We realize that today’s privacy and security of people’s communications are at risk. In a world gripped by cybercrime and mass surveillance, intruders can easily steal personal data and compromise correspondence unless people have the right tools.
At Secure Group, we want to make sure individuals, businesses, and organizations can secure and manage the information flow while preserving their data privacy. But how do we ensure that we deliver high-quality products to our customers and ensure their confidentiality remains untouched?
When it comes to developing our products, we tried different approaches during the years. It came to a moment where we realized we had embraced an unhealthy micromanagement approach, which was not helping us innovate. Micromanagement is the ultimate controlling management style. This is where creativity, conscious trial-error, and innovation can never thrive, as the desire to control and make sure everything goes to plan only creates more long-term problems.
We decided that if we want to keep growing and topping our products, we needed to drastically change the way we think, work, and communicate. After countless meetings and planning, the moment for change finally came, and we decided to switch to a different working model – strategic management.
We shifted from the command-and-control mentality to agile working practices, providing employees autonomy over their working pattern and the ability to choose why, how, and who to work with for reasons unique to them. Instead of trying to control people, we began setting the appropriate context that embraces our strategy, objectives, assumptions, and metrics, leading to increased motivation and performance in employees.
As our business is all about privacy and securing people’s communications, we knew that we would need some basic rules and exceptions to make sure no critical mistakes are made. Everything, including task execution and technical decisions, is made by the teams and not the manager. Still, these decisions need to be aligned with the business, our strategy, and the partner’s needs. Also, to ensure security in all aspects, we made exceptions for some situations where control is required:
- To prevent irrevocable risks: the possibility of data breaches
- When people are still learning and need mentoring: this applies to junior employees who, based on our career framework, are levels 1 and 2
- Moral, ethical and legal issues: when there are escalated conflicts arising
With these changes, we realized that by setting the right context, our employees can now understand the goals we are trying to achieve and stepping on that they can effectively contribute to it.
To say it differently, if you want your teams to succeed, try to avoid giving them orders (control), and provide them with the information and challenge they need to succeed on their own (context).
If you want to work in a context, not a controlled environment, look at our open positions, as we are always looking for bright talent.
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