5 ms·

I don't remember where I read it (probably on a HN post or comment) but there was a great suggestion regarding organization chart. Instead of doing one only whe

by vmarsy 9y ago

I don't remember where I read it (probably on a HN post or comment) but there was a great suggestion regarding organization chart. Instead of doing one only when you scale from 10 to 20 people like this article suggests, the idea was to do one on day 1. On day 1 every position from CEO, CFO, to mail delivery messenger is filed with one or 2 names: the founder(s). As the company grows, you hire people and start delegating the work so that they can fill the positions on the organization chart.

dasil003 9y ago
I understand the appeal of this, but the hardest thing in the very beginning is keeping a laser focus on the critical task of building and validating something people want. Resources are so precious at that stage, and the green field is so wide open, that you have to be obsessive about keeping an eye on the ball. It's extremely easy to drink your own koolaid and start believing the narrative in your pitch deck before you are anywhere near traction. Mulling over an org chart is one of the easiest of the thousands of nice-sounding things you need to brutally cull from your todo list in the early days.
- dilemma 9y ago
  I think you've misunderstood the parent. By making explicit that the founder does all these things, it makes the urgency of hiring and delegating clear.
  - buzzybee 9y ago
    It's only helpful if it adds something to the feedback loop. That's what an organization and its projects need at every stage: healthy feedback. If it's too far into fantasy, it gets forgotten and replaced with something more expedient; if it goes completely unaddressed, the absence manifests as some other failure. So, early org chart is only useful if it doesn't jump too far ahead of what the business is: If you discover you need a different organization to execute on the plan, there's no point in planning for scaling the existing one out. But if what's being followed is a "hire a great team and great things will happen" kind of plan, then there's no conflict since it just means you've considered both near and long-term aspects of building a great team.
    - dilemma 9y ago
      I think you should read the GP again.
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    The trouble is that it may make the urgency of hiring and delegating seem more than it is. Plenty of businesses won't need separate people to take on each responsibility for a while, if ever. Other than the really obvious ones, a new business probably won't even know which responsibilities might become large enough to need dedicated people looking after them yet. Hiring is always a fine balancing act, and hiring the wrong people and/or to fill the wrong positions is just as toxic to a new business as not hiring and delegating when the right time comes.
  - dasil003 9y ago
    Sorry, what do you think I'm misunderstanding? The GP is clearly suggesting thinking about role definition from day one rather than waiting until the 10-20 employee phase. I'm stating unequivocally that I think that is a mistake. The "urgency of hiring and delegating" only kicks in once you have a level of certainty of what needs to be done. Every employee you bring on adds not only burn rate, but also communication overhead. The only thing that gets a startup from the garage phase to actually being able to series A and credibly hire more than 10 people is for every founder and early employee to ruthlessly identify things that need to be done and execute on them. This idea of documenting what exactly founders are doing and thinking about delegating them is what YC has dubbed "playing house"*. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html
Denzel 9y ago
This is a central point of Michael Gerber's book The E-Myth (E stands for entrepreneur). You must work on your business as much as you work in it from day 1.

by vmarsy 9y ago

dasil003 9y ago

I understand the appeal of this, but the hardest thing in the very beginning is keeping a laser focus on the critical task of building and validating something people want. Resources are so precious at that stage, and the green field is so wide open, that you have to be obsessive about keeping an eye on the ball. It's extremely easy to drink your own koolaid and start believing the narrative in your pitch deck before you are anywhere near traction. Mulling over an org chart is one of the easiest of the thousands of nice-sounding things you need to brutally cull from your todo list in the early days.

dilemma 9y ago
I think you've misunderstood the parent. By making explicit that the founder does all these things, it makes the urgency of hiring and delegating clear.
- buzzybee 9y ago
  It's only helpful if it adds something to the feedback loop. That's what an organization and its projects need at every stage: healthy feedback. If it's too far into fantasy, it gets forgotten and replaced with something more expedient; if it goes completely unaddressed, the absence manifests as some other failure. So, early org chart is only useful if it doesn't jump too far ahead of what the business is: If you discover you need a different organization to execute on the plan, there's no point in planning for scaling the existing one out. But if what's being followed is a "hire a great team and great things will happen" kind of plan, then there's no conflict since it just means you've considered both near and long-term aspects of building a great team.
  - dilemma 9y ago
    I think you should read the GP again.
- Silhouette 9y ago
  The trouble is that it may make the urgency of hiring and delegating seem more than it is. Plenty of businesses won't need separate people to take on each responsibility for a while, if ever. Other than the really obvious ones, a new business probably won't even know which responsibilities might become large enough to need dedicated people looking after them yet. Hiring is always a fine balancing act, and hiring the wrong people and/or to fill the wrong positions is just as toxic to a new business as not hiring and delegating when the right time comes.
- dasil003 9y ago
  Sorry, what do you think I'm misunderstanding? The GP is clearly suggesting thinking about role definition from day one rather than waiting until the 10-20 employee phase. I'm stating unequivocally that I think that is a mistake. The "urgency of hiring and delegating" only kicks in once you have a level of certainty of what needs to be done. Every employee you bring on adds not only burn rate, but also communication overhead. The only thing that gets a startup from the garage phase to actually being able to series A and credibly hire more than 10 people is for every founder and early employee to ruthlessly identify things that need to be done and execute on them. This idea of documenting what exactly founders are doing and thinking about delegating them is what YC has dubbed "playing house"*. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html http://www.paulgraham.com/before.html

Denzel 9y ago

This is a central point of Michael Gerber's book The E-Myth (E stands for entrepreneur). You must work on your business as much as you work in it from day 1.