Prolongation

Monetary infection is amazing. © Pavel Sharp

year 2013. It's time to evaluate the results of work for the past year . Much has been done - there is nothing to boast about.
The CEO, having read some of the next “smart” books (and maybe after attending a seminar), understood what the trouble was with us. There were notions of capitalization, exit, options, stocks, budgets, forecasts, hypotheses and investment rounds.



All projects have become separate and independent from the incubator. The company provided services in fact to their own projects. Innovation: Man-hours and any other expenses are indexed to the cash equivalent - all expenses are included in the rate. Then an invoice is issued from the “incubator” department to the project for which he allegedly had to pay. In fact, the money did not come to anyone anywhere, just influenced the calculation of the capitalization of each project.
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The entire executive management tries to resist the emerging bureaucracy, suspecting the causes of eternal prolongations. Each informed his truth about the CEO and offered his own ways out of the current situation. Instead of the expected "break" of the network and incessant talk about a successful project, managers got "nothing." They convulsed, spent their forces on the internal "war" with the CEO. On the sidelines only talk about how to convey information, and what to do next. Initially, they tried to convey the essence to the CEO with hints, then openly. It was difficult to argue, not having a single success story behind them, and therefore they asserted something, relying on common sense, their intuition and sensations. In this case, the preponderance went in the direction of the authority of the CEO, he often seemed to hint “do not forget who feeds you”. All the conversations led nowhere; nobody could convince him of anything. It remained only to be fed up on the fact that he himself would come to someone's conclusion. “Help me, I can still fix it” - the leaders shouted - “Let me try to steer at least, if my variant doesn’t work, I’m ready to be punished.”



An additional project Designer Toolbar appears . A very talented marketer noticed this niche for a long time and offered to do development. From calculations and presentations: investment is minimal, the field is familiar, so there are real prospects here. The company has +1.

The CEO himself is gradually changing. Gone are the days when work was in the foreground, leaving or absent notifies no one (after all, all processes are still tied up on it, the burden of responsibility, so to speak).

The stack of tasks is packed to the top, waiting for its apruva, and completed tasks were ignored.
The statuses in front of each task are “Waiting for approve” ;
Opposite to the projects - “Prolongation” .

The letters, which he considered less important, waited for a response for months, and the “unimportant” remained unanswered at all (an example from the unimportant: you need to pay for the office rent, overdue taxes, leave, equipment). There was a change of priorities and more mundane things took the upper hand: abroad, leisure, real estate. "Major" manners did not appear, but the attitude towards the employees changed. If earlier employees expressed their opinions and at least listened to him, and sometimes accepted him as an expert opinion, now, at best, they “listened” to it. Absent-mindedness, forgetfulness, especially in those monetary moments where he was “must”. No one relied on the word given or promised; everything was duplicated on the mail: the topic of the conversation, its results, mutual agreements, responsibility of the parties and promises. We tried to describe everything in detail, so as to exclude to the maximum possible debates or excuses "you did not understand me so much", "I could not say such a thing."

Every time when a CEO was faced with a choice, he was not always made in the right direction and was often dictated by his unwillingness to part with the bloodlines. For example, the allocation of funds for an advertising campaign or the purchase of a reference mass for a technically ready project was problematic. These expenses were not encouraged and were not considered necessary, the PM had to gnaw each successive currency sign. But the complete change of priorities, goals, approaches and a full "restart" of the development was quickly brought into action.

Everything turned upside down. Where it was not necessary, excessive wastefulness was present, and where it was really necessary, one had to deal with incomprehension and stinginess. Nobody was surprised that the button was drawn for 2 weeks, and the design of one product was developed in a new way in 4 circles.

The situation is similar to the case of the principle of "well, no, once it should earn!"

The hypothesis “According to all known statistics, only 1-2 projects out of 10 in the portfolio of a venture fund can become successful - therefore, only every 5 startups that raised money can really be a completely stable business” - was tested and for some reason did not work . Games startups slowly over.

He sincerely does not understand the reasons for what is happening, shifting the blame, then to the Project Managers, blaming their amateur approaches and complete incompetence, now the lack of proper quality of work, then suspecting everyone of the unreliability of the information / results provided.

Having brought the situation to a critical point, the CEO comes to a new approach. The wind of change blew.
Naturally, it is hard to try on several roles at once. On the one hand, he is a investor and finances projects, and on the other hand, he acts as a CEO and spends them himself.

