I just read a great blog post by Steve Blank called The Sharp End of the Stick. Steve explains that in any company at any time, all departments are not equal. There is a "sharp end of the stick," the point department that all other departments should support, the way most jobs in the military exist to support the front line. But for me it helps to think about this as the heart of the company, because the heart is the one thing the body can't live without for any length of time [and let's not split hairs here]. In his examples of growth companies the heart is usually sales (as distinct from marketing) because without sales the company will die. In early stage companies the heart is usually product development, because without a great product the company will die before sales has a chance to sell it.
But the real takeaway from Steve's post is that you need to make sure all your departments understand where the company's heart is at any given moment, and that the heart is the lead, and thus comes first. Ex: If sales is the heart, accounting should design the expense reporting process to be easy for sales to complete, not for accounting to manage (if it can't be both, that is).
One line from Steve's post really stuck with me: "I loved to compete against companies [that treated everyone equally]. Their own internal culture would tie them up in knots, and agile startups could run rings around them. Stay agile, stay focused."
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