The Organization Roadmap

When navigating into a organization, knowing which terrain you'll be crossing is crucial for decision making. Few points are very important when addressing which type of company you are working in.

1. Open or Closed

Deals with how information is spread around the company. Is it into a more open-style where information of every single thing is of easy access? Or is it more closed? With private Slack Channels? Documents? Informations?

2. Oral or Written

Is the information shared into a more oral manner or all docs should be written? Are decisions made by documents OR by informal meetings? How much is the informal decision making accepted or not? Do we use Design-Docs? How formal should be the Change Management process?

3. Top-down or Bottom-up?

This determines whether the company rewards independent initiatives or close adherence to established guidelines. In a highly structured company, acting without alignment can be seen as bypassing the expected process. For Staff+ Engineers, you should be autonomous. But careful with how your manager sees your autonomy due to the points above.

4. Deliberate or Slow Change?

Startup Mentality vs Enterprise Stability.

Move quickly toward a minimum viable product (MVP), or invest first in a more reliable long-term solution?

5. Open channels or via Process Channels?

Does the company use direct messages (DMs) for questions and decisions, or does every request require a ticket or document? In process-heavy companies, bypassing an agreed request path can be seen as rude even when the request seems small. The right approach depends on the organization’s size, business model, and the level of coordination it needs.

6. Available Resources or Busy People?

Basically, you are not getting any traction OR may even be seen as annoying if you try to convince new initiatives when people are just too busy.

Papers to read https://www.researchgate.net/publication/8150380_A_Typology_of_Organisational_Cultures