour regulations tospecific application programs and services, as a platformfor trading in India or forex trading ingeneral; functions; and job responsibilities. The latter can include thefollowing:

• what the employee will be doing(actions expressed in verbs - develops, organizes, controls, creates, etc.,10-12 points);
• how quickly they should answer work questions(for instance, email within 24 hours, messages in Slack - within 2 hours);
• what the employee should additionallydo (for example, optimize work processes to speed up the solution of problemsand create a knowledge base for the direction).

Rights: to requestand receive from managers and other employees of the company's divisions theinformation necessary to perform official duties, to get acquainted with ordersregulating their activities, etc.

Responsibility:conscientious, high-quality and timely performance of their duties, compliancewith labour discipline and established work standards, etc.

To understand whatkind of team you need, you have to assess the specifics and complexity ofbusiness processes. Forextime blog will help you to do this.

Step 3. Provide supportive IT solutions

For most digitalstart-ups, the following set of business automation solutions can berecommended:

• General management:Asana, Basecamp, Notion, Bitrix24;
• Internal corporatecommunication: Slack, Zoom, Skype, Hangouts;
• File storage and workwith cloud documents: Google Drive, DropBox, OneDrive;
• Development teammanagement: Jira, Pyrus, YouTrack, Assembla, Readmine;
• CRM: AmoCRM,Pipedrive, Bitrix24.

Step 4. Establish and Maintain the Rhythm of Communication

The best tool forkeeping pace is daily and weekly short meetings:

• Daily meetings (up to15 minutes standing or on skype). Structure: news, key indicators, problems.
• Weekly meetings (30to 60 minutes). Possible structure: 5 minutes - good news, 10 minutes - figures(by company and employees), 10 minutes - working with reviews, problems, andstories of employees and customers, 10-30 minutes - "rock" (one priorityissue), 5 minutes - completion (each participant must say a couple of phrases).
• Weekly one-to-onemeetings with direct reports (the so-called One'n'ones). Discussion materials:budget and financial plan of the direction, OKRs, leading indicators(indicators affecting OKRs, including in the long term), projects/initiatives,operational plan (if necessary), the personal development plan (books,training, etc.).
• Monthly meetings.Structure: collecting data, discussing progress, understanding what works andwhat doesn't, learning.
• Quarterly meetings.Reaching the strategic level, comprehending the results of the past quarter,clarifying plans for the next ones.

Step 5. Delegate More

Delegation is acrucial skill for a manager. There is no easy way. Any skill has to be honedfor years. Only by delegating will you be able to get out of the shaft of dailytasks and do what is really interesting to you and what is really essential foryour business.

Delegation is oftenunderstood as follows: “Find someone and just throw on them all the tasks thatyou do not want to do yourself.” This approach only leads to the fact thattasks are not performed or performed incorrectly. You have to act with patienceand thoughtfulness:

• First, you need tounderstand well enough the tasks that you want to delegate. You cannot teachanother person what you do not know.
• Guide the person byhand through the problem-solving process. Patiently answer questions andexplain details so that the person remembers everything, and most importantly,realizes.
• When the employeelearns the basics, let them repeat the process on their own. Allow them to makemistakes, but watch closely so that they do not become fatal.
• After that, you canbegin to let go of the person and gradually give them complete freedom. Fromtime to time, they will make mistakes, but in normal situations, they will beable to act independently.

Most of the projectsremain in the heads of their creators. There is absolutely nothing stopping youfrom starting right now, right after reading this article! No lack of money, nojob, no family. To get started, allocate an hour of time and start, it will beeasier further.

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