How to scale the business while preserving Techmission values?

For certain company decisions or projects (such as compensation and end-point management), Techmission team members may have a lot of opinions and interest, and they want to provide their feedback and comments. On the other hand, it might be challenging for the project DRI to digest and respond to all these inputs. What should you do in this scenario?

Everyone can contribute at Techmission. We encourage team members to share feedback and leave comments on issues. Leaving feedback and comments shows that team members care about a topic and about Techmission as an company. These perspectives may also uncover potential risks and problems in the project.

There shouldn't be a “Don’t they have their job to do?” type of response. Furthermore, we shouldn’t judge team members who are perceived as being the “squeaky wheel.”

At Techmission, we measure results, not hours. As long as a team member is producing required results, they are empowered to decide how to spend their time.

On the other hand, as Techmission grows in size, we need to make decisions and the decisions may not be agreed to by everyone.

If a decision or project is sensitive or controversial, and receives large amounts of feedback, it can be challenging for the project DRI to handle. In these cases, it's best to have time-boxed feedback built into timelines.

In a hypothetical example where a DRI needs to decide between red and gold potatoes for a stew, they would create an issue with the following sentiment:

We’re deciding between red potatoes and gold potatoes to go into the soup. We have to decide by Tuesday 2020-07-14 so that we can get our order to the grocery store on Wednesday 2020-07-15. We’ll be collecting input and feedback until that point. Jane is the DRI and will make the decision on 2020-07-14 with all the information we have at that point. Here is the framework we’re using for the decision:

• are there allergies to consider?

• cost per kilogram

• team member preferences

Once the decision is made, it will be what is going into the stew.

This method has shown itself to be effective at soliciting productive feedback that doesn't derail a timeline while ensuring team members feel heard.