Bursts of Color - Minimum Viable Bureaucracy
My friends Mike and Grace at Canvas Ventures recently introduced the term Minimum Viable Bureaucracy (MVB). Here's a teaser:
Minimum Viable Bureaucracy or MVB (a purposeful reference to the Lean Startup MVP) should be your goal to manage any startup: the minimum level of management needed to adapt and run an organization at different phases of growth.
I think this MVB concept is right on: how do you introduce just the right amount of process to keep the trains running on time, but without burdening folks unnecessarily? This is one of those many arenas in which things are never perfect... rather you keep tinkering and evolving your bureaucracy as the company does. That said, there are benchmarks for MVB. Here's what I typically see at different company stages:
1-10 Employees
Org Structure: Everyone reports to CEO
Goal Setting: Weekly
Key Meetings: Daily team standup
11-30 Employees
Org Structure: 3-5 functional managers reporting to CEO
Goal Setting: Monthly goals by person & team
Key Meetings: Weekly All Hands + Weekly Managers meetup
31-100 Employees
Org Structure: new departments form, bringing total to 6-10
Goal Setting: Quarterly OKRs by group; monthly by person
Key Meetings: Weekly exec staff meeting + Daily departmental stand-ups added
101-500 Employees
Org Structure: Ensuring managers have 6+ reports keeps the org relatively flat and limits I-formations
Goal Setting: A number of roles & corresponding goals get standardized as you have 5+ people doing the same thing
Key Meetings: New hires batched to start & train in parallel; "SWAT team" cross-functional groups added as needed