When we started AntStack, we were only 8 people and we kept growing at a constant pace. As we grew we naturally split responsibilities among ourselves and a natural hierarchy started forming. Apart from few months into pandemic, this system functioned well for us. But when we grew beyond 50, I started noticing how we started losing our culture slowly.
Following were some of the challenges I was going through as the organisation grew:
- Too much power in fewer people, appraisals were subjective and biased. Instead of performance, people are focused on being nice to the manager.
- Cultural inconsistency - one team experienced a very different culture than the other because of how their managers run the show
- Lack of measurement in performance, no objectivity, no future visibility for improvements
- Hierarchy didn’t allow open peer-to-peer communication as it has to traverse the org chart
- Lack of opportunity for potential team members hidden under hierarchy.
- And countless many more…
I never thought these problems can be solved and thought I’ll have to “live with them” until I picked Adaptive. Adaptive systematically breaks down what is going wrong in a hierarchical way of working. And at the same time systematically approaching what the future of work should look like. In the era of technological advancements why do we expect mechanical mastery from humans? We can easily offload that to tech and focus on doing more human things.
AntStack has adopted this model since a quarter now and we are already noticing huge positive differences. We are able to tap into talent which we never knew existed in our organisation before! Adaptive has pushed Antstack into high intensity growth platform for young talent while maintaining amazing culture which we had when we were small.
Overall this book goes to the top of the list in terms of making a huge impact on my life. A must read for all the leaders out there!
