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Growing pains
Some companies experience great success at their present level, and the next logical step is to hire more staff, to fill the growing workload.
However, as any business owner (or department manager) will agree, growing a group involves much more than hiring people.
The approach to execution, which worked so well for that smaller group, will no longer work when the group doubles in size. I have seen departments, or companies, grow from 10 to 25, from 40 to 80, or from 200 to 400 within six months, all in great need for more staff, but few with actual plans for utilizing the huge numbers of people they are bringing in.
As a result, work piles up, people are constantly busy.
I’ve been through this--I have been that 7-day work week leader who has had to cover for six new employees’ learning curve mistakes. After a few months of this I was exhausted, until I figured out (and implemented) a new process to more efficiently spread the work and execute our plans.
Here are five new skills that must be developed, when you are leading a group that rapidly increases in size:
- Learn to delegate. While you may have been able to do everything in the past, and well, the time has come to hand things off. In most cases that I’ve seen, things get handed off, but either instructions are unclear, a specialized task has been delegated to the wrong person, or the transition from one expert to another is patchy and the (almost former) generalist must almost do things over from scratch. The cure here is to be very specific with instructions, and in some cases allow people the freedom to do things differently than has been done before.
- Develop processes. While smaller groups can rely on skilled improvisation and individual heroics, larger organizations must develop a set of systems and processes to manage and streamline the activity. At the large company level, Jim Collins refers to this concept as, “Clock-building.” However, every company that has successfully built a clock seems to have built a different clock! In fact, several authors have written business best-sellers describing formulas for success; not only do the books strongly vary and sometimes contradict each other, but case studies differ from others in the same book! What worked for General Electric differs from what worked for Walgreen’s, and Atari shouldn’t have even been included. My point is, your group will need its own set of processes that works for your group, and in the case of larger companies, fits into the company culture. You should not come up with these processes alone. They can be created bottom-up, a new executive (say a VP of operations) can be brought in, or perhaps a consultant will know your line of work and save you months and/or millions.
- Choose your leaders carefully. Leadership is a different skill set than individual performance. Lone wolfs can make terrible leaders of the pack. Similarly, mediocre individual performers may make outstanding leaders. Look to promote from within first, and consider those who you may not have thought of at first. Go through every name--who could be a dark horse talent? Who has consistently had a level perspective of things, even if circumstances, hierarchy or politics have prevented this person’s views from shining for the whole group to see? If you do go to the outside, heed the next point carefully!
- Never rush hiring decisions. It is always easier to get into a deal, than it is to get out of one, and nowhere is this more true than when it concerns people with whom you choose to work. You may have an urgent, pressing need, but if you rush and hire the wrong person to fill the position, your urgent, pressing need will turn into a waking nightmare. Take your time, conduct due diligence, and trust your instinct instead of their resume. Prior accomplishments have nothing to do with how well a person will work with existing staff. Make sure new hires are a good cultural fit.
- Beware strong personalities who guard their turf. Strong personalities can turn into great leaders or great headaches. The most famous example of a great headache was with ebaY, when early-stages architect and critical senior technical person (Mike Jeffries) refused to share passwords or critical system knowledge with anyone else, even though ebaY was (preparing for their IPO). When (Mr. Jeffries) took a vacation to (South America), systems crashed, the entire website went down for two days, and nobody else in the company knew how to get the site back up because (Mr. Jeffries) was the only one with passwords and knowledge of the intricate systems. EbaY employees had to fly down to (asdf) and retrieve him, in order to get the problem fixed. This one emergency, two days of website downtime, nearly sunk the entire company. In a smaller operation, say an early-stages startup, there would not be as great a risk. But this is a perfect example to illustrate the concept: As your group gets larger, the operation should not be reliant on any one person, in order to function. Another way of putting it is there can be no single point of failure, when it comes to your staff. Even Google long had a trifecta in their top leadership, so even if TWO people were to disappear, they would still be covered. Talk about redundancy!
- Don’t be cheap. There’s the old adage, “You need to spend money to make money.” While spending money for the sake of spending money doesn’t guarantee a great return, you definitely get what you pay for, when it comes to hired help. I have seen so many business owners, or decision-making department heads, pay dearly for turning down an available top-priced expert, who was perfect but “too expensive.” Don’t do this. Spend pennies today, and earn dollars tomorrow. Or, save pennies today, and lose dollars tomorrow. It’s your choice. Hire the best, pay them well, and you will see your investment paid back many times over.
Conclusion
The silver lining to all this is that others have faced the same situation. in fact, every group who goes through a growth spurt, runs into this wall. Fortunately, the structural changes required are similar for every group. Unfortunately, making the transition into a effectively performing larger group involves a certain amount of letting go. Letting go can be a real challenge. But if done properly, letting go is the best thing you can do for your group, your career and/or your business.
Jason
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