Hustling is a mindset. It is your company DNA

You don’t need ‘a hustler’ in your startup

Why you ask?

I say this because ‘hustler’ is not a role. For a successful startup — hustling up is the DNA in every role; at every level. You do not need a particular person or particular people / roles in the entire system to manage things and ‘get the work done’.

Hustling is a mindset. It is not a role.

Hustlers to a startup are what managers are to a corporate firm

 

Worse yet, if they are like corporate middle managers! 😉

Scumbags. Without a point of view. Non directional. Hands off. Useless articulation. And supposedly — “capable at getting things done”.

There is a fundamental problem with one person solely responsible for getting things done in a startup. More so when it is the first few years of the startup venture when you are figuring things out and building things up. You don’t need some ‘one’ doing the hustling around for everything.

If you have a business person doing all the ad-hoc work, ‘visioning’, building relationships ‘only’ and / or motivating team members. Then I assure you its not a great startup DNA. Even when you have scaled up in your operations and your execution; its important that you build hustling in an essential mindset

Hustling is a mindset. Just as growth is a mindset.

Every one in the co founding team most importantly needs to hustle around — in everything possible.

• Your technical co founder / coders / developers need to hustle about pushing the next feature at the earliest possible. Figure out the open source hacks as early as possible instead of reinventing the wheel everytime. If you are an engineering startup; you need coders who can think through solutions and challenges before committing timelines and delegating tasks.
• Your designing team needs to understand your development cycle and iterate with the rest of the team at the earliest and as consistently as possible. Provide better design illustrations and be brilliant at askign questions
• You need people to execute your marketing / branding / communications effort in the most strategic manner and using the most efficient tools. Discover and develop hacks to maximize efficiency. Build talent in the team on the go to be able to optimize efficiencies.
• You need everyone across teams to be exceedingly willing and able to spot opportunities — for excellence, for growth, for better execution.

Hustling is about building a culture of execution excellence where your team members are always willing and proactive to figure out innovative ways of building a win-win situation.

At GetEchoed, our consistent understanding has always been that every person has something executable, something hands on to take care of. Hiring the right talent, connecting with the relevant people in the industry, investing the adequate quantum of time to develop talent and motivating is as much the job of the coder for any and all technical aspects of the startup as is the expectation from the person who does the marketing and then the person who does design. We do not have a person who is solely ‘a hustler’. Everyone is hustling in whatever they do. Each person is responsible for execution excellence in whatever they are doing.

Build a company DNA where everyone is more than responsible and accountable for excellent results. No one is responsible for getting the results done — as the sole parameter / expectation.

Gone are the days of the manager. Now is the time of the leader. A leader with inclusion. A leader who is hands on. A leader who listens. A leaders who hustles.

What have been your experience (s) around hustling for your startup / venture / company? Share your thoughts in the comments below and it will be a pleasure to exchange thoughts!

 

This post is written by Arpita Chakraborty, straight from her laptop – sharing learnings and experiences of working across startups for years now. She is a social media geek and loves to question things at GetEchoed. Tweet to her about anything @arpitaambition

Arpita Chakraborty, Co founder @GetEchoed