The cookbook for a hearty company
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Staying at home when there's a beautiful day waiting just outside the window is never my thing. But that's my reality, our reality, now with this coronavirus in the air. I woke up this morning and decided that now is my only chance to write that little cookbook I always wanted to write. A book that I wish I had when I started my company sixteen years ago. A handbook that would not be a lot of theory but would give me clear actionable ideas for creating a great company, that is compassionate during good times and resilient during bad times.
When I started my company, I assumed that there would be a bunch of books like that telling me what I needed to do to make such a strong company. Like a cookbook that I follow to make a hearty soup, I would just follow the recipe step by step and end up with a hearty company. A place where people would actually love to work. A company built to last.
My hope of finding such a book was not unexpected. As a software developer all my life I was used to "missing manuals", "cookbooks", "cheat sheets" for learning a new technology and getting things done quickly. I was extremely surprised to find that there were no such "cookbooks" around. Sure, there were great books on teamwork, about company culture, HR or organizational behavior, even software teams but none that would cover the wide range of issues that a new entrepreneur faces every day. None that would give her the answers to her questions quickly and with facts and data to support those answers when she needed the rationale. The fact of life is that when you are in the whirlwind of creating a new business you just do not have the time or energy to read through and assimilate theoretical books about company structure or project management. At times like those, you want, just as I did, a cookbook that just gives you the steps. You want someone else to have read through, try and test all the theories and just let you know what worked, why it worked and what you should do if you want it to work for you.
I didn't have that.
I had to, just like millions of others before and after me, plod through with whatever I knew, whatever I could read up and whatever my mentors could tell me. I made a lot of mistakes and learnt from them. But I also did a lot of things right. Today, Kaz is a company that is widely admired for its workplace culture, for the quality of our work and most importantly for the bond between its people. I am happy with what I have achieved. Yet I feel I've lost a lot of time doing things that others before me have done and failed. If I had only known, if I had that book I would have been miles ahead. I could've achieved even more in this time.
So that is what I want to write. That missing cookbook.
I want my handbook to be exactly the way I wish I had it. In each chapter I will start with a section - Ideas that will be the summary of the principles that matter and the actions you take to fulfill that principle. This would be what I'd have used when I was on the run and just wanted to quickly check what I needed to do in a certain situation. A good example is:
Idea: People need to feel safe to feel trusted.
Actions:
Place the seats where there is a wall at the back and someone can only be approached from the front.
...
I will then have a section to explain those ideas properly - Explanation. This is for when you have more time to understand the rationale behind the ideas. This is where I will try convincing the reader why these ideas matter, why they work. I will share my own experience and any data I have to support the idea.
And lastly I will have a section for further reading - this is for people, like me, who are always skeptical about anything they read and want to form their own opinions (when they have the time to read up!).
The hearty company
Let me first define what I’m trying achieve, what do I mean when I say a hearty company.
The hearty company is an organization which has the following qualities,
Happiness: a hearty company is an organization where the people are happy to work. Happiness starts from the point where an employee feels excited and happy in the morning to go to work. It continues in her experience in working on projects at the company, in her conversations with her colleagues, in her interactions over the digital space. Happy is the workplace where the employees actually bond outside of the company's time.
Resilience: a hearty company does not break down during bad times. It's easy to be strong when the business is good but being able to survive when the business is bad, when resources are difficult is the biggest test. That is resilience and it is the biggest insurance that a company has to survive hardship.
Strength: a hearty company is strong. It has the strength to take on new challenges, it is confident that it will deliver and it will always win. You see that strength everywhere you go within the company, in every conversation you have. People feel like they know exactly what they are doing and what they are supposed to do. They feel they and their team has the ability to pull anything off and they have control over their work.
Fearlessness: a hearty company is fearless in it's actions. It can change directions quickly and move to new things and take up new challenges. People in such companies brag about how open and relaxed the work environment is. How they can voice their concerns without worrying about repercussions. You don't hear that there are political struggles going on in such organizations.
Flexibility: a hearty company is not rigid about it's rules and modes of operation. It knows that there are no perfect set of rules that a company can run by and it knows that rules that worked in the past may not work as the time and context changes. So it adapts, adjusts and transforms itself without a lot of red tape. The changes it makes to itself can also be to adapt to the changes in the business landscape.
Pride: and at the end a hearty company is proud of itself. People feel good working at the company. They feel good to tell their friends and family what they do and the company they work. They share with pride how they are different from others around them.
The recipe
The secret to a hearty company is simple.
A hearty company is made of just four ingredients in equal amounts. Get those ingredients right, get them balanced and you are guaranteed to get great results. It is at the end one of those recipes you just can’t get wrong if you have the ingredients right and do the steps right. It's been proven time and time, over hundreds of thousands of companies all around the world. There is no need to reinvent the wheel, no need to do a doctorate in organizational behavior. Just follow the steps to make sure you've got the four ingredients covered and you've got a winner.
So here are those ingredients.
In the rest of the posts on this thread I'm going to go through each of these ingredients and give you the exact steps that you need to take to make sure you have the full portion of that ingredient in your mix.
Looking forward to meeting you on my next post where I start with my favorite ingredient Passion.
Stay safe in these uncertain times. Stay home!
