I’ve read an article interviewing the HRM of a tech startup. One question asked is what advice she would give to someone starting out in a managing position in her company. One piece of advice is to be open to ambiguity.
I can't agree more. It's certainly one of the most important mindsets everyone should have to work in a startup. If you don’t have that mindset, it’d be very stressful to work in a startup. But I'd rather say if you want to be in a managing position in a startup, being open to ambiguity is not enough. You have to have the ability to synthesize. Why?
Startup environment (reminder)
Full of ambiguity: product to be built and validated, market to choose, proposition message to be created, processes to be set up…
Ambiguity is everywhere in the company. But when you're a member, you can just follow the tasks you're assigned. The higher the positions are, the fewer clear tasks are, the bigger the ambiguity gets. Now you're in the managing position, you suddenly get more responsibilities but less guide.
So many things you don’t know. So many questions you need answers. It’s not because you’re not good enough or not experienced enough. It’s simply because they haven’t been created in the company. And worse, you now realize that even the founders don't always have the answers for you.
Synthesize
According to the Cambridge dictionary, synthesize is to put separate facts, etc. together to form a single piece of work. As per my understanding, synthesize is the ability to combine separate pieces of information to a whole. The beauty of this skill is that it helps you to come up with new ideas, new concepts by applying existing information.
In an environment full of ambiguity like a startup, good synthesis skill helps you a lot! You can create new frameworks, ideas, and concepts just by collecting scattered information. Of course, your synthesized concept is not always correct but with it in hand, you can find the answers even in the situation the boss has no answers yet.
Without any synthesized concept, your conversation with your boss is to look for an answer. But they don't always have one, which makes the situation so bad for both and you will feel so stuck! With a synthesized concept, now you're able to present an idea and pick your boss's brain to find the answers with him, instead of looking for the answers from him.
With a refined synthesis, you can start building a lot of new things for your startups.
How to become good at synthesizing
It's another big topic that I may share later. But as you can guess, a crucial aspect is that you have to be able to access information sources. How can you combine separate pieces of information to a whole if you don't have information, right?
And to your surprise, the best way to have access to information is you have to synthesize first! It may sound counterintuitive. When you approach your boss with a synthesis instead of questions only, he tends to provide you with more information to refine your synthesized idea. And over time, if you do synthesis well, the boss sees that you’re so helpful and he will certainly share more information with you! And you will have more information to synthesize better.
Thank you Julia for proofreading.
