How a team operates fundamentally shifts when you go from five people to ten and more. What used to work before, a quick phone call over WhatsApp or chats over the desk to make sure clients and customers get what you sold them becomes an inefficient way of working and in fact, you end up spending more time either repeating yourself or more time doing admin.
The exciting thing is there are so many tools, apps and programs to help you solve this - CRMs like Hubspot, Task management tools like Asana, Monday and productivity tools like Notion and Airtable. Many of these tools not only save you time in the day-to-day but can give you insights and data to enable you and your team to work faster and more effectively.
However, often as founders, when we find something new that works for our team we get excited and try to do too much too quickly. Rather than taking a plug-a-play mentality whereby you can gain greater insights into your business to make changes quickly, you can sometimes get caught up in the depth of data. Instead of seeing patterns and experimenting with incremental change and adjusting to the goal of having you get fixated on more insights to validate any change you want to make.
To quickly introduce operational changes to your business, and ensure you continue to build structure without overburdening your team, remember the following:
People naturally resist change: we don’t like change for various reasons, and knowing them will help you be successful in making your changes. Ensure your training is clear, you’re not applying too much burden in one go, and you can explain the benefits, and you’ll increase the chances of adoption.
Focus on improvements that deliver value straight away: with limited time and resources, look for quick wins that can be used to prove the benefits of the change. When looking at bigger projects, for example, CRM adoptions or OKR implementations, identify the features you need today and in the near future. If you can get 80% of the benefit with 50% less effort and spending, this is a great place to start.
Don’t implement change everywhere at the same time: In an early-stage business, there’s a temptation to try and get everything moving at the same time. Doing this can be expensive and difficult for the team to adopt, as there is always a learning curve to any new process. Let change settle first before building on it; otherwise, you could be building your next phase on shaky foundations.
That said, it can still be hard to introduce changes and identify which projects will offer the most value, particularly when you are in the weeds of trying to build your business. Our team at Zaidaan has worked with founders to both address the blindspots that are in front of you here today but also take their vision of what the business will do in a year’s time and what they need the business to do now, helping them to create a plan of what to change and how balancing your need to build scale whilst keeping your cost burn low.
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