My Aspirations

In my last post I wrote about where I came from. In this post I write about where I want to go, and what I aspire to do.

My goal is to help organizations that are...

1. well managed and want to manage growth
2. growing ad hoc and need practices developed
3. new and need to establish practices
4. having problems with management

...build and/or refine their infrastructure and processes in the following ways:

1. Hiring: Getting things matched right in the beginning—bringing the right people into the right places.
   Why? If there’s no hiring protocol, then different people could make hiring decisions based on different ideas on what is a good candidate (I'm not saying that multiple perspectives are bad. But I've seen some cases where the lack of standardization wreaked havoc). Someone might even hire somebody (who is clearly not well-suited) on a whim. I witnessed that quite a few times, and I’m sure you have too.
2. Onboarding: Getting things started right with proper onboarding and context setting.
   Why? If the new hires are not properly onboarded into the organization, then it will take them much longer to figure out where the resources are and it can stifle their productivity as well as confidence.
3. Robust-ing (next-level transitioning): Making operations robust by maintaining a balance between specialization and redundancy.
   Why? If there is zero redundancy in what people do, then one person’s leave of absence can quickly become disastrous as the other team members cannot cover the hole in the operations. On the other hand, if there is 100% redundancy in what people do, that is also unhealthy because accountability can become blurry and important issues will remain untouched. My rule of thumb is to have a primary and a secondary person for every role.
4. Transitioning (in situations where Robust-ing was not implemented): Making career transitions smooth by implementing and refining a succession plan and knowledge transferring protocol(s).
   Why? If succession plans and knowledge transfer protocols don’t exist, then somebody leaving the organization can leave a gaping wound not only in knowledge but also in culture. It leads to the organization frantically trying to find a unicorn who can patch that wound.

In more eloquent words, what I strive for is this:

"Pour faire de grandes choses, il ne faut pas être un si grand génie; il ne faut pas être au-dessus des hommes, il faut être avec eux."
​- Montesquieu

This translates (roughly) to:
​
To achieve something great, one does not need to be a genius; one does not need to stand above people, but needs to stand with them.

I want to design processes and systems that support people in reaching their potential (and improve the organization's overall performance as a result, because the organization = the people).