Monthly internal product management rituals for startup success
Few things compare to a good idea, but nothing is as satisfying as great execution.
how DO you make sure your good idea is being executed in a simple, scalable, and sustainable way?
Make internal product management best practices a core tenant of how you build
Why This Works
Embedding a culture of internal product management in your startup establishes a repeatable and justifiable model for sustainable growth. Just as you want to ensure that strong processes and procedures are in place for your customers, it’s vital to ensure you’re maintaining such housekeeping internally for your team to set the structures as you scale your business.
Why Do This Now
Operational debt is as debilitating as tech debt (more on this in the weeks to come). The quicker and earlier you invest time in building internal product management best practices into your org, the faster your startup will move and the happier you and your team will be. Full stop.
how We Do: Quick ways to embed internal product management best practices into your organization
Quick refresher --
Internal product management (noun) man·age·ment: IPM is the art and science of delivering business impact by coordinating tools, processes, and people to work cohesively together so that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
Take each of these independently and focus on one small lever for change. Together, they’ll represent a slow yet marked shift in how you think about your organization.
Tools 🛠️
Run a Bimonthly Tools Audit: Conduct a tool audit on a regular monthly cadence. The importance of this is twofold - review access/permissions and the seats you are paying for. Especially as you grow and add new employees, this can easily get overlooked, but is incredibly important - saving time, money, and headaches.
Do:
when registering for a new tool - use a generic account (i.e. login@) for the master username. Ensure employees don’t establish master account access under personal emails.
maintain a database (Google Sheets works well) of all active tools and who on your team has access to each tool.
assign certain members of your staff to check the tracker regularly and update it as new team members or tools are onboarded.
ensure you appropriately remove access to protect your data when someone leaves your team.
audit account usage to see if you are unnecessarily paying for seats that are not in use.
if you’re working with independent contractors, establish SOPs surrounding when they should use personal email addresses and when they should be assigned company email addresses. Stick with this for consistency and communicate it broadly.
If an individual transitions from a fractional role to FT, work with your software providers to transition their data and access to their new company accounts.
Don’t:
disregard the importance of this element of IPM.
disengage from the monitoring. It makes sense to delegate the maintenance of accounts to a team member, but ensure you retain birds-eye visibility.
forget about free trials that become paid memberships. Ensure you or a member of your team audit your monthly software expenditures to ensure all tools are actively in use.
fail to communicate staff changes, especially with part-time folks, to the team and those responsible for engaging with your software stack
Rules (Process) 📝
Regularly check in on What’s Missing in Your Docs: Schedule a monthly meeting dedicated to zooming out and making the implicit explicit. Working at the speed of startup, it can be easy for teams to fall into autopilot, with vital information stored only in individuals’ heads or scattered through Slack channels. By regularly taking the time to look at which processes have evolved to the point of being true standard operating procedures, you will create clarity in your operations and develop your working culture.
Do:
use this as an opportunity to talk to your team about what you all have learned recently that’s changed how you operate. Do existing SOPs need a refresh?
prompt your team to think about the repetitive aspects of their roles. Are those processes written down? Have they been improved on the fly?
as new members are onboarded, ask them for insight regarding which areas they felt clarity that need further codification.
create space for strategic reflection - ask your team members open-ended questions to identify procedural gaps or ambiguity.
create a folder structure so that active SOPs are easily accessible and inactive SOPs are archived.
Don’t:
change for the sake of change. If what you’re doing is working, that’s great.
feel pressured to write new SOPs. There isn’t a magic number of new procedures that should come out of these check-ins. Document what feels important and repeated.
assume all knowledge will be transferred from employee to employee. Create a culture of documentation (and figure out where AI can help with this!)!
fall into the trap of too much structure. SOPs are meant to enhance and streamline work not create bottlenecks or barriers. Build in the space for candid feedback.
People 📝
Lead a Weekly Reflection Ritual: End-of-week retros can be a great way to get a true sense of how things are going. Your team needs a space to be heard while also articulating what they’ve accomplished, even if it’s seemingly a small win.
Do:
use this as a way to punctuate the week. At the end of this time, the work week is over. Make space for the endpoint together. No emails, calls, or meetings after. You’ve reflected, then you take a break and can pick up with startup speed on Monday.
be present. Turn off your notifications and all other work. Be in it, and you’ll get the most impact.
remind yourself of your values. Did the in which you showed up align with the way you hoped you would, and the standards you’d like to hold yourself and your team to?
remind yourself of your mission. How much closer are you to achieving what you set out to achieve this week? What invisible work happened to get you there?
remind yourself of your vision. Have you learned anything from your work that’s resetting the long-term vision for your work together?
Don’t:
make this a report-out. There are other ways to get updates. This is a space to document, reflect, and refresh your team’s energy. Take a peek back up the mountain you all just skied. Be proud.
discourage venting. This should be time to get out what might be happening in the week that there wasn’t a space to communicate about. Let it be here.
encourage venting. The team will leave feeling energized and accomplished after this session unless you let it be one big venting session. Recognize the feel of the room and make sure you (or someone else on the team) positively guide the conversation.
Actually Actionable
Nice article. Now what?
We’ve taken the ideas above and created an action plan for you and your team.
Objective 1: Establish a regular monthly tool audit
Meeting 1: Build a tracker that manages tool access by user (1 Hour).
Meeting 2: Meet with specific members of your team monthly to ensure the tracker is accurate, and review all tools to confirm appropriate team member permissions (1 Hour).
Objective 2: Create space for weekly reflections
Meeting 1: Meet with your team at the end of each week to provide a brief opportunity to reflect on the wins (and struggles) of the prior week (1 Hour).
Review 1: Review weekly reflections to ensure the team feels valued and appreciated and the values of the company are being upheld (.5 Hours)
Objective 3: Make the implicit explicit
Meeting 1: Meet with your team monthly to bridge the gap on your SOPs to determine what’s missing, what’s changed, and what needs to be codified and/or updated (1 Hour).
Before you go
A thriving startup requires more than just creativity; it demands careful execution. Think of it as painting a picture where your idea is the canvas and execution adds the colors and details. To ensure your startup's success, make internal product management best practices a core part of how you operate. This approach provides a sustainable growth model, just like you establish strong customer-facing processes. By regularly checking your tools, refining processes, and encouraging team reflection, you'll be better prepared for the challenges of scaling your business and achieving long-term success. Ultimately, ongoing expert execution is what breathes life into your startup and sustains its growth.
Writer: Britt