Top 5 Startup Operation Management Strategies
Did you know that 9 out of 10 startups are set to fail before they can even make money?
While that’s a bitter truth, it doesn’t have to be the outcome of your entrepreneurial venture. Startups can be hard to manage, especially during the first few months where the company is vulnerable to almost anything. Nonetheless, successfully managing your daily operations gets you one step closer to success.
Here are five tips for assuming better command over your startup operations:
1. Define your company culture: The culture of your company is its personality. Create your company’s culture by identifying the values that are important to you and are relevant to your product/service.
There are two types of cultures:
Low-context culture: If you explicitly state the rules of your startup, you create a culture where people rely on facts instead of emotions, require validation in tasks and center the customer in all operations.
High-context culture: If your startup culture is transmitted through contextual clues - body language, status, behavior, etc. - you create a culture where people use emotions over facts to complete tasks.
The way you define your culture impacts your operations. Whether you want a process-focused or a people-focused operation depends on the culture you want to instill. Be aware of how you communicate cultural elements. Find ways to integrate your company values into your startup’s operations, shaping your culture from the inside out.
2. Set you leadership style: While high-context operations favor collectivism, startups with low-context cultures favor individualism. As a result, leaders in people-focused startups seek validation from colleagues, friends, mentors and leaders in process-focused startups make decisions at their own discretion and rely on their own knowledge, experience, and instinct to guide them. Whichever leadership style you choose, make sure you’re involved with your employees’ professional growth. Invest in your team through in-house programs and workshops, giving advice and mentorship when possible, and giving them enough recovery time throughout the work week.
3. Implement the right technology: Technology advancements are what drove the startup surge in the first place. A must-have tech for startups is management software, consolidating all relevant data including contacts, calendars, cases, projects, documents, schedules, and billing.
4. Consolidate & negotiate: You can save a lot of startup capital by consolidating expenses and negotiating better prices. Make it a point to renegotiate with your suppliers frequently, especially for businesses that experienced recent growth, something that allows you to demand better pricing.
5. Measure every detail of your startup: Drill down on your numbers and don’t miss out on analytics. Knowing precise metrics about your business is wise business management, especially if you’re trying to manage finances and balance cash flows.
Use the five tips above to improve your chances of survival in the startup world. For sustainable growth, make sure your startup operations and organizational structure can grow into your future vision.
Are you ready?
