Process and Culture for Management

A start up company or organization always came from founders with few major followers, or a project team leader with his team members. The advantage for the organization is moving fast, i.e. every activity can be adjusted by task purpose. The task will depend on the project, product, technology, or customer's priority.

I didn't deny such as model of operation, since it is the best efficiency for any task. I joined two start up companies after left school. The most impression is I worked with boss for customer project more than 16 hours a day frequently. We had no specific process for every day's activities. We quickly to solve customer's issue without any more process. Since we focus on the customers' issue, and take back the money from the customer. It works fine for few people company with no operation problem.

When the company is growth up to more than 50 people or 100 people. The communication is getting problem. The condition will be worse if the boss with much hands on intention. Since he can't trust others can make the task smoothly. He became a bottleneck for more and more task. It is hardly to find a best way to help the situation. Most of condition is to set up a "better" process to improve the condition.

Process, is a very easy "word". It looks not much difficult. From my personal view, it is a very big job and task to define it. The most important is "culture" in the company. People is the major for an organization. Unless people, there is no any company or organization can commit to their customer. Therefore, "Process" will relate to "People". "People" is a group of person with the same interesting, hobbit or mission plan to move to the "Goal". The company culture will help people to move to the goal, since they treat it as personal important to do. What I emphasize is the process and culture relationship.

Unfortunately, most of company, even it is more than 10 years still take the effort to improve or fine tune the process. Why? The major issue is the CEO or key man change. I didn't say it is bad. The issue is how much effort have to take with new process change? How much impact from the change? And how much benefit will be? My most of experience the process change is fail due to the company top boss can't have passion. And he always won't give up to have a new process change policy.

I will write down more about the topic and share to you as long as you are interesting.

An Interesting Path for a Company

I work for IC design house for more than 10 years. During the 10 years, I enjoyed the life from a company start up, growth, down, and how to recovery from the worst season. We enjoyed the company at record high sales revenue and upside down during the economic depressing.

There is a interesting path for the company operation. The first stage is growth period. The company came from start up at 1998, there was only few people. Everyone focused on the product developing. There was no any sales revenue for the first year, there was only one NRE fee from a customer ASIC. But, the feeling was very well, since small size company and few people worked together, all of us were such as a family. When the product released, it was hot issue for product testing and smell the right channel, partner and agents for the product sale. The product chip cost was around $0.5, but we sold at more than $10. It was really high profit. The key point was at "right application", "few competitors" and "Niche Market".

The second stage for the company, we considered to develop the more and more product for next generation. And company IPO for the public stock market. We start the plan for more product with more engineers resource. Become a more and more human resource and "project", not a "complete product" during the stage. It took for around 5-6 years operation. It was the peak sales and the peak human resource cost. It became a a risk starting for a company.

The Third stage, the company stat to recur more and more consultant for the operation. The major issue was the company didn't alter the RD engineers management was important. For an IC design house, RD developing capability and product spec is top important. Product release schedule is very important, otherwise, competitors will jump into the market quickly. Therefore, the market will be getting bloody and impact the selling price. Of course, profit would be an issue at that time. How to cover the company expense got into very tough.

The fourth stage, company revenue was going down. We start to cost down, included to frozen the new product developing, and cut down the human resource, and expense... What would be the impact, there was no new product be announced, and no more sales resource. Of course, there won't be no more profit to cover the expense, even we start to layoff people.

The fifth stage, we faced the world wide economic going down from 2008. Every company start to impact if they were not strong enough. We are lucky, though we don't have new product, but we control the cost up to balance. Hopefully, the sales revenue didn't improve much, but profit can cover the cost. The most important is we keep the cash on hand, and didn't much investment others business. We survive and start to recur the new team to change company operation flow again. We hope to have opportunity to going to second growth after the fine tune operation flow.

Up to now, the company had been took more than 10-11 years. I would like to share experience from my Blog and record those stuff what I did. I hope to share personal opinion for my friends or you. It is a long stage for me. During the period, there are many times of opportunity that I missed. It will help me to think about what is the next step to me?

At Start

This is the first time to me to create the blog in my life.

A-Life means a simple life. It is starting to become a brief concept and experience. We always thank you the people who help you today, and look for new comers in coming day. The most important is to appreciate people.

A-life is the easy way to keep the life easy.