Why companies create stuff?
Have you ever wondered why we bother creating things? Sure, we want to make money, but what drives us to keep creating?
Of course, we create stuff that our users and customers can consume — so that we make money for ourselves and our company. But that’s more like the outcome of creating stuff; the “then I got back home happy” part.
In this post, we’ll cover what “stuff” is in the context of a company as well as what’s needed to get to the “then I got back home happy” part, the in-between steps.
So let’s dive right in…
What is ‘create stuff’?
My broad definition of creating stuff is:
Everything we create for our company is stuff that we essentially share with our users, customers, and people to use and consume.
Let’s explore the definition:
- “WE” of the definition includes all the company departments. Everyone in your company creates stuff! Whether you’re in HR, marketing, engineering, or legal you contribute to the company’s story. Even those dry company policy documents you wrote count as creating stuff.
- “USERS” are the people interacting with the company brand. This includes everything from a Google search or a Linkedin/Social post, chatting in the community, talking with anyone in the company, or just using the platforms available.
- “CUSTOMERS” are that subset of users that found our stories interesting and chose to pay money for our company services.
So, whether you’re a seasoned pro or just starting out in your career, this post is for you.
The “create stuff” roadmap toolset
To “create stuff” is a journey, and every journey needs a roadmap. Even before jumping on the actual steps of the roadmap, we’ll need a set of tools — applicable throughout.
We are keeping this whole process department-agnostic. So, if you’re asking “Yeah, I’m a <insert your role here>, is this for me?”, the answer is a big “YES!” 🙂
Analysis of the tools needed was a beast, so I opted for covering them in separate posts. Find out more in:
- The importance of always focusing on experience: Building stuff? Focus on user experience no matter what!
- Working in iterations and getting feedback: On working in Iterations (iterations, iterations)
- Always use storytelling: Everything works better with storytelling
In this post, we consider the above methods as a given. We’ll focus on the “glue”; merging everything back into steps and eventually into the company.
Step 1: 🤔 There’s an interesting story to share!
All “stuff” starts with great ideas. Revelations triggered by a problem, some data, or a discussion with a colleague, customer, or friend. The big point here is that you consider something interesting and important enough to work on!
Your idea is a proto-idea. It’s something rough at this point. You invested some thought already. The more you think about it, its shape shifts. It’s essential to keep it in your mind as a proto-idea, something raw and unrefined that will change with time and mind work.
Using the mentioned methods, you start by formulating a rough draft of your idea, focusing on:
- Communicating the core story of your idea, clearly stating the problem and the suggested solution only for the basic hero in mind. Mention nothing about returns of investment, peripheral work needed, or implementation for this just yet! Just focus on the problem and the end goal!
- Be as precise as possible, skipping any fillers to the story, just what’s needed to share the core story. The point is to have “the meat” of your story as raw and clear as possible.
- Share the core story for feedback, to one or two people that can help you identify holes and enrich the core storyline. It’s important to keep feedback small at this point and stick with one or two people max. Ideally, these people are the ones affected the most by your story and have an interest in knowing more. These are your companions.
Completing the above you have refined the core story for yourself and have reached very fast a small audience to talk about your proto-idea! You have invested minimal effort on your side and are already collaborating with people and gathering feedback to evolve this idea further!
If the companions you talked to find this interesting, you have secured the team’s brainpower on the proto-idea! Hereafter you are not alone on this!
On the flip side, if the companions are not interested you have some feedback too! You can choose to iterate on your own and pitch it again to the same people or drop the idea altogether.
Either way, your companions will appreciate your work and desire to share at this early stage! They’ll see the story — your proto-idea — in its roughest form. It’s like you’re sharing inclusion and collaboration vibes with your teammates.
Step 2: 📖 Evolve the story
You reach the next step only if step 1 was positively received by the people you shared with and has some feedback to act upon. Now it’s the right time to write things down. If you’ve done that already for step 1, enrich your storyline based on feedback!
Using the same methods regarding storytelling, focus on experience, and iterations:
- Co-write the story with your companions. That’s where your proto-idea evolves into a full story. Something better, more solid. Be loose on what “write down” means; it’s not necessarily a doc. I prefer presentation slides. I’ve also tried out recording a video of me talking/presenting. Feel free to use whatever medium helps you communicate your idea better.
