Process, Org and People

(How to be your COO’s favorite leader)

I’ve learned many principles about “staffing” over the years - like:

- you almost never need to hire people as early as the team thinks you do (because there’s almost always more clarity that a small team can find before you need more people to implement), and 

- you can almost always add people to a project later than the team thinks you can (because they are almost always over-optimistic about how it closes out)

But the most important and most universal principle around staffing has to do with how you approach problems, and where “people solutions” falls in that process.

The knee-jerk reaction to a new unanalyzed problem, especially in a newly approved project, is to “hire someone to solve/operate it.”

But, that’s the most expensive - and often the least efficient - way to solve problems.  Adding people adds actual cost, adds interaction overhead, often adds confusion.  As a former COO, these are all things that I want the organization to avoid.

Try this path instead:

1) First, can we solve this most simply by changing process?

• are we solving ad hoc, but we need a template or replicable process?

• does this simply need assignment to someone as an ongoing responsibility?

• is this similar to work someone is already doing, and we can add it to their plate?

• is there an existing process that can be modified to include this problem?

2) If we’re unable to solve with a simple process change, can an organization change solve it?

• is the appropriate organization unwilling to accommodate a process change, and responsibility needs to be moved?

• is the solution spread across too many teams, requiring an organizational alignment to make it happen?

3) If you can’t find a solution by moving the current pieces, only then do you propose a change in people.

• are the people who have responsibility for this area not up to the task, and need to be trained or replaced?

• now that you know that alignment solutions don’t work, do you need someone new to operate the solution?

I’ve used - and evangelized - this principle many times over the years, but recently I was in a studio that had hired a new 20 person production staff in a year for a new project, and production leadership was making the case for more people.  The project lead and I stepped in and focused on solving through the process above - using pattern-recognition to consolidate processes, resetting individual and project goals with newly aligned teams, moving people into roles that leveraged their strengths rather than their knowledge or experience - and found that (as we expected), the work could be done better, with fewer people.

This process lets you drive more efficiency and clarity in the team, and keeps you from asking your COO & CFO for more unplanned staff spending.  They will thank you for it, and be more likely to give you resources when you demonstrate that you only ask when you really need them.

To learn more about these and other principles, reach out to us for a free consultation.