Have been receiving lots of inbound interest for the strategy & ops role I'm hiring for Acme Technology, thank you for the interest -- and the patience.
I've started getting a lot of questions around how it's like moving from McKinsey & Company (large global firm) to Stripe (late stage startup), to building at an earlier stage.
Here's how my skillsets and mindsets have shifted:
1. From answer-first to action-first. McKinsey focuses a lot on rigorous analysis to prove or disprove hypotheses. The right answer will come when the work has been done. At Stripe, we spent a lot of time writing docs, getting buy-in from many stakeholders, before taking action.
In the earlier phase, it's much more about learning by doing. Lean into intuition, and learn by doing. If it's wrong, pivot and move on. Intuition is tricky, but it will sharpen over time.
2. Being comfortable with ambiguity with how your life will look like 6, 12, 24 months down the road. In consulting you know quite clearly where your career is headed if you stay on track. There is some degree of unpredictability at Stripe, but nothing is going to change dramatically on it's own.
At Acme, it's almost impossible to predict exactly what you will be working on or how your life will look like, even 3 months down the line.
3. There's no one single approach to getting things done. In larger organizations, learning to navigate the org early on can bring disproportionate benefits to your career, and every org has a different 'way of working'.
There's no org to navigate in an early stage startup. Figure out what it would take to get the highest impact things done at high efficiency. But remain sensitive to org dynamics, especially when we serve large customers. All that is to say, lean into your strengths and craft your own path.
What else did I miss?
Fantastic opportunity! Let’s help you find the right candidate!