You are an entrepreneur and you are establishing your Startup. Or in the company that you are working, it has been expected from you to set up a department and manage it.

When the enthusiasm of the first days has quiet down and you are alone with a pile of problems to be solved, if you don’t have a strategy then you cannot know where to start to solve them. 

I experienced that situation at the beginning of my management years. Today, I know to determine detailed road maps to “establish” and to “manage”. In time you will learn it too. 

Especially for entrepreneurs who establish their Startup and for the managers of small businesses, I have 5 strategic advice. I would like to share them with you. Start your journey by knowing these strategies.

1. You should have principles

This is a value that one should have not only when he is establishing a startup or managing/setting up a department but also for all of his life. Because;

The technology, the truths, and wrongs, etc. can change all the time. But the principles don’t change regarding time, location, or a person. 

While you determine to your principles, you should underline each subject one by one and consider its applicability. As DNA, you should decide by thinking genuine and only special for you. 

The rules of the people whose success you admired and lives in different geographies, at other times and in different conditions, don’t fit you if you cannot fully understand or internalize them

All of your principles should be in written form by being determined one by one for ethical and technical subjects. This increases intelligibility. For sure you should expect all of these principles to be understood and be adopted by the whole

2. While you set up a work team, be careful with humanitarian values

The constant humanitarian quality should be the thing you look for within the team members you are going to work together. 

Finding trustworthy and spiritually mature people in the business world (I have experienced so many times that maturity doesn’t relate to age) and work with them resembles taking a pearl out of the sea. 

These people as if they are a wise man, everyone respects them and they are also very respectful against everyone. They passionately love what they are doing. Therefore they never get engage with cooking someone’s goose, the raptorial career wars, and self-seeking.

In short, the reliability, the spiritual maturity, and the passion for the work which is being done are the main values you should be looking for in your team-mates.
While you are doing employment interviewing, you should arrange your interview questions in a way to make firm these values. 

The team spirit in your squad can be earned with the existence of those values.

A must to do is having innovative objectives and marketing the success in the company very well by measuring it.

3. The departments should have strategic plans

No matter of being a newly founded Startup or being a huge holding, in all establishments whether they are big or small, each department should have its own strategic plan.

In those plans. the objectives, the budget, and the expectations should be indicated clearly in terms of time-wise periods. (annually, monthly, weekly, etc.). While hiring a manager or an employee, the person should be informed about the expectations and the budget at the moment of the interview.

The indication of objectives based on departments and preparing the strategic plans for each department separately are very important in terms of evaluation of success. 

The success is being evaluated to be presented to your top directors, your customers, or to higher authorities such as an executive board. This eliminates getting heavy duties that are unmanageable and material and moral uneasiness that may arise from it, As I experienced it so many times, for example as an IT department if you are not given any objectives, then it cannot be measured if you are successful or not. The IT departments are the ones whose importance is being understood when there is an issue on systems. When everything is alright, no one knows that this kind of department exists. 

The way to get off this situation is not waiting for having issues often and in this way to become visible. 

A must to do is having innovative objectives and marketing the success in the company very well by measuring it.

4. Have meetings frequently

Even Though sometimes it seems unnecessary and a waste of time, it is important to have meetings frequently in the company and the departments.

Unfortunately, in most of the establishments, the dates and the agenda of the meetings are being decided only by the directors. And in these generally hourlong meetings, jumping out of the fraught agenda which has been decided in advance is not that possible. 

Whenas, every employee has his right to open a discussion about his issue.
Don’t put off for tomorrow what you can do today

You should organize your meetings as daily, weekly, monthly, and annual based on the dates determined in advance and in a way that whoever wants they can set the agenda. 

This fact is very important in abroad. For example in Germany, there is surely a meeting once every single day in all departments of many companies. In these scheduled meetings which don’t last long time attendance is mandatory and everyone has a voice.

Especially if you get the routine of having daily meetings;

•  You will not accumulate the topics to be discussed
•  You give freedom of speech to all of your employees to express their ideas/issues
•  Your employees feel safe and free 
•  You provide the communication and cooperation within teams. 
•  You consolidate the team spirit

Earn points in the company

Besides the routine meetings, there is another type of meeting you should take note of.
Let’s say, there will be an important structural project general or departments based in the establishment. The ones who will use the new system or who are the shareholders definitely will definitely want their voice to be heard. This scores a point to you and your department in the company. 

You should organize meetings in which these people get convince by feeling special and their ideas are being discussed and listened to. This scores a point to you and your department in the company.

5. Make a room for “the discretionary fund” in your budget

The expenses of your department or your establishment are included either in CAPEX or in OPEX. The budgets given to departments at the beginning of the year are categorized based on these 2 categories by taking account of short or long term profits. 

The budget and the expectations allocated for your departments are certain. So you use your budget to actualize your annual objectives. Yet your department has other projects that gain favor to your company.

In such cases, you should appropriate funds similar to discretionary funds in the general budget which is not included either CAPEX or OPEX in the beginning to resource other additional projects that you will develop.

That ensures to be able to think more creative and flexible for innovation and projects.

If you are the employer of the establishment, you should think about that fact for all the departments in advance, if you are an administrator then you should demand this from your superior. You can include that expense in CAPEX or OPEX after the project comes true.