Reimagining Organizational Strategy: Why Enterprises And Startups Need To Switch Tactics

Some of the world's most successful companies–from Silicon Valley to Wall Street–began as startups. Their small size allowed them to be agile to shifting trends and take calculated risks that paid off. However, being a startup doesn't guarantee long-term success. Mistakes can be made along the way by both startups and big corporations, but these pitfalls can be avoided if a novel approach is taken. Balajee Asish Brahmandam, a software engineer with almost 8 years of experience leading DevOps teams and handling complex programming tasks, suggests startups and big corporations exchange strategies. If enterprises embrace the ‘move fast, break things' mentality of the startup world, they can stay competitive without sacrificing their market reputation. On the other hand, startups can benefit from weighing their decisions alongside future goals to ensure they're not jeopardizing the company's future for a short-sighted win. 

Organizational success is difficult to obtain because business is constantly changing. To remain profitable, companies must establish robust policies but also explore how to achieve greater efficiency and competitiveness. For startups, a small budget is the main barrier to their success while corporations struggle with change at such a large scale. As a result, startups make daring decisions about integrating new technologies and changing procedures at the drop of a hat. This can be beneficial at times, but lacking organizational structure causes major issues in operations. Balajee notes that startups should postpone experimenting until they've developed a well-defined product. If the organization is continuously changing its policies while the product is still developing, customers and staff may have adverse experiences. Customers may not receive the value they were promised and staff may become overburdened with the lack of structure in their workload.

Startups can mitigate these potential issues by clearly outlining the company's roadmap at least a few years into the future. This foundation will simplify decision-making and allow leaders to conversate about what elements of the business must be developed the quickest. "If you're a tech startup, you need to have robust architecture and infrastructure that enables users to get value out of the product," Balajee says. "You should invest in tech capabilities and sift through different platforms and designs that will improve the user experience and perfect the product, but not waste resources. In this case, you should direct funding from other channels into the ones that matter most to avoid confusion, burnout, and ultimately failure."

Due to their scale, large corporations struggle to adapt and remain competitive. It's difficult to keep technology and policies updated when a business' footprint is drastically bigger than a small team. However, this doesn't make innovation impossible. It just requires strategic thinking and an environment that fosters growth sustainably. Balajee believes incubator programs are perfect for corporations because they encourage brainstorming without forcing ideas to scale rapidly. "With internal sandboxes for development, enterprises can consider numerous ideas without needing to scale each one," Balajee says. "This is a very effective way to test an approach, connect it to a larger project, and minimize the resources necessary to build it."

Balajee's knowledge about how organizations of all sizes should operate comes from hands-on experience working in the most notable startups and Fortune 500 companies. In both settings, Balajee has led cross-functional teams and overseen the design, build, and management of software development projects. He has learned that many organizations are unable to meet their true potential because of cultural limitations. 

When working in a fast-growing Silicon Valley startup, Balajee recognized that companies would make serious mistakes because they didn't consider whether their current actions aligned with future objectives. Even once they scaled, startups had problems acting like larger organizations with more to lose. Balajee also saw big corporations fail to harness opportunities for growth and transformation because procedures limited creativity. Balajee's insights underline the need for all businesses to examine new strategies to overcome growth plateaus.

This post was authored by an external contributor and does not represent Benzinga’s opinions and has not been edited for content. The information contained above is provided for informational and educational purposes only, and nothing contained herein should be construed as investment advice. Benzinga does not make any recommendation to buy or sell any security or any representation about the financial condition of any company.