Sustaining Growth - flattening of curve and growth stagnation

Flattening of curve amidst the covid-19 scare, is the moment the World is eagerly awaiting for the much needed relief. On the contrary, for an Organization’s continued strengthening & scaling, it has to carefully watch out for such flattening of curve of its workforce’s and its growth stagnation.

While an Organization on the Operational Excellence trajectory is centered around 3 Ps (people, products, process), the People part is usually in the driver’s seat. 

The Sustenance aspect of the Growth would call for meeting the needs of today and preparing the workforce for tomorrow. The Challenge usually is to meet individual aspirations while aligning them to business needs supporting organizational growth.

Like most (Software) Systems, Organizations also need an architectural blue-print of sorts to augment the vision and keep steering to stay ahead of the competition. Extending Systems Thinking to Organization building and scaling, the scenarios and approaches discussed further are most suited to specialized GICs or ODCs in various life-cycle phases.

The case in point here comes from my experiences at different ISVs spanning:

• specialized product portfolios, legacy & emerging technology footprint
• varying operational scale and overall company sizes
• across growth phases from setting up to stabilizing and scaling
• handling Product Development & Project based services delivery models

The Givens: The building blocks are the usual mix of people with the needed technical, domain, business & supervisory skills & competencies across various functions and levels. Over the years, as the company on boards new people, the in-house landscape of experience and distribution on the above dimensions keeps evolving. The As-Is state of the organization or the unit helps best determine the leading choices to chart the way for the desired To-Be state and sustain the growth momentum.

The Pointers: some of the aspects that may need attention to identify the under-currents

• Expectations from the Candidates from their Role(s)
• Expectations of the Candidates on Job Level and growth
• Synergies between the individual aspirations and the Business goals
• Enablers and Disabler's in the work delivery

The Symptoms: specific traits to take into account and add up to the above pointers

People with Short Term expectations, who:

·        Want to build the needed experience and hone skills

·        Are looking for individual level contribution

·        Don’t want to be limited by specific Business Domain or Technology

People with Long Term ambitions, who:

·        Look beyond the domain/technology mix and want to step up to the operational aspects

·        Aspire to grow into Group level roles

The Two Facets:

Individual Aspirations

·        Career Growth (role stagnation, personal and professional growth)

·        Compensation & Benefits

Business Challenges

·        Operational Stability (grow & sustain)

·        Business Continuity (knowledge management & retention)

·        Performance (predictable pace of delivery)

·        Managing Attrition (retaining critical mass)

The Organization Footprint:

• Change in mix over period during the Organization building
• Retaining a healthy mix depends upon the chosen strategies to grow

The approaches for Attract, Grow, & Sustain would determine how the re-enforcement's are applied to keep the underlying system nimble.

Aspect # 1: Attract – Journeying through the phases, scaling the organization to handle growth

Phase Boot Strap - Lateral Hiring with Senior/Medior

·        Mostly people with Senior level experience who can self-organize and need limited support

·        Helps in faster knowledge built-up owing to the seniority and prior exposure

·        Gives a jump start to the work

·        Will help in grooming the next level (Medior/Junior)

Phase Stabilize - Lateral Hiring with Medior/Junior

·        Filling the gaps for Senior Roles with Medior and enabling scaling

·        Mostly Medior/Junior who will get groomed and provide the execution bandwidth

Phase Scaleup - Introduce Freshmen

·        With all knowledge in-house, makes grooming faster

·        Longer retention time for personal stagnation

·        Provides opportunities for curtailing under-performing people

Aspect # 2: Grow

• Knowledge Management
• Ensure knowledge built up across domain and technology
• Manage expertise per domain and technology area

• Managing the spread of Knowledge
• Even spread across skill-set and job levels
• Mitigating personal stagnation
• possible change of work topics/role by job rotation across teams
• by positioning people on possible/needed growth path
• Knowledge management via specialist groups on domain and technology areas

• Retaining critical mass
• Balance skill-set and job level
• Maintain Organization Pyramid
• enough execution bandwidth
• sufficient decision making layer
• is not head heavy

Aspect #3: Sustain - Manage Critical Mass

• Team Composition Matrix
• Spread across levels (Juniors/Mediors/Seniors or a different classification model)
• Spread across Skills and Disciplines (Developer/Tester/Architect/Functional Consultant/Team Leads/Managers)

Aspect #4: Manage Role Curve – staying relevant due to technology obsolescence and ahead on the innovation curve

Productivity and Performance growth in different roles as the experience grows
· Growth in the engineering role starts to taper after a certain point

· Based on the individual's aspirations and skills, positioning them for the next level roles

· New role provides an opportunity for personal and professional (manipulating the stagnation)

Aspect #5: Cost Vs Performance – Re-balancing the Value Delta by regularly re-calibrating the performance baseline

• Budget Performance & Cost to keep the business targets on mark
• Stagnation & Longevity to enable individual and organizational scaling
• Threshold of Performance & Cost

Some Takeaway’s

• Focus Areas during building the Organization
• Knowledge Retention
• Execution throughput time
• Knowledge ramp-up time
• Aligning Individual aspirations with Business growth
• The above approaches address retaining the in-house knowledge at the appropriate levels to handle
• People: managing aspirations and growth internally
• Process (Execution & Delivery): ensuring the existing process knowledge is retained, applied as expected and improved as needed
• Product: knowledge passed on from person to person ensuring the quality of the deliverable meets the standards and stays there

• From the experience vs. delivery curve, balance performance and cost (budget guidance)
• Build a steady backbone of freshmen base to take over the more routine tasks and provide quick replacement (as they would get seasoned in the company during the initial internship and associate work)

This is a continuous improvement journey and a well #CuratedHome in challenged times helps stay focused on the purpose.