S3 Ep 21 Bringing Clarity to the Chaos

The important thing here is that without money, you don't have a company.

Without customers, you don't have a company.

So when you come in and there's messy, rapid growth, it's chaotic, everything's everywhere, no one has an official hat they're wearing, they're wearing 10, what do you do to help them break down those complexities into tasks that people can actually do? Like, what's that, what does that look like?

The first thing is I'm going to go through and assess where everything is.

So do you have the cardinal pieces?

In people's heads, Jen.

Yes.

And-

Not, not written down

... and that can happen really fast, right? You can seem fine one day, and then the next day it's a giant mess, and it's usually there's a lack of process that's been put in place.

So how do you fight the unwillingness to build process? By making it lightweight, but also doing things like start, stop, and continues both together and separately, so that people can really say, "Here's where I think we're wasting time and resource," and make it a way that you can bring it to the front without it feeling like it's accusatory.

Mm-hmm.

So I think that's a good first step.

Every team I've walked into, I've had them do a start, stop, continue as part of that assessment process, so that we can really start to see what's going on that shouldn't be.

We'll break that down-

Mm-hmm

... a little bit.

So a start, stop, continue is really, like, what things should we start doing today that we're not already doing? What should we stop doing? So we're doing it right now, but it's not bringing us any value, we should stop it.

And what are the things we should continue doing? We feel like they're bringing fruit, we feel like they're helping us, so we should continue them.

And it's a very simple way to get everybody on the same page.

Big fan, big fan.

Okay.

So let's say we've started with our stop, start, continue, and maybe everyone's on the same page except the founder.

Mm-hmm.

That is where working together can really make the difference on whether we're gonna be successful or not.

The important thing here is that without money, you don't have a company.

Without customers, you don't have a company.

So when you come in and there's messy, rapid growth, it's chaotic, everything's everywhere, no one has an official hat they're wearing, they're wearing 10, what do you do to help them break down those complexities into tasks that people can actually do? Like, what's that, what does that look like?

The first thing is I'm going to go through and assess where everything is.

So do you have the cardinal pieces?

In people's heads, Jen.

Yes.

And-

Not, not written down

... and that can happen really fast, right? You can seem fine one day, and then the next day it's a giant mess, and it's usually there's a lack of process that's been put in place.

So how do you fight the unwillingness to build process? By making it lightweight, but also doing things like start, stop, and continues both together and separately, so that people can really say, "Here's where I think we're wasting time and resource," and make it a way that you can bring it to the front without it feeling like it's accusatory.

Mm-hmm.

So I think that's a good first step.

Every team I've walked into, I've had them do a start, stop, continue as part of that assessment process, so that we can really start to see what's going on that shouldn't be.

We'll break that down-

Mm-hmm

... a little bit.

So a start, stop, continue is really, like, what things should we start doing today that we're not already doing? What should we stop doing? So we're doing it right now, but it's not bringing us any value, we should stop it.

And what are the things we should continue doing? We feel like they're bringing fruit, we feel like they're helping us, so we should continue them.

And it's a very simple way to get everybody on the same page.

Big fan, big fan.

Okay.

So let's say we've started with our stop, start, continue, and maybe everyone's on the same page except the founder.

Mm-hmm.

That is where working together can really make the difference on whether we're gonna be successful or not.