Contributed Article: What We Did to Develop Our “Organizational Operating System,” a Game Changer to Foster Teamwork

Hello, I am Katsuhiro Yoneshige from JX PRESS Corporation (JX PRESS).

JX PRESS is a virtual news startup aiming to leverage the power of data intelligence to foster a more prosperous and safer society. If we can use data to visualize “what happened where” and “what people are thinking,” we can understand everything in the world—with this concept, we are working in the areas of breaking news and public opinion polls to deliver valuable information asap to news outlets, local governments, companies, and general consumers nationwide, leveraging big data and technology.

About three years ago, we suffered “organizational barriers” that are typical of startups. We kept relying on each member’s individual skills even after our organization grew larger, which led to poor information sharing among teams and a slowdown in business expansion.

At that time, we were fortunate enough to be supported by Global Brain’s Value Up Team (VUT), a team of experts that provides portfolio startups with business support.

The VUT worked alongside us to solve specific business issues such as developing and executing sales and marketing strategies and recruiting engineers, but the team’s support did not stop there. The VUT members helped us become a “strong organization” capable of further expanding the business in the future.

Through our efforts together with the VUT members, we were able to install what we call a sound “Organizational Operating System (Organizational OS)” in our company, which for better or worse, had been in a very startup-like chaotic state until then. After being able to work together as a team rather than relying on each member’s skills, I feel that we are able to make decisions and run PDCA cycles more speedily.

Through this change, I found that the following “five points” are vital for building an Organizational OS.

1. Information sharing: Increase “shared insight” in the company
2. Transfer of authority: Trust the members and delegate tasks to them
3. Problem-solving: Solve problems together
4. Review: Focus on “customers” and “matters”
5. Mind: Be open-minded

In this article, I would like to share with you our efforts and improvements we made with help from the VUT.

1. Increase “shared insight” in the company

The first thing we did with the VUT to change our organization was to create a structure to turn our members’ insights into the company’s ‘shared insight.’”

Before, it was up to each individual member, regardless of department or team, to take ownership of any tasks in the company. This may seem like a highly agile and flexible organization, but in reality, we were highly dependent on individuals, carrying a lot of risk. There were many tasks that required input from a particular person, and this placed an excessive workload on certain individuals and also hindered business and organizational expansion.

With this, we started to create a culture of organizing and sharing information so that everyone, including the management team and other members, could have smooth discussions for making better decisions and taking action.

The VUT gave us many specific improvement suggestions to enhance our shared insight and accelerate our business through informing members of the key points of various document such as meeting minutes and appropriately sharing information based on asynchronous communication.The team helped us to implement a structure and technologies for “information sharing” throughout the organization.

They not only gave us advice but actually took action themselves. For example, the VUT members also attended our regular internal meetings, and they supported us by working alongside our members to prepare the agenda before each meeting, organize the discussion points, specify next actions and owners, and so on. They supported us as if they were our company’s members and helped us to get at the heart of the matter in our discussions. It made a strong impression on me.

As a result of these efforts, we saw gradual improvements in the quality of our company-wide documentation. This is an area where we had seen a lot of inconsistencies throughout the organization even though each individual had documentation skills. In the past, the way meetings were run varied depending on the department or person in charge. Now, documents with information needed for the meetings are circulated prior to every meeting, and decisions and next steps are always shared after each meeting. As a result, the situation and know-how of each team were accumulated as shared insight of the company.

This has led to another change in us: an improvement in the quality of decision-making.

When we examined our company’s past communications in detail, we found that a lot of time was spent checking in with the people in charge to ask the status of various matters. This kind of communication would be unnecessary if the information is documented.

However, since we have been much more thorough in documenting information than before, we can now find a lot of information quickly.

Although these initiatives sound quite simple when explained in words, the situation cannot be improved simply by enhancing the awareness and capabilities of individuals. It is more difficult than you might think to make them part of the organizational culture.

Thanks to the VUT members’ support, we are now able to spend more time discussing important matters that can only be done in meetings and achieving improved quality and speed of decision-making.

2.Trust the members and delegate tasks to them

Improving the way information was shared was a big change for us. However, this alone was not enough to restructure an organization that had become too dependent on individual skills. Appropriately “transferring authority” is also important to drive the change further. The VUT actively helped us here too.

