1) Building relationships across teams in a growing company is vital for success, as there are few formal processes and job roles are changing rapidly. 2) Knowing who to contact in other teams, especially in startups with high employee churn, is crucial. One should gather this information and share it, as it helps everyone navigate an uncharted organization. 3) Charting an organization by creating "Who to talk to" pages and seeding basic information, then asking others to update it, allows one to make valuable connections across the company as a remote employee.

1. NetWORKing inside your office
I am starting on: relationships are vital to your success and your company’s success. You have to
reach out to make alliances and connections with people in other sections or teams in your
growing company. Ultimately this is how you will get things done when there is little formal
process in an immature firm. With fast growing firm you will find teams, products and job titles
changing to keep pace. There’s little chance to establish processes which will last. Getting a
decision made or validated can lead you to lots of confusion
Knowing who to talk to in any section or team is crucial. Particularly in a startup, the churn of
employees will be pretty high. If your firm doesn’t already keep that information in one place,
start to gather the resource together and share it. Everyone will thank you. In my previous
company, one person in leadership specifically said he didn’t like ‘organisational charts’. There
is an uncharted firm in there, go discover it.
This hidden or uncharted firm won’t necessarily be reflected in job titles. It’s sad to watch people
founder in a fast-growing startup because they don’t know how to connect to people in other
sections and teams and don’t know who the influencers are. I’ve felt better connected as a remote
employee than colleagues who had joined my company and were there for 2-3 months.
This kind of connection will not happen organically. To chart my organization, I started putting
single pages of “Who to talk to in X team” on our intranet, and seeded in all the basic
information that I knew, and asked key people to correct it and be responsible for that particular
page. It didn’t take me long and soon I had even made a few new friends and got to know some
names I wasn’t familiar with across the company. As a remote employee, making these
connections was incredibly valuable.
If you work in your company in person, go over there and talk with them. If you work remotely,
arrange a short 15 minute chat to ask advice. It could be that this second tier person is actually
more influential and has more time available. Keep in contact with them. I’ve made more friends
and keeping relationship forever.
Thank you