A few months ago, I decided to cut back on my #SharePoint work because, frankly, I think the platform and product is dead or dying. I looked around at other areas or opportunities and within hours found a pretty amazing little company called StarterSquad (SSQ). I sent them an email and said that I want to work with them, and shortly thereafter, I joined the team. You may think that means I was hired, but thats not how SSQ works. In fact, its one of the key differentiators I really like about the company; people are members, they arent employees. Its a flat organization in that there isnt a single boss or manager anywhere. Everyone decides, in a strangely fascinating democracy, what happens. SSQ is a task force for technical projects. Imagine youre a startup and you have this great idea but nobody to build it. You can employ someone, which is a huge risk and very expensive if you dont find the best people right away. If you hire freelancers, you effectively have a team of mercenaries that are their own competitors and are there solely to get their own reward. If you outsource, you have the burden of needing to train the team to work together and you dont really have control until you hire someone to manage the team. SSQ does things differently by combining the best of all worlds. SSQ has freelance members, but these are people that work as a team and has extensive experience with working with each other. There are no managers per se, the team is self-managing. Because we use intelligent development methodologies with rapid delivery, the risk is minimal and rarely more than one week of work. Its cool that it actually works, but the truly amazing thing is that it seems to work so much better than traditional approaches. It does require a bit of mental rewiring, both from the members and the clients, but once that is done, the productivity is exceptional. Iwein, the brain behind the idea (but in no way a boss beyond what everyone else is) was interviewed on what makes Startersquad special, and I highly encourage you to watch the video to learn new ways of thinking about how to run a company. https://youtube/watch?v=ZPk-25rdBCE
Posted on: Mon, 01 Sep 2014 16:28:56 +0000
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