Geoff Ryan, chief people officer, SkipTheDishes Restaurant Services Inc.
Early employees at Amazon, which got its start in 1994 in the garage of Jeff Bezos’s house in Bellevue, Wash., had a broad range of responsibilities and functions. Over time, as the startup grew into the tech giant we know today, those jobs splintered into specialized roles in a range of areas within the changing business.Transitioning from a startup culture into a grown-up organization isn’t easy.
As a business grows, its people work to define the organizational structure, finding out what different departments are responsible for and where overlaps exists between different teams. Sometimes, in the earlier stages of a business, an overlap between teams is warranted.Overlapping employee roles and responsibilities can make sense in the early days of a business.
It’s important for managers and employees to shape emerging process and policy while maintaining the freedom to innovate and create. As an organization, we’re always looking for new opportunities to take our technology and apply it in different ways, never losing focus on what could be.