Tightening Up The Team

You keep pushing; you work yourself harder; you put in more hours; maybe ride your team harder. That’s how you succeed, right? That is what has gotten you this far most likely. Hard work, determination and commitment.

But, you find you just can’t get to that next level.

Maybe it’s your team.

Something is Missing

You may find yourself with a skills gap (yes, it can sometime be a capacity gap too!).  There are some skills and/or experience that you need to execute on your forward-looking strategy. So, what’s missing? What are you getting wrong?

In a 2020 CEO Survey conducted by Inc. magazine, 33% of CEOs said they struggle with applicants that have insufficient experience.

For many scale-up companies, they fly under the radar of the most qualified talent out there. It takes work to go find the best talent and attract them. Many of these companies, have very lean HR teams that are focused on operations rather than being strategic in their hiring process. They don’t have the time or resources.

You should be focused on hiring for the future, where you are going or want to get to. That means an ongoing recruitment process rather than waiting until you have a position to fill.

Growing fast is a good thing but sometimes you grow too fast you can’t keep up with hiring enough of the right talent (the A team) and over time performance slides and you stall out. Packard’s Law.

You want exceptional talent. To constantly raise the bar. You want to hire smarter than you. A + players. Is it possible that you are missing certain skills because of fear or insecurities? Maybe as the Founder you have hired an A+ team but what about your managers?

It may be that they fear be replaced. They believe that hiring smarter people means they become obsolete. Someone will outshine them, or they will be overlooked for future promotions. This may reflect a culture of mistrust – managers should feel empowered and encouraged to hire up. I would also argue you are not hiring for redundancy but for someone who can do something you can’t do, or they can do it better so you can go focus on something else – something more strategic or on your leadership skills and team management. Get you out of the weeds.  

Someone Has to Go

Hiring and firing kind of go hand-in-hand. You won’t always get it right. Fact.

 But, firing someone is hard. You may think it reflects poorly on you. Your team will think you have no clue what you are doing – hiring and firing people. That you can’t spot talent or read people very well.

You also may think I don’t have time to start over. The recruiting, hiring and onboarding process takes time and energy. You think to yourself this person is doing well enough or I will give him or her another month or quarter. Maybe I haven’t given them the feedback they need.

Maybe you need to let an existing employee go. You think they have been so loyal/here from the start, or they have been here so long I can’t do it now. You don’t want to see that they didn’t keep up with the job. They aren’t scaling with you.

You also may just really want to avoid the difficult, awkward, and painful conversation. That’s natural.

But, here’s the thing. You don’t really hear leaders say I fired too fast. I should have waited.

The longer you wait the more you slow down performance. Maybe the person can’t do the job. What they promised in the interview they can’t deliver on. The experience they described from previous jobs were things they observed more than developed and implemented. If you let them stick around aren’t you lowering the bar for everyone else. You can’t say that you are all about excellence and then keep dead weight.

Or, they may be a crappy culture fit. Again, you don’t always get it right. They just don’t mesh with the team or they blatantly engage in behaviors that go against your values and are toxic. Hopefully your team speaks up, or they will sit there quietly as frustration festers. Unhappy employees are less productive further slowing down progress.

It’s a hot mess. One that is absolutely bringing down the performance of the whole team (not to mention you are probably ruminating ad nauseam about whether to fire the person or not and then getting yourself all worked up about doing the deed!)

Getting your team right is about as fundamental as it gets when it comes to execution. All the vision, strategic planning, hard work, and extra hours won’t get you to that next revenue hurdle if you don’t have the right team on board.