Align Your Stage with People Operational Strategies
“Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.” ~John F. Kennedy
You found your start up and you have adopted some key partners to help get your momentum. After long hours, product development cycles and potentially months or years later, you’ve grown to 25, 50, 75+ employees. You’re feeling overjoyed with a product market fit that’s scaling, happy investors and more. But now you have more organizational complexity, more to communicate and faster cycles you need to execute. Here’s a quick overview to help spur thinking of how you can align the stage or your team / company operationally to maximize potential.
Think through a high level first, all of the requirements to operate and lead your team/company: the activities, meetings and communications.
Make sure you have your core values, mission, vision of your team/company clarified as these will be central to executing and weaving into implementing your People Operations strategic framework
Look at your annual goals, team/company initiatives, strategic team/functional plans, Board inputs/meetings or requirements, customer connections, employee communications needs and talent cycles and lastly, team/company communication vehicles
Map it out and practice this religiously as consistency will be a key driver of successful adoption
Consider your Size & Stage: If you have a smaller team/company (10 - 50), you will need daily meetings and informal stand ups throughout the day to keep in sync and focused on your objectives. As you grow, consider this lengthening out to weekly, bi-weekly and potentially even monthly depending on the topic. If you are a medium sized team (50-100+), for example, consider a weekly All Hands style meeting. If you are a larger organization (500+) you may want to shift to monthly All Company style meetings with strategic messaging cascading throughout the month to reinforce focus
Make sure you get specific on People Practices so you can link those to your strategies. Set up a goal setting methodology & practice, hiring processes, a talent review cycle and process, talent development programs and processes and rewards policies/philosophies to fully sync
Here is an example of what you may want to map out and adopt. Within these, make sure to fully establish the specific People Practices mentioned above as well as core communications for full optimization:
Q1: Your All Company Meeting to Kick off the Year/Quarter, Check in regarding your Strategic Plan, End of Year Talent Reviews, Market Inputs, Weekly Leader Team and Strategy Meetings, Weekly or Bi-Weekly 1:1s with Managers/Directs, Board Meeting
Q2: Quarterly All Company Kick Off, Mid Year/H1 Check in with your Strategic Plan & Goals, Market Inputs and continue Weekly Leader Team and Strategy Meetings, Weekly or Bi-Weekly 1:1s with Managers/Directs, Board Meeting
Q3: Quarterly All Company Kick Off, Strategic Planning Start for Following Annual Year, Mid Year Talent Check Ins, Market Inputs and continue Weekly Leader Team and Strategy Meetings, Weekly or Bi-Weekly 1:1s with Managers/Directs, Board Meeting
Q4: Quarterly All Company Kick Off, End of Year Celebration, End of Year Strategic Plan Check In / Reflection on Learning, Growth, Failures and Improvements, Market Inputs Prep for Following Year and continue Weekly Leader Team and Strategy Meetings, Weekly or Bi-Weekly 1:1s with Managers/Directs, Board Meeting