100% Time: Self-Organization at Meetup (SXSW09)

(Below is quoted or paraphrased, unless otherwise noted)

Upending Internal Management Structure

This is kind of embarrassing - We announced that we were no longer a startup, we were a post-startup.

We had a lot of bureaucracy, took 12 steps of get anything done. In 2007 we didn’t launch almost any new features.

When we did launch features, members revolted. “This is not what we wanted!” Morale was low. End of 2007 was low point. Company was going to fail not because of money or biz model, but because of management.

So how do we address this? Must do something now to buy us time.

So announced a six week hackathon.

Whatever you did before is on hold. Now, you can do whatever you want, but must convince 3 others to work with you. Impress your peers and you can do it.

I’ve heard several times in this conference to “create corporate culture.” How do you create culture within your company? Your job is to identify the culture and not squash it.

Job title and seniority don’t matter when it comes to authority. Senior people don’t need to be in charge of a particular project.

The six weeks flew by, nobody finished. Took another 8 weeks to finish and join things together.

Started to wonder: Where do we go from here? Are we going back to the old way?

They sat down and identified lots of problems: Who does bug fixing? Etc.

How to solve them? Determined that for the most part the potential problems won’t happen, so address individual issues as they come.

“Don’t solve your problems before you have them”

Analytics

If everyone is going to have decisionmaking power, they need access to the data.

Built development lab. People building the stuff watch people who use the stuff they built.

Frequently people who build stuff never see who uses it. Not their fault, but it’s an issue of access. Meetup decided to provide direct access to people using the site.

Core group of key users that Meetup consults when they want to build something new. They involve customers in the dev process directly.

We missed the keynote on Sunday because we were meeting organizers in Austin. They were giving us amazing feedback.

You don’t help self-organization by removing all structure. The *right* amount of structure is what enables self-organization.

Q&A

It’s rare for upper mgmt to own up to saying you screwed up. Can you speak to that?

It was obvious to us that we needed to do something, they didn’t even think twice about sharing with employees.

Andres: There’s this image that mgmt is the parent, employees are the children.

When we say “how are we going to position this to our staff” we know we’re screwing up.

We treat them as adults, and they have different jobs than you do.

It’s very hard to predict up front what’s going to work. Mgmt has skills that enable us to help people be more effective at their jobs, but doesn’t necessarily mean that what we want to do will be a good idea 100% of time.

Question: Once you flattened hierarchy, how did you deal with performance evaluations and compensation?

(Very interesting challenge for democratically-structured companies)

Greg: The number one thing we value internally is “getting shit done that makes a difference.”

Question: How do you resolve product vision conflicts?

Greg: We communicate with each other a lot, so there’s usually no problem about product vision. We’re almost like an incubator. (Yes— but a directional incubator all towards one common goal. Very interesting iteration on the incubator concept).

Whitney Comment: Your model’s not that different from an agency with multiple accounts. Might want to have autonomous UX group that consults with the groups to ensure consistency at UI and Experience strategy level.

Question: Where else is this documented?

Andres: Books: Maverick, and Seven Day Weekend

VC’s say “great, what are you working on this Summer?”
“I don’t know”

Comment: We have an award: Top democratically or self-organized companies in the world.

Greg: When in doubt, I just ask the users. It’s a good way to stop arguments, and when are they wrong? Why don’t we take this outside and talk to the people that use the product.

Question: How do you deal with losing talent?

Greg: Culture trumps all. We’ve made this mistake before. If you hire someone brilliant, who sits in a corner and hacks away all day, they’re freaks. Nobody will work with them.

Question: How do you hire?

Greg:
- Different for different jobs. For engineer, there’s a written test. We give them 40 minutes to do a 2 hour test.
- Maybe means no.
- Can you work collaboratively? Can you not be a tyrant; can you convince others?

Question: How does team transition to a new project when other teams are still working on their stuff?

Greg: Don’t know. We’ve been lucky so far.

Post-event anecdote from Greg: QA was way understaffed, so they put up a board asking for people to volunteer to help until they get new employees online. It’s working.