By Jim Grey (about)
I think there’s a miss in how startups recruit. They hype the interesting problems they have to solve and their cool company culture. But those are only two of the three things they need to hype. The last one is that together, you get to build a great business.
If that doesn’t sound very interesting or exciting to you, well, it should. Seeing your work lead to a company’s overall success is enormously rewarding. And given a startup’s size and scale, you have an outsize ability to affect that.
Does the company you work for share financial results and business plans with you? The one I work for does, once a quarter. We all get to see how much money we’re making and how much is left. And we are updated on our strategy to get to our planned next business phase. All of this tells us where we are on our corporate journey. Are you clear on what your company’s journey is?
(Sidebar: It is interesting to me that in my career, the companies where I’ve been the happiest are also the ones that shared financials and strategies. Not all companies do it. I think companies that do it get how it brings the company together as one.)
When you understand that journey, you understand the larger context your work lives in. It helps you make better decisions in the moment, ones that let you deliver the right balance of speed, quality, and scope.
If you don’t see now how building your business is an exciting journey, you will when your company meets its goals. Especially in a startup, it will be impossible to miss how your work made it real.
Jim Grey 