I think that the key to successful transfer of authority is to share the goal you want your team members to achieve in the form of “end-state goal”.

An end-state goal refers to “your ideal state.” The best way is to clearly show the expected goals and intentions, then leave it up to your team to decide how to achieve the goals.

I’ve always been a rather detail-oriented person. I think I used to be the kind of manager who would be involved in various business processes giving out detailed instructions on how to do this and that. For example, I would check every sales proposal before they were presented to the customers.

However, this led to a slowdown in our business because I checked everything. I became the bottleneck of our company. The sales team even ended up using old proposal documents because my revisions were not made in time.

The VUT members who had one-on-one meetings with me often advised me to “trust and delegate tasks to your team members and focus on the things that only you can do as the CEO.” They also made suggestions on the reallocation of work from an objective standpoint, such as “this issue can be assigned to this person” or “this task can be passed on to that team” in order to change the way I use my time.

Reflecting on myself, changing my own workstyles and behavioral patterns is easier said than done. Especially since I am the CEO and I am not “managed” by anyone else, I often overlook my problems or issues.

Thanks to the VUT, an investor who truly “worked together” with us and gave us practical advice and support, my management style and the organization changed significantly. Before, the leadership team including myself used to control every aspect of the members’ tasks while being a player at the same time. But now, we share the end-state goal with the entire team and have the members think and act for themselves. We leave it up to the team to run projects until the verification phase. Things have changed drastically.

Transferring authority in various areas of the work made me acknowledge that “the quality and quantity of the output will improve if you think and act with five people rather than one, 10 people rather than five, and 100 people rather than 10.”

Again, this is very obvious when said. The sales proposal documents will definitely have a greater impact on the customers if the sales team updated the materials under their authority. They are the ones who talk to the customers face to face and listen to their voices and concerns.

I used to think “I can do it faster myself” or “I should give detailed instructions.” But now, I am experiencing how things improve dramatically when I entrust tasks to the members and get everyone involved. I have too many examples and I cannot share all of them here. As a result, I myself have been able to grow even more, and gradually move forward with the transfer of authority.

The most important role of a CEO or manager is to show the ideal state and vision. In other words, it is their role to show the mountain they want to climb. They should not only focus on giving detailed instructions on the climbing route and schedule without indicating the mountain. I learned my lesson very well by working together with the VUT.

3. Solve problems together

Sharing information and delegating authority expanded the scope of work we were capable of doing as a company. Our problem-solving skills also improved.

As I mentioned earlier, a very small number of people in the organization, including myself, used to decide very detailed action plans.

However, things have changed. Spontaneous discussions on what needs to be done next pop up here and there among the team members. Since each team is entrusted with the authority to decide how to move things forward, they are now able to document their tasks, discuss efficiently, plan next steps, and take action by themselves.

Again, it goes without saying that 50 people will solve problems faster than one person, and 100 people will be even faster. The speed of business has also changed due to the large amount of trial and error now being carried out everywhere in the company. I feel that our new culture of “thinking together” is an asset to the organization.

As each team began to take on the challenge of solving problems by themselves, I felt that my notion of a CEO was also changing.

I began to realize that although the CEO does need to be accountable and responsible, the CEO does not need to do everything.

I had always made myself believe that an ideal CEO is someone who works out the details of the strategy down to the tactical level, presents it to the team, and leads them. However, this approach will not work as the organization and the scope of work expand.

In order to grow a business in a large organization, you need a lot of speed in addition to trial and error. And in order to achieve speed, it is critical to have a simple but important mindset of “thinking together” instead of thinking by yourself.

What a CEO should do first is to draw up an end-state goal as a mountain to climb and an overall strategy for reaching that goal. Based on that, for further small issues, the CEO only needs to step in and bring the team back on track through discussions and feedback when there is a risk of deviating from the end-state goal. This mindset of fixing priorities is a must-have for a CEO. This was a major change in my way of thinking.

4. Focus on “customers” and “matters”

In order to overcome business challenges across the organization, I believe there is also a desirable way of “reviewing” your actions”.

There are two points that I, as well as the entire management team, keep in mind when reflecting on our actions.

