3 Ways Startups Should be Thinking about Building Systems to Scale

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My company is moving fast, which has energized me to keep up this pace. I’ve seen what we’re capable of and how fast we can make things happen, and it makes me want to do more of it.

Over the years, I’ve realized that most of this progress comes down to implementing effective systems, which have propelled us to where we are today.

Establishing and fine-tuning these processes allows us to continue progressing and improving as an organization. This can have a huge impact across any business, and without systems in place, progress may be fleeting and temporary.

Implementing systems is essential to any company, especially startups. The payoff is huge, but you have to put in the work to find and streamline them in the first place. This begins and ends with establishing self-improving systems, sustaining failure, and effectively leveraging artificial intelligence (AI).

Building self-improving systems

Creating self-improving systems is a big part of business growth. What does self-improving mean? It means some part of the system includes feedback on how it works. Systems aren’t meant to be static and should improve over time as your company scales.

For example, every time we do a tri-annual business review at my company, Wistia, we reflect on how the last meeting went and improve the next one based on those takeaways. Small changes can switch things up for the better, making tasks faster, easier and more impactful. Think: Try > Fail > Reflect > Improve. With everything you do.

As you set up self-improving systems at your organization, keep these tips in mind:

Reflect constantly. Discussions should always revolve around how processes can be improved. Setting up separate meetings to discuss reflections/takeaways or even conducting surveys are great ways to gather insights.
Establish clear ownership over who owns what parts of the system and hold them accountable for improving it.
Leverage your data. Without data, it’s hard to make informed decisions. Data from your systems will help you understand if something is improving and if you’re achieving the desired results.

This constant focus on self-improvement will inevitably help your company grow and keep your systems viable as you scale.

The art of sustaining failure

I have a hot take on failure: it’s often a sign that something is going right. Failure also means we’re free to create, we’re moving quickly, and we’ll find the right path faster. Because of this, we try to inspire a positive failure culture at Wistia that doesn’t unfairly penalize failure and where teams feel empowered to take chances and push boundaries.

To reach a point where you can fully embrace failure as an engine for progress, you need to have systems in place that can sustain failure. In my opinion, if you can’t sustain a couple of failures, you may actually be too risk-averse.

I get it. I’ve been in a place before where you feel like you need everything to work. But this can reduce risk-taking too much, and you’ll miss out on opportunities that may provide the most benefit and upside.

When establishing systems that can sustain failure, it’s important to:

Set achievable goals in the short term and reach goals for the long term.
Stay focused.
Constantly share learnings and takeaways across the organization.
Agree that small failures are a sign that you are moving quickly enough.

Effectively leveraging AI

Whether you’re an AI “doomer” or “optimist,” there’s no denying that we’ve entered a reality where tasks are faster and easier. As AI continues to take on more repetitive processes and streamline productivity in our everyday lives, everything will only become faster and easier.

The same goes for systems in business. When it comes to organization-wide systems in particular, AI can help:

Summarize recorded meetings and provide helpful takeaways/transcripts.
Rapidly distill down data. Today’s businesses often have more data than they know what to do with.
Speed up the self-learning and self-improving process.
Ultimately, we should dramatically change how quickly we make decisions. This will help processes become more efficient over time, achieving better results and eventually a higher percentage of success.

At the end of the day, entrepreneurs are often focused on finding shortcuts in a fast-moving environment. It’s easy to fall into this mindset and resort to quick “fixes” like team overhauls, reorgs, and new goals. I’ve been there. But this approach does nothing for business longevity.

Working to create stable systems that are smart, self-improving and sustainable is critical to scaling any company. My parting words of advice? Don’t let the frenzy of the short term distract you from how far effective and stable systems can take you over time.

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