Don’t give me that disconcerting look. I’m not talking about while you’re
driving. I’m talking about roles at a startup!
In a small organization that is strapped for time and resources the last thing
you want to be is as Alton Brown would say, a “unitasker”.
Staying in your own lane is a way to crash!
It’s not enough to be someone that can wear multiple hats. You have to be
surrounded by individuals that lack enough ego to let you wear their hat
sometimes.
Once egos are factored out of the equation, you can exploit productivity by
floating in and out of different roles within your company.
That’s not to say that you should run around stepping on everybody’s toes. You
should be communicating with your team and jumping in where work needs to be
done, not where your title or role fits the best.
Everybody should be ready to pick up a mop and get their hands dirty if that’s
what it takes to ship another widget or whatever it is your business offers.
Nothing can get in the way of a small group of people with overlapping skills
and a collective willingness to trust each other enough to let them work on
something they may have the most domain expertise with.
Remember, a startup may only have 2 or 3 people so one person carries a lot of
weight. If one person gets sick and they are the only person that can do
something, productivity will probably grind to a halt.
This can compound very quickly and starts to negatively affect work-life
balance. We’ve all known the one co-worker that is the only person that will let
somebody do a certain task.
If I had to guess, they probably complained a lot about how they worked over the
weekend and about how they haven’t taken a vacation in years.
This is usually followed up with a quip about how it’s because they are so smart
compared to their peers and that nobody can pull off that task that makes them
so darn special.
Don’t be that guy or girl. Do some things well, especially letting other people
do things well too.