The whole situation is aggravated by another factor, "paranoia percolation . " Long-standing love, from the past gray days, to encrypting everything in a row, virtual machines, vpnam and proxy did not contribute to the simplification of processes and development in general. Lack of information about what is happening with the staff. The policy was conducted "only you know about it, yes I, yes he." There were not so many employees close to the CEO: an accountant, secretary, financier, and executive director of the incubator. Each was entrusted with his own separate piece of work, and each of them owned some part of the “commercial secret”, but no one in general understood what was happening. As a result, confusion in the heads, rights and access to the internal systems, not to mention the number of duplicate documents. Even those information sectors were limited to which they directly worked. Often the work was done blindly, not knowing the purpose of the document and its functions, filling them in turn, complementing each other.

Legal clutter: a large number of registered foreign companies for each project. Employees faced with confusion in their own contacts, emails and generally in their legends invented. The number of “masks” for the foreign market was going off scale. Complete confusion with bank accounts, transactions and their appointments, as the company's personal expenses were mixed up with the company's expenses. Some of the employees working in managerial positions besides their main job duties also performed secretarial functions.

What is available:

• A lot of theoretical knowledge, little practice
• Application of several techniques at the same time
• CEO priority change
• CEO does not delegate its tasks (still makes all decisions)
• A large amount of required documentation from PM
• "Independence" of projects (separation from the company "incubator")
• Capitalized projects
• Attempts to market existing projects
• New project: designer Tulbarov
• The change in the attitude of the CEO to subordinates
• Mutual claims and search for the guilty
• Excessive Secury
• Lack of understanding of what is happening with employees
• Confusion in legal and banking matters
• Big capital
• Great team
• Good level of RFP
• Accumulated fatigue
• Lack of a common goal:
• The goal for PMOs is to get authority
• The goal for the CEO is?

It is necessary:
Instead of a long list, you need to do a full format and start over.
Close the "corpse" projects, stop combining and teach delegate.

Stagnation

The tighter the belt is tightened, the more it looks like a loop. © Valentin Domil

Having graduated from the new courses (accountant, agile specialist, project manager, business analyst), the CEO has mastered a couple of new techniques that he is actively implementing. There are additional roles on projects, the right to choose the management team. The CEO positions itself as a portfolio investor, trying to move away from performing activities.

This path led to the following: instead of unloading managers, allowing them to breathe freely and take responsibility for their actions, everything turned out differently. The CEO does not take part in the project, but! now each PM at the next iteration (a new round of investments) had to prove “its” profitability. The struggle for survival began.

PMY are mired in a compartment of documents: budgets, planning, exit options, several hypotheses in order of priority. All filled an unimaginable amount of documentation, drew charts, “drew numbers” ... yes, it was they who drew. Hypotheses suggest, and the facts have. Having no idea how and where to convert, tons of foreign statisticians raked out, trying to “pull” them onto their prodges. They appointed meetings with the CEO for the presentation and protection of their "writings", which is mandatory for the next round of investment. All undesirable hypotheses were discarded, and without being tested, budgets and plans were substantially adjusted. "They gave the wheel, the keys are forgotten." In fact, the CEO was still the head of the company and each project separately, but now the responsibility was no longer on him. Having “otdelegirovat” their tasks, accountants and employees of the “incubator” departments were in no hurry to endow them with any powers.

Each subsequent round of investment required the provision of supporting / disproving information, as a result of a proven hypothesis, necessarily in numbers. Even those leaders who were humanities to the core, learned how to create unimaginable calculations.

The investment rounds were first semi-annual, then short-term 1-3 months. At the end of which the PMs, prepared the documents, sent them out and waited for the conclusion. Despite the fact that many hypotheses simply could not bear fruit in such a short period of time, or they could not be accurately assessed. For example, launched an advertising campaign in the social. networks, unsubscribed on thematic forums, registered on the stock exchanges, bought for 100 USD of the reference mass; attention to the question: “how many sales did each of the methods convert?”, “How many posts do you need to unsubscribe in order to make a profit of $ 200?”
CEO looked through the paper with the consciousness of the case, made adjustments and taught PMov higher mathematics.

Rallies were constantly frustrated, because the CEO was busy, which delayed the work for a longer period. In anticipation of the consideration of their "case", many PMs did much in advance, on their own. They themselves raised websites, a little bit “podkodivali”, agreed on credit with remote workers (if they could not receive investments, they paid from their own pockets).



In fact, this process is obtained on projects: they work 2 months, they write documentation for 2 weeks, another month they are trying to “agree” with the CEO.

Design - in short, the train left. Envato have increased such a service that they can neither reach nor jump. The previous attempts of the project manager were not crowned with success, for several reasons: there is no experience, no competitors (novelty elements), there was no “trial and error” method, the inability to run your project and make decisions on your own.

