Balancing micromanaging and freedom

The beauty behind working at a startup is that there is a lot of freedom to go out and do what’s needed to move the business forward. When I left PwC to work at Secfi, I felt a huge weight off my shoulders. There were more or less no guardrails or processes which was scary at first, but allowed me to thrive as I got to build things out my way and move quickly.

When people join Secfi, I tell almost everyone the same thing that this is their company and they have the ability to make a huge impact, and they should never be shy about chasing what they think will help move the business forward.

Of course, you do need to set some sort of bumpers so people don’t stray too far off course. For example, I’m always for people getting exposure to other areas of the business or other teams, but if they aren’t taking care of what they are hired to do then it will be a problem.

In addition, the team needs to also know that they need to own the decisions they make whether it works or not. People can experiment and chase projects, but if it doesn’t work out, I expect them to own it and figure out why they/it failed and move on quickly lest they burn too much time and money for the business.

On top of that, the staff needs to know when something is too big of a decision for them to make and know when to escalate things. There’s simply some projects and tasks too big for one person to solely make the decision on.

Over time, these things become natural for the team if you work on them. But they need to be worked on and people need to be coached through it.