The first is to always remember that we are working “for the customers”. “For the customers,” “customer first,” and “user first” are words and phrases we hear in any company, so sometimes they become meaningless platitudes. However, this is the core perspective to keep in mind when reviewing the actions.

In a company, when each team thinks from its own standpoint to take action, they may think differently about their issues and their interests may not be the same. In that case, members can start blaming each other.

However, regardless of your position, role, or department in the company, “solving the customers’ problems” should be at the heart of any business. This should be common to everyone. Therefore, whenever we catch ourselves failing to take that into consideration, it is important to have discussions so that every one of us can think about what “customer first” means from our own standpoints.

In the course of working with the VUT to boost our organizational capabilities, “becoming an organization that can quickly deliver the best products to customers” was one of our goals. It is a fundamental point, but one that we must never forget.

The second is to** “focus on the matters”**.

When members with different backgrounds work together, sometimes their frustrations and issues can be directed at “people.” In the past, when we were reviewing our issues, harmless comments were sometimes taken as criticism toward individuals, and we would end up spending more energy on making sure that members get along with each other than on addressing business issues.

However, we do not see such situations any more. When I give feedback on matters I expect to be improved during the review process, I try to focus on the “matters” rather than the person, saying, “I expect you to do this. That’s why I think this approach is different from what I expect.” With the support of the VUT members, I have been able to permeate this approach throughout the organization.

Incidentally, I think that our attitude toward matters is nurtured by thorough documentation.

When we discuss things verbally, it is easy to focus on the person we are talking to. But when we put issues into writing, the “matters” are clarified, and by facing them, we can calmly analyze the causes. Instead of pointing out what a particular person or team could not do, we can have a constructive discussion by confirming what was lacking and what could have been done. I feel that the culture of thorough documentation supported by VUT has been effective here as well.

5. Be open-minded

Up to this point, I have shared what I found critical in overcoming the “organizational barriers,” but I think that “being open-minded” is the most important thing in order to install an “Organizational OS.”

Even if each member can compile high-quality meeting minutes and authority has been appropriately transferred throughout the organization, the company will face communication failures and not function sufficiently if it is not open to different opinions and ideas.

We have taken several measures to create an open-minded organization.

First, we have reduced the use of direct messages (DMs). Slack allows you to communicate with people one-on-one via DMs, but we lose transparency regarding who is doing what if everyone uses DMs to communicate work-related matters. If people are reluctant to make their communication public, it will be difficult to have good discussions. There are certainly times when you need to discuss sensitive personal matters, but excluding such delicate topics, we strongly recommend that all company members communicate usual business matters in a way where everyone can see them.

It is also important to create a space where company members can feel free to communicate with each other. For example, we have a company Slack channel called “#somebody tell me” where anyone can ask about anything, even trivial things, without directing their questions to a particular person. Although each of these are small initiatives, I feel that they are particularly helpful for relatively new members to smoothly fit in with the team and maintain psychological safety.

Furthermore, we also started to intentionally increase the number of casual get-togethers between members, which were not so common before. Since the pandemic, our work style has shifted to remote work and online meetings, but relying too much on this style may make it difficult for the members to know each other’s personalities. By going out for meals together with no specific purposes and intentionally increasing the number of opportunities to get to know each other well, including their personalities, we are trying to create an organization where people can feel free to rely on each other.

An open-minded organization is not just about making information sharing easier. From a management perspective, it also increases the ability to delegate tasks and brings out the overall organizational strength. I think this is the key to installing the “Organizational OS.”

Our organizational development is still in progress

With the support of VUT, various changes have occurred throughout the company.

However, our organizational development is still in progress.

From now on, while maintaining the “Organizational OS” that we have installed, we aim to become an organization that can rapidly make a significant number of trials and errors. Our goal is to become an organization that can solve problems more quickly and flexibly by leveraging the brains of 100 members if we have 100 members, or 200 members if we have 200 members.

At the moment, JX Press is continuing to take on new challenges, such as Japan’s first joint public-private experiment to create a regional “information lifeline” and a renewal of the NewsDigest app features, which allows the general public to submit local risk information. We hope you will continue to follow our journey as a news startup.