Billing - passed the hype from the complex stage of certification. It turned out that this certificate in general does not help in any way with banks. The reality was tougher than imagined. All well-established banks and the majority of those involved in E-commerce have long had their own processing company. Separate Jur. a person who does not have anything with a bank or ... they have already entered into an agreement with local processing ... who did not own cash assets for their own structure. Conclusion: everyone wants to work through their processing with their bills. New players are not the place. The project manager put a lot of effort into it and still “shoved”, and then ... searching for clients. Within the framework of the white business, the conditions are the same for all, there were several options: to attract friends / your projects or to work in the negative. There was a particular desire to work in the minus, we do not forget that the CEO, by definition, did not consider the possibility of working with small clients (“not our flight bird”). Large boulders did not need our services, they had no problems with the opening of the merchants. We process our own projects.

Hosting - at the head of this project becomes the system administrator of the project billing. Positive trends. In addition to its internal projects, it was possible to find external partners. The level of self-sufficiency is still far, since the bulk of the investment was in a fairly expensive iron. The negative aspect is that physical equipment is depreciated, there is no capitalization of the project. In cases of exit from the crisis point, in this case it was possible to sell something and return some of the investment. The CEO is investing with less apprehension, understanding the specifics of the project and taking into account more realistic exit options.

Peer-to-peer - here problems were from the very beginning. At the head of the project appears, previously mentioned, MBA specialist. They coped only with the software part, by truth and not by truth. Licensing - not pulled, commercial activity was impossible. Looking for other opportunities. Content could not be commercially a priori. The lack of any technical information from the manager was unambiguously affected. knowledge and product architecture. Replacing the project manager with the company's “elder” techie didn’t bring any stunning success either. From previous experience, he was familiar with the gray methods of promotion, only they earned. Subscriptions? Twisted and commercials, tried to try. It was impossible to earn on white. The Investor did not agree to any shade of gray. The money here was still ... BUSTED!

Pseudo entrepreneurs

With unity, the small grows; with discord the greatest breaks up. © Sallust

Hypothesis: the cause of failure in organizational matters.

After some time, the CEO realized that in the absence of any regulatory documents it is hard to understand who is right, who is to blame for disputes (inside the team happened quite rarely) and it is difficult to assess the reasons for such a protracted development.

The stage of restructuring and regulations has begun.

Regulated everything: the procedure for registration of leave, passes, the rules for the provision of social services. package, the procedure for completing the task, the distribution of roles in projects and in the company, subordination, the procedure and stages of investment, the assessment of the quality of work, etc.

Virtually none of them have earned full force, except for the one that described attendance, holidays, passes and everything about earthly life.

I'll tell you a little about the procedure for writing regulations - a precedent system was in place. There was a situation> they wrote it down> they wrote a version for resolving the situation. Thus, they were subject to constant changes, becoming increasingly tougher and if previously a monthly pleasant and crisp bonus was relied for reporting or punctuality, then now there were penalties in the form of working off, fines and sanctions.

Why encourage accountability and punctuality? Previously, reports were more likely to be of a preventive nature (when debriefing flights), so that they would not forget, they decided to reward. Punctuality - the schedule was quite flexible, but here there were some limits to somehow synchronize the developers and discipline managers, because the work was done by the team - again, it is better to motivate add. income. Some employees did well and without bonuses, so there were abuses, although they were not permanent and did not affect the processes as a whole.

The CEO nevertheless had a deep conviction that this was the root cause of all the troubles, but he was in no hurry to set his own example, always “lingering”, forgetting about the tasks / agreements / upcoming meetings and so on. Nuts twisted hard and unprincipled.

They lifted all the documentation until 2010, calculated the remnants of “unwelcome” leave and ... understood that if all employees were given the opportunity to use their balance, then we can safely release the entire management team of the month by 3, which was unacceptable. As a result, the limit on the number of days per year. We informed all employees about the new order, which caused a storm of emotions and indignation. Some thought that this did not concern them and hoped to get, though not a vacation, but monetary compensation so accurately. Others bit their elbows, recalling those "lost opportunities", while trying to correctly convey the idea of ​​the injustice of this scheme - did not find understanding from the CEO.



At this time, the founders of the company (I remind them there were only 4), "smelled the smell of roast" and began to wash their hands until it was too late. All remained in good relations, though not the best of friends, currently have no complaints about each other.

The first went. From myself I want to add that this kind of people are quite rare, and some never. Crazy tech., A talented architect, somehow reminiscent of Einstein, a very charismatic, good-natured and easy-to-communicate person. The whole architecture of the "tree-splitting" machine and the technical side of the billing is its merit. Allowed fin. questions, retired, remaining a shareholder, while still getting relying fin. reward

The second has gone. Another architect (system administrator) who stood at the origins, after sitting and thinking, decided to go on indefinite leave. This employee is a data security wizard and on a short foot with such concepts as encryption, high load. He threw all his duties to the still young guys in this business, gnawed his fin. reward, waved his hand and never came back. It happened with a number of employees.



