When I lived in Santiago, Chile, and worked out of the government-sponsored startup accelerator, I founded a small marketing company with a Chilean guy. We pretty much had to do active inquiry with every new client (read: small or medium-sized companies trying to grow). As part of the inquiry process on the customer end, we would execute design thinking interviews to understand the real-world use cases and applications for each product.
For the companies, as they were small enough to still have overlapping roles where most employees wore “multiple hats” and the founders were heavily involved, we had to evaluate the strengths of, and best practices for, each company as it grew. This involved establishing solid processes and lines of communication based on personnel and the unique nature of the business, as well as figuring out the real identity, value, and purpose of the company. Employees who had the abilities and ambition to do more, or something different, than their current role were transitioned into that role. As part of the lean startup methodology, it is ALL about identifying the strengths of your product/company and of your personnel and putting everyone in the best situation to succeed.
One specific example is an Airbnb management company that had a proprietary booking software and platform to manage one’s Airbnb without being directly involved with check-in, cleaning, etc. We talked to many users and seasoned Airbnb hosts to determine where the focus should be and what they most valued about the product (and what it would look like in its MOST desirable form that they would MOST be OK with paying for). We also streamlined the company, who had a rather petulant founder who was constantly traveling between 3 different cities; a Slack channel and Gantt charts were established to keep everything moving, because it was easy for him to lose track of what everyone in the company was working on (and easy for people to disappear for a while and do little to no work).
