And you are here why?

You know how, when you turn on the tap, the water initially comes out all nice and smooth and neat and transparent? And then as the flow increases, things start going a little wonky? This is the difference between Laminar  and Turbulent  flow, between water that is coming out neatly, all lined up, and in layers, vs water that is irregular, chaotic, and mixing with itself all over the place. And yeah, there is very definitely an analogy to be made with organizations here. Take Laminar flow. Smooth, well-running, oiled, process-oriented, "everything in place" - nice adjectives to associate with your organization, right? It makes sense after all, the last thing you want is chaos all over the place, with stuff constantly breaking, nobody knowing what's going on, seventeen different ways of doing things, and so on. And I'm not here to disagree with this - you actually  do  want these characteristics in most (if not all!) of your internal systems, processes, and services....

Many many   many   years ago - during the DotCom era - I was at a company that unicorn-ed overnight. Mind you, before the craziness, we were a   tiny  company, a handful of people at that. But then - DotCom bubble, websites, and   BOOM! , we were growing like mad. It was pretty awesome, I have to tell ya 🤗 At the time, I was young, full of beans, and pretty certain that the world revolved around me. And the hyper-growth certainly only served to accentuate this - after all, it was obvious that I had something to do with all of our success, right? Somewhere along the way, we brought in a couple of people who were, well, capable of doing what I was doing. And, what’s worse, they had been doing it for a lot longer, and at a much larger scale, than I was. Thing is, I  knew  that I was better, stronger, faster than them, I just needed some way of showing everybody that I was all that and a bag of chips. And I needed to do it  right damn now  becau...

What’s your response when you’re handed stuff that somebody else did? Specifically, when you’re the New Person, brought in to clear up the mess — real or perceived! — that the Previous Administration created? Mind you, let’s get the “Everything Is Irretrievably F**ked Up” scenario out of the way. Oh yes, these situations do exist, but then again, unless you’re The Wolf (Pulp Fiction. Movie. 1994. Now I feel Old) this doesn’t apply to you. Odds are that you’ve been brought in to deal with a “mess”, (Hint: Not An Actual Mess). For any number of reasons, the existing system/structure/processes just didn’t cut it any more, and the Powers That Be decided that a change was necessary. And you’re that change. So  fine .  You’re the change.  And the million dollar question is — “ What do you do? ” Step 1 :  Blame The Previous Administration Th is is the single most common pattern out there (admit it, you’ve probably done this yourself!). And it’s an easy one too — after ...

You’ve hear it all the time. Stuff like “ Yeah, we process about 20 orders/day manually. If we ever got to a hundred a day, we’d be in trouble, but  it’d be a good problem to have! ” “ The system is setup for about 10,000 users. If our user-base went up to 50,000, it’ll buckle, but  it’ll be a good problem to have! ” As an off-the-cuff statement, I’ve got nothing against this. However, I frequently see this used as a Business Rule, used to justify a decision that falls into the “need to do something *now*” category. And, even then I’ve got nothin against it,  as long as time is factored into the decision . The thing is, most companies aren’t growing rapidly. Oh yeah,  some  are, but that is a very,  very  small percentage of the economy. Most companies, on the other hand, are growing (or shrinking. or flat) at a very,  very  small rate. And for  these  companies, the orders/day, or the user-base, will grow 5x in, oh, two...

What does “ Professional Management ” mean to you? It’s not an idle question, because the answer can have significant impact on your workplace environment. Think about it this way — if your company has had any degree of success, then, at some point, it’s probably going to bring in a “grownup” to deal with the inevitable issues around growth. These may be current issues (“ we need to scale our sales and marketing efforts ”), or upcoming ones (“ we’ll need a *real* customer support organization ”), but regardless, you’ll need to bring in someone who has learned from their mistakes elsewhere  . In this situation, there are typically two different approaches that can get taken here. You can bring in someone who has cut their teeth in  StartupLand, and has experience growing small companies into larger ones, and can do the same for you. Or, you can bring in someone from  EnterpriseWorld , who has seen how things work at scale, and can apply those lessons to your organiza...