- Iterate your full story with a bigger cycle. Gather feedback from people affected by the full story. Some of these people may be involved in the realization of the scenario. These people will be the advocates, leading the full story towards finalization and completion.
In the second step, you add a definition to the story. Many holes are covered at this point. If you and your companions feel uncertain at this point, repeat step 2 with more people than the advocates.
By engaging more people in your idea, you display team spirit, collaboration, and co-ownership. Refining the proto-idea into a full story with a bigger team you display fluidity and a low ego on the idea and solution ownership. Advocates and companions already see this, by working together on the second step.
Step 3: ⚒️ Let’s go! And the rough path of implementation
Entering the final step, you and your advocates are ready to start the implementation! If approval is needed, you share the full story once more with all the required people, request feedback, and iterate once more.
As shared already, at any point you have the choice to abandon or keep pushing (check: Working in iterations and getting feedback). We’ll examine the good scenario when all lights are green!
Any story is empty if it’s not backed up by action. Delivering the story needs effort. By now, in step 3, you’ve built a set of advocates and companions to help in the realization. This is your baby, the idea you pitched to so many people. You have to keep everyone engaged and “walk the talk” on your side.
For the implementation, we’re entering a product management field covered in a separate post — again due to the topic size! If we can summarize the key points, we’re talking about:
- Working in iterations, that can showcase fast the value to the users and customers of your full story. Depending on your idea, an iteration might include the whole of your idea but still be a little rough.
- Share your iteration outcome with a subset or all of your audience, to gauge and get feedback. Your audience is “USERS” and “CUSTOMERS”, as defined in the section above “What is ‘create stuff’?”.
- Repeat these steps until you deliver the expected value. This is a tricky one! It’s very easy to overdo it as “Perfect is the enemy of good”!
The implementation phase is a very complex and convoluted one! What’s shared above is just the tip of the iceberg. In my mind, it’s the equivalent of “draw some shapes, and then add some details to the horse” joke.
Implementing stuff is something we all do regardless of the steps we follow. That’s a step we all do and we’ll continue doing it in the companies we work for, or on personal projects.
Working in the inclusive way we described above makes the whole difference. People are engaged early on, shaping the idea and building trust and excitement over the project at hand!
Final thoughts, why “create stuff” this way?
If that story evolves to success, everyone engaged has gained:
- 🤘 Trust in the process of making it happen. People have experienced the iterative process and evolving spark to a flame. Knowing the process, they might be the ones bringing an idea to the table!
- 🤝 Trust the people of making it happen. Building connections and collaborations towards a common goal.
- 💪 Autonomy and accomplishment of making it happen. Nothing tops the incredible feeling of shaping an idea and making it happen!
This whole process has shaped wonderful teams and collaborations that are strengthened with each cycle of ideas worked on! Has helped to dissolve egos and build a team spirit.
As a colleague from Transifex used to say (be well Antonis!):
“What I want for this team is to enter a meeting, each one with different ideas A, B, C… but when we’re done we — collectively — built an idea D which is way better that the sum of A, B, and C! We leave egos behind and focus on the problem at hand, not making the discussion personal”
This post is the conclusion of a series of posts, inspired by my product management experience and my current job at Hack The Box. The whole series of 5 posts was inspired by a lightning talk to the entire HTB team💚!
Here are the other posts from the series:
The Inspiration for: “Why companies create stuff?”
That’s the title of a Lightning talk I gave at Hack The Box, the company I work for. At that time I was 8 months in the company and I was impressed by the amount of work everyone was doing!
To understand the amount of effort, Hack The Box consists of around 11 departments, supporting 4 web applications (B2C & B2B) and a large community. I won’t bother you with minute details but we’re talking about:
- Lots of initiatives across departments for culture building, marketing, new content created, meetups & conferences, new features, etc.
- Lots of people working in parallel on their very demanding departmental needs!
Considering the above, plus my Product management background, I thought of ways to improve upon this base. How could departments work closer together? Exchange ideas? Innovate together? Align further on the messaging?
