Process? Process? Not the work. We talking about process?

H/T to AI and his rant about practic3. This is how most people feel about process as it creeps into their startup.

H/T to AI and his rant about practic3. This is how most people feel about process as it creeps into their startup.

I see process is the scar tissue of growing pains. Growth means more people and more people means communication breakdowns. At some point communication breakdowns result in a failure. A missed deadline. A product that the customer does not want. A (insert growing pain of your choice.)

You solve for this by managing information flows, coordinating effort and creating process. Everyone does this differently, but some level of organizing principle is necessary when the team gets bigger.

The key is not to over-react to the failure. Don’t treat a sprained ankle type growing pain with ICU intensity level process. You need process, but, you only need as much process as required to know when critical projects will be complete and to know when things are about to break with enough time to fix them.

No matter what type of organizing principle you choose, the people who were there before there was process (including you) will feel slowed down and burdened by the extra steps required. The best people will feel it most acutely and will talk about time spent on process vs the actual work.

Remind them (and remind yourself) you hired the bigger team because you needed help. You needed leverage. Without clear communication and timely information they can’t contribute and without coordination their effort won’t have full impact — and that could actually cause an injury that does require a trip to the ICU.