Mar 28
‘People’ essentials when your start-up is on the path to ‘scale-up’
According to Noam Wasserman, author of the best selling book ‘ The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup and professor at Harvard Business School, 65% of startups fail because of “people problems i.e the problems around how to involve, engage and manage people the startups.”
Aspirations and enthusiasm go through the roof for the startups and these new-age organizations are commended for their operational agility. However, the challenge lies in managing the people effectively in times that are disruptive, uncertain, and in an environment that is agile and hyper-growth-oriented.
As a people’s leader in startups, you would not want to intimidate people with all the demand and unpredictability of a hyper-growth environment but excite them with the opportunities and help them stay connected with their purpose.
Along the journey of scalability, the importance of conscious effort by people leaders to maintain and increase engagement can hardly be overemphasized.
Jeffrey W. Hull ( Professor of Leadership at NYU) in his article ‘How Your Leadership Has to Change as Your Start-up Scales’ points out that leadership behavior and style have to change as the company goes from ‘start-up’ mode to ‘scale-up’ mode.
While in the early stages, being close to the ‘founders’ and working alongside them is a source of motivation for young staff; the same link may become less profound as the company grows. As a result, many start-ups experience Zero turnover during the first two years, but suddenly start dealing with 40% turnover in the third year.
Start-ups create first-time leaders as much as they create first-time managers, entrepreneurs, and employees. And it is important to create a culture in which people can believe and thrive before giving them a scale-up strategy to execute.
‘People’ essentials when your start-up is on the path to ‘scale-up’
Here are some of the essentials for leaders to manage their teams in a manner that is engaging, effective, and ethical.
Building Meaning and Respectful relationships
As a leader, it is important that all your interactions should be based on mutual respect and empathy which are essential for the productivity and team’s success.
An ounce of people’s sensitivity is worth a pound of cure when it comes to daily human interaction and mitigating conflict. ~ Jacquelyn Smith
Building a ‘solid’ not ‘silo’ed organization
Collaboration, communication, and meaningful relationships are what add to the sense of collective identity of all the organizations. And leaders need to be mindful of facilitating the creation of a work culture that lets the teams come together to work towards common goals. Create an idea and perspective-sharing culture. A collaborative mindset allows people to be part of something bigger than themselves. People thrive when allowed to work together and communicate freely.
Social Intelligence
A leader who is able to understand the social dynamics and social cues of her team is able to achieve higher outcomes than the ones who only focus on goals.
A leader must be able to recognize different effects that her decisions would have on the group as a whole, as well as specific members, and be prepared to have mitigating factors in place prior to making the decision.~ Adam Cave
Be open to receiving feedback
While as a leader, it is quite likely that you are giving feedback. But you need to be also open to receiving feedback.
The dilemma that giving feedback presents is that ‘Low-quality or vague feedback is generally not useful, positive feedback is undervalued, and negative feedback delivered unskillfully can actually agony.
Instead of asking generically as a leader ‘ Do you have any feedback for me/ what do you think of me’, being specific helps like ‘What do you think of my action’, what do you think of my relationship with the team’. This can help you gather useful data points to take action on.
Transitioning from ‘starting-up’ to ‘scaling-up’ requires a more nuanced approach to leadership in general and people management in particular. And these minor adjustments in behavior and your style of leading your teams can have a phenomenal impact on all that you seek to achieve: productivity, less attrition, building trust, generate creativity.
Let your role and impact be greater than your function and as you do so, you help others also do the same!
