STARTUP SPECIAL .......... 5 WAYS TO Manage Your Startup

5 WAYS TO Manage Your  Startup   A startup can be fairly vulnerable as entrepreneurs tend  to focus on keeping the business alive and growing rather  than managing it on the ground. As a company scales,  organisation culture and employee motivation become key. ET's Varuni Khosla gathers some techniques that startups use to keep their employees as well as manage it. 1 Stay Hyper Focused In a startup's journey, a founder will never be short of good ideas. “It's quite tempting to take on new features, new projects, new geographies, challenges, but as a startup founder, we live a world of limited resources and managing bandwidth is the key to survival and scaling up. Stay focused, the best teams are often defined by what they choose not to do,“ says Ahmed Naqvi, CEO and co-founder of Gozoop & Sparknext. 2 It's OK to Make Mistakes “You will make mistakes so learn to accept them. Don't pretend to be all-knowing and don't expect your team to be perfect either. Inspire them to take risks, admit when things go wrong, and adapt when required. Reveal to your team your human side to make them feel  comfortable in admitting their own challenges,“ says Naqvi. 3 Matrix Organisation Since startups are usually lean organisations, and each person is executing more than one role, every employee may be doing overlapping work. Matrix organisations foster closer relationships and information flows easily, which facilitates quick decision-making, says Aditi Balbir, founder and CEO of V Resorts. 4 Get Your `Why' Right “That's if you have not already! It is the key to managing your startup well. Your startup `why' is what will get you through the challenges of early years, attract amazing  talent, keep the team aligned and help in making  better decisions, explains Naqvi. 5 Manage Your Targets Encourage employees to set monthly targets for themselves  and keep track of their performance through a weekly system. “At the end of the month I shouldn't have to ask  why they missed their target (if they did), I only hear and comment on their plan to achieve next month's target,“ says Balbir.

ET11DEC15