How To Implement Pod Structure in Startup?

The Most Important Thing to Know is Why and When to Implement?

When the startup is seed or series A funded, you don’t need many processes to scale the business from MVP to proving the model. But when you see many bandwidth leaks, blame game, not so transparent culture, opportunities are not equally divided, it’s the right time to begin to roll out the pod structure.

What is Pod Structure?

A pod is a small group of individuals with complementary skills working with a shared purpose to complete a portion of a larger project or campaign. Pod structure was kicked into the IT industry by tech giants like Google, Hubspot, etc. What part of the business does pod structure impact? or do you need to roll it out in every department? From Series A to Tech at scale like Amazon, it depends on your business problem. E.g., a Small startup can have a group of product leaders, developers, quality engineers, and DevOps/SRE in a group, but as it scales like amazon, you might even have sales, support, NoC, hr, and even finance.

What Impact is Expected After Pod Structure?

Usually, Ineffective operating models can lead to decreased productivity, more inferior quality, and lower employee morale and customer satisfaction. Hence, it would help if you defined KPI (Key performance indicator) for growth and even compared how each Pod meets its OKRs.

1_izDP0WIQV9GUl4M4FpaLwA.jpeg Impact of pod structure in a startup’s culture

Caveats of Pod Structure Rollout,

Which Every Business Executive Should Keep in Mind?

  1. Attitude issues cannot be solved via Pod.
  2. Never assign technical debts generated by one pod to another pod.
  3. If you are a startup, you might not have a change management process; hence communication and setting expectations to your individuals is a must. If you are a mid-size startup, then follow your change management process. If you are an enterprise, you should have KPI to track the impact.
  4. Don’t enforce leave employees to communicate and breathe and listen to their suggestions to improvisations. Else you might see a churn in your employees or more unsatisfied customers.
  5. As this model empowers your middle managers to showcase themselves, senior executives must keep supporting them to make sure they succeed in adapting to this change.
  6. A fine line of roles and responsibilities should be clear to every member of the Pod else.
  7. Pool resources should have enough skill set to make their own decisions and responsibilities.
  8. Frequent shuffling of resources
  9. Constant skill enhancement and documentation are a must for all company size so that whenever you are scaling, you won’t face challenges.