Startups are fun. They give employees opportunities to learn business in ways that are rarely available to employees in large companies.
Startups are highly “people driven” because the processes that make the company run are still being established. Early in a start up’s life it is still deciding on its product or service, its company vision, its sales cycles and even its target customers.
This means a lot depends on the early employees and their ability to figure things out along the way. But as the company goes from 10 people to 30 people and from 30 people to 100 people, things change. The focus shifts from people to processes. As a company grows paying customers demand deliverables and specific services and the sales cycle gets defined.
As processes begin to take more importance, organizations take a more structured approach and move away from their previous “live and learn” approach to business.
This can trigger a people vs. process dilemma in some successful start ups.
This phase can be a tough time for the early entrepreneur. The focus shifts from early innovation to process formalization and building a business delivery model. This always brings in new lists of do’s and don’ts for employees, something that early hires never had to deal with before.
For some this can lead to the perception of a loss of creativity and empowerment. It sometimes makes early employees feel the company has changed, their role has been marginalized or they are not adding as much value as they used to. They may even find the new processes constraining and mundane.
So how can an entrepreneur solve this dilemma?
One of the key skills entrepreneurs need to have is the ability to communicate in a timely and effective manner with early employees. It’s their responsibility to constantly explain the changes to the organization and the need of a new approach as the company grows.
As a company shifts gears from people to processes to embrace scalability, it’s the entrepreneur’s responsibility to communicate what is expected of early hires and how their roles will change. It is the early entrepreneur’s responsibility to present a vision so that people can easily understand their roles as the company evolves from a small startup to a growing company.
The toughest challenge for entrepreneurs comes when the early employees cannot understand this change in the people vs. processes mix and reject the need for processes. Sometimes it means their presence in the company has become counterproductive. When that happens, the entrepreneur sometimes needs to make the tough decision to let them go.
For start up HR / Management Services call / SMS us today at 9880080321 or mail to sowmya@ravinaconsulting.com
Author : Rajiv Dingra is the founder and CEO of WATConsult, a social media agency. He also founded WATBlog.com, a leading digital media blog.
Source IndiaRealTime / WSJ
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