The Complex System: Story of an Entrepreneur

Roles & Responsibilities - Post #1

I've been dragging on my 10 keys to exponential growth series, but I really need to get some of this out. I've discussed R&R before, but I want to reiterate how critical I think this aspect of business building is. When I first started as an entrepreneur I never even considered writing a role description. I always assumed that because “I” knew what the company need and what I wanted out of the hire. As you can imagine (or maybe not) I made a lot of poor hires, and the ones that were really good often ended up doing things other than what I wanted them to do. I realized that my picker is good; that is to say I am pretty good a finding smart, hardworking, dedicated, passionate and on-culture people, but I don’t necessarily align them with the right roles. Of course getting great people is critical. In fact, this skill is probably more important because once I learned how to write a good role description, my recruiting acumen started to hockey stick. Here is how I approach a new role.

A good role description does 2 primary things; first, it gives me and my team an opportunity to fully vet out what it is we need and expect from the job. Second it gives the new hire a very clear framework for success. As simple as it sounds, if an employee doesn’t know what they are expected to do and if they are unclear about how effective they are at achieving the requirements of the job, they will most likely fail and certainly be frustrated. You would be surprised how many people at your company have no idea what is expected of them or if they are successful in the role.

I start by researching similar roles in other companies that I respect. For Leads360, I almost always start with Salesforce.com. Incidentally, borrowing what works from other companies or people who have proven success is one of my favorite strategies. There’s no shame in copying what works vs. reinventing the wheel (that’s a topic for another post). I go to Salesforce.com and look at the comparable roles. From there I start to build out the role. I always use the same formatting and I require all my managers who hire people to use the same format.

I think it’s important to include very specific and measurable objectives for the role and the performance metrics the person will be held accountable for. No matter where the employee is in the org chart, this practice will pay dividends and save you many headaches.

Growing During Tough Times

Surviving a downturn is one thing, growing amidst a tough market is another? I read a great article on the Harvard Business Blog I started tracking (Nick Hedges would approve) about Accelerating Performance Through a Downturn. There are some advantages to this strategy, in particular the competitive advantages that can be gained if successful. If it's hard work for you, imagine how it must be for your competitors. When most companies are just trying get by and maybe even cutting costs to survive, a downturn is a great opportunity to build infrastructure, invest in technology and hit the gas on sales and marketing. Once the market comes back, and it will, you'll be in better position to really make an impact. And as this article shows, many companies in second or third place in a market moved up a few notches while the competition wasn't paying attention to growth.

Democracy Only Works for Startups

What is a democracy? What's so great about it? What's not great about it? When we think about the idea of a democracy most people think about our great country. After all it was a government by majority rule that gave us such a wonderful place to live and work. What about democracy in the workplace? Many companies operate this way and it can lead to some incredible success. My belief however about democracy in business is that it only works for startups.

When a company is first starting out it has only a few people. Usually that includes one or more founders and some key early hires. At this stage it's all hands on deck. Everyone must pitch in and everyone has input on how the company will be built. It's a fun time and these collaborative efforts are essential. Without democracy, things just don't get done. There is too much to do for one person or for everyone to work in a silo. Everyone works together to make decisions.

As the company grows the democracy begins to breakdown. More people mean more opinions. More opinions mean more time to make decisions and more chance of making the wrong ones. If you’re lucky you still come up with the right decision, but it may take you weeks longer to get there than it did a year earlier. The democracy is becoming counterproductive and starting to hinder growth, not facilitate it. Still, it's relatively early in the companies maturity cycle and at about 12-15 people things are still working ok.

Companies that make it past here must have some pretty talented and hard working people, that's great. Now it's time to hire more and start creating departments. The democracy is now implemented at the department level as well as the management level. Whoa, now things are really getting pushed back. More meetings are necessary just to go over everyone’s opinion. Meetings go longer and decisions are often postponed until another decision from another meeting can be made. Is democracy helping here or hindering?

At about 35+ people the democracy is totally breaking down. You can push through it and many companies at this stage do because democracy creates strong culture. When people at all levels give input, they feel like they are making an impact and this is one of the biggest contributors to job satisfaction. Don't want to lose that culture do you? Neither do I, it's critical. But wait, the democracy we've created is almost created a standstill. How do you balance the desire for killer culture and not get bogged down in the process? Good question, I deal with it every day and it should be the topic of yet another post.

Ok, now more than 50 people. Meetings are pretty much going on all hours of the day. Nobody is at their desk working. It's just one big decision making committee, or worse, a dozen committees all trying to make decisions so that another committee can make theirs. It just doesn't work. Management must step in and start leading. I don't suggest a dictatorship, but it’s up to management to get input quickly, analyze and make decisions, lest the inevitable paralysis.

Interestingly I think this theory also applies to government. When the country is small and trying to build all the pieces of the machine, democracy rules. But as a country grows and more and more people get to have a say, especially when it's combined with capitalism, problems arise. I personally think that's part of the challenge our own country is facing. Democracy w/ capitalism is failing and I'm not sure that time will heal it. There needs to be a change that facilitates growth, but that too is the topic of another post.

Product-Centric Leaders

I was forwarded a great article on Search Insider about how great product companies often have product-centric leaders, who are essentially customers themselves. By this I mean they understand what customers want because they are the same people. The article really resonated with me because I really am that guy. Just about everything creative I’ve ever come up with is a response to what I felt was not good enough. I’m constantly trying to “improve” products, services, systems, software, buildings, that I see. When I see something I like; when I’m in customer mode, my mind immediately goes to, ok, how can I improve this? What’s missing from this product or service? Most of the time I come up with good ideas.

At Leads360 I think we do this well. We have numerous people that behave like this and it’s enabled us to develop some pretty innovative products and services over the past 3.5 years. I wouldn’t say I know what our clients want 100%, but I get us in the ballpark for sure. The key is to add the customer input on top of baseline innovation.