The team spirit somewhere quickly evaporated. The CEO added fuel to the fire by inventing new ways of "execution" and increasingly sophisticated methods.

Documents for counting the capitalization of each project are filled out daily. All investments are made here to the penny, right up to the depreciated equipment and once computers purchased by the company for work. Tons of documentation, in which even those who filled them did not understand. The complexity of the formulas amazed the imagination.

The service function of the incubator is already over. Marketers, designers, layout designers and testers were out of work, occasionally typing something on the keyboard. The output was finally to reorient themselves to the external market and start earning by providing their services or else find another start-up somewhere. The company didn’t have social life, having created a business card site for applicants, they didn’t "unwind" further.

How to promote a company that does not have a single success story? No portfolio. Need a wave of glory, at least one of the projects. The departments formed by intuition needed expertise. We wait. In the meantime, everyone is looking for any other occupation in projects, offering himself as an employee. The company employs adequate people who understand that money needs to be earned. They didn't want to sit down and wipe their pants, even for money. Those who have not found a use for themselves, diverge someone where. The work is over. BUSTED!



After a short period of time, the CEO disseminates information that has already been spent quite a lot. Investments end. PMy get their bread in vain, because they do not understand the price of money, they "sit" on wages and spend investments without risks for themselves, but the CEO was convinced that this was wrong. It is necessary to take measures and it is time to tighten the belts.

"The game of entrepreneurs" begins. Canceled social. packages, bonuses are completely canceled, only fines remain. Project managers are forced to underestimate their RFP, which has already lost its former glory in the market. RFP is part of a planned budget. Tightened with the documents, could not “add” the investor - blame yourself, then you sit without investment and RFP, waiting for your turn. Who likes this? Right to anyone!
The question is put an edge. All PMs are now becoming entrepreneurs, so they carry the same risks of being left out of money, like the CEO. Who does not like - can go on the way out.

Is it worth talking about the mood of the staff of all projects? Every man for himself. Throw your project, your brainchild, quite a difficult decision. At first, everyone fought for their place under the "fading" sun. Then they realized that there was no way back. No argument, no conversation with the CEO did not bring results. Everyone understands that they have already been businessmen for a long time because they have learned a lot by themselves: to invest their money in “not their own” projects, they took the risks themselves without problems, they learned to do the least for a minimum.

After some time, which was absolutely natural, the PMs were a bit tired from the eternal pursuit of happiness, so they resigned.

Project Billing - BUSTED!
Project Hosting - BUSTED!
Project Design - BUSTED!
Project toolbar - a little later, but also BUSTED!



All those who invested their personal money, received less profit, or acted as a co-investor, partly donating their salary, with a creak and a shriek brought only the money invested. Neither of which%, nor convertible shares, stocks, options, even the speech could not be.
Everything has been indexed, recalculated, re-divided and spent for a long time already without them, shares have become blurred or, in general, many have long been “merged along the way”. Under any pretext, the CEO delayed (sometimes for several years) even the very moment of payment of the due and already “confirmed” payment. There were many different reasons, changes and facts that made this amount even less and less!A bunch of excel and formulas according to the CEO "confirmed" that he was right. Most of the staff diverges. The CEO states the fact of failure and claims that the entire management “threw” him, leaving without a drop of gratitude.

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For several years, the pink dream of working in white was never realized, so the CEO is trying to whiten this business too. Let me remind you that all the scheme on which this business is based, a priori, is not very white. Bundles hung everything ... how can this be bleached? Right, you need to start over!

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As a result, the project X suffered almost the same fate as all of the above, as soon as the CEO switched to it and began to "manage" there. To this day, the confidence that the team has let him down. Without him, no one will achieve anything, because he needs it, only he (the CEO) can give all these people the opportunity to earn money, teach them something and lead them to success.

Epilogue

Making a lot of money is courage; to preserve them is wisdom, and to skillfully expend is art. © Auerbach Berthold

This story contains a fairly large amount of trial and error.
A good example of the fact that even in the best of circumstances you can bring everything “to the handle.”
It was all:

• A good team that engaged in self-sacrifice in pleasure.
• Common goal.
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Capital. I will not deny that much has been spent. As promised in the previous section, here is the order of the investment amounts (note, some projects were not affected, since they were essentially derivative or identical):

1. Project peer-to-peer - 80K
2. Designer Tulbarov -90K
3. Project Hosting2 - 200K
4. Project Marketplace - 80K
5. Indoor / outdoor advertising project - 160K
6. Project Billing - 150K
7. Incubator - 150K
8. 220K in-line projects

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