| 7 Challenges To Overcome When Building A Startup Team Posted: 23 Apr 2022 03:41 AM PDT  Every startup lucky enough to get some traction gets to the point where they decide to hire some "regular employees" for sales, marketing, and administrative tasks. Then they are surprised to see productivity and creativity take a big dip. What they should be doing is hiring only "entrepreneurs," meaning people who think and act as if this is their own business.
This commitment to hire people who think like entrepreneurs, or instill an "owner's mindset" in every employee, should be a high priority in every business. It's what every customer looks for in every transaction. Most people will tell you this is impossible, but I found a classic book, "Army of Entrepreneurs," by Jennifer Prosek, where she seems to have actually accomplished this. I like how she was able to motivate, train, and reward employees, including the implementation of an incentive program to get every member of the team actively involved in generating new business. She also identifies the typical myths against using this approach, and describes how to overcome each one: - "Entrepreneurs are born, not made." The reality is that all entrepreneurial skills are learnable skills. The entrepreneurial mindset is a function of motivation, priorities, and risk versus reward, all of which you set or enable by your leadership and example. Hire employees who have strong skills, with the motivation to learn new ones.
- "Employees will care only about work they create." This is really an issue of the quality of the people you hire rather than the management or compensation system. The key is to hire people with the right mindset, and communicate it daily to your whole team, by your actions as well as your words.
- "Junior people shouldn't be involved in new business." This is the platitude of an obsolete corporate culture where you had to "pay your dues" in menial jobs before adding creativity or making decisions. In today's marketplace, junior staffers are often the most intimately connected to the market, technology, and the customer network.
- "Employees will lose focus on their work." Old management models encourage employees to optimize their own task, often at the expense of the overall company objectives. There is new evidence that people want to understand the bigger picture, and business growth financial incentives will increase productivity, rather than lower it.
- "Sales will be the organization's sole focus." Again, you get what you demand and reward. If sales are the only way to get rewarded in your organization, then sales will take precedence over other activities. Motivate for a spectrum of entrepreneurial behaviors, and you will see results.
- "We don't need to reward lead generation." For a startup, you don't have a recognized brand to bring in the leads. All businesses need to proactively seek leads, rather than simply attract them, with the creativity and initiatives of every employee rewarded for every contribution.
- "There is too much risk associated with decentralized decision making." When you have to move and change quickly to survive, centralized decision making is too slow. You become the bottleneck. If you train people properly, empower them, trust them, and they understand the business, your evolving business can become a revolution.
Every large company wishes they could harness the power of a thousand entrepreneurs within their employee ranks to re-create the exceptional business growth they once knew. Instead, for growth, most have resigned themselves to buying startups that exhibit these characteristics. Thus, the last thing you need as a growing startup is a "regular employee." Hire entrepreneurs like you, grow like an entrepreneurial company, and stand above competitors in the acquisition process to carry that fire forward. That's a win-win for everyone in this new culture and new economy. Marty Zwilling |
| 8 Management Mistakes Which Will Defeat Your Business Posted: 22 Apr 2022 04:07 AM PDT  Even entrepreneurs who have built many startups, or sold their last one for millions of dollars, know they make occasional people leadership mistakes. They know leadership is all about managing their own complicated, illogical, and fallible human foibles, as well as the people they depend on. These can trip up even the best, often at the cost of more than a good night's sleep.
Thankfully, most mistakes won't be as spectacular as the America Online merger with Time Warner for $350 billion, back in 2000, engineered by then superstar entrepreneurs Stephen M. Case and Gerald M. Levin. They apparently ignored all conventional wisdom and advisors, and struck a deal which crashed both companies, now a case study in many business schools. By most accounts, this case exhibits almost all the lapses identified in a classic book by Dr. Nicole Lipkin, "What Keeps Leaders Up At Night." She provides some great guidance, based on coaching experience and a doctorate in clinical psychology, on recognizing and resolving the most troubling management issues for leaders in all stages of an organization: - I'm a good leader. So why do I sometimes act like a bad one? According to the evidence, good bosses go bad (temporarily versus the chronically horrible), for three overarching reasons – too busy to win, to proud to see, or too afraid to lose. Every leader needs to check and enhance his self-awareness to recognize and avoid these.
- Why don't people heed my sage advice? Many people use the terms influence, persuasion, and manipulation interchangeably. But each carries its own specific meaning. Influence requires winning minds and hearts to inspire action. Persuasion intellectually stimulates a person to action. Manipulation is seen as insincerity, and it gets non-action.
- Why do I lose my cool in hot situations? Stress comes in two distinct forms: good stress and bad stress (distress). Managed effectively, stress is a good thing, leading to survival. But chronic stress and distress results in overreaction to non-life-threatening events. Schedule an on-going reality check with trusted advisors to know the difference.
- Why does a good fight sometimes go bad? A good fight in business is called healthy competition. Unfortunately, feelings of envy and inferiority can quickly turn healthy competition into a knock-down, drag-out fight between people and companies, turning a win-win situation into a lose-lose one. Check all your emotions at the gate.
- Why can ambition sabotage success? Every leader needs to balance ambition with humility, restrain one's ego, treat others with respect, create positive impressions, and adopt a long-term perspective of success. Don't let a "nearsighted" view cloud the "big-picture" view; success in the best interests of all. Contemplate your legacy to others.
- Why do people resist change? The brain's hard wiring pre-disposes us to habitual behavior and decision making. We let biases influence our reaction to change and our ability to make decisions that cause change. To thrive you need to become more aware of biases and psychology behind your own and your people's responses to change.
- Why do good teams go bad? Humans have always affiliated with groups and teams in order to survive and thrive. Group dynamics are not always good, including "us" versus "them" mentality, group conformity, social loafing, and emotional contagion. Leaders need to manage these dynamics to keep from falling prey to negative group behaviors.
- What causes a star to fade? When start performers fade, it's almost always a failure to remain engaged with the people and the job. Smart leaders must constantly monitor the four essential elements of engagement: social connection, leadership excellence, aligned culture, and meaningful work and life. Engagement drives performance and satisfaction.
These questions should all be contemplated and understood by every entrepreneur and startup founder, starting on day one of their quest. Remember, we are all human, and we will make mistakes. The challenge is to learn from these, and just as importantly, learn from others who have been there before you. So when you find yourself losing sleep at night, don't get mired in the quicksand of self-pity and self-destruction. Every personal admonition of "What was I thinking?" should be followed with some objective analysis, maybe some help from a trusted ally, and a determination to get back on track and have fun. Being an entrepreneur is a lifestyle you must enjoy to be successful. Marty Zwilling |
| 7 Keys To Creating A Productive Business Team Culture Posted: 20 Apr 2022 06:14 AM PDT  In my experience, the right team culture is critical to every business and startup success, so every business leader wants to know how to create it. In reality, I'm convinced that none of us can "create culture" directly, but we can create an environment where the desired culture emerges. You do this by driving values, letting values shape behavior, and the behavior defines the culture.
I believe you must start by being a role model for strong personal values and purpose, as well as empathy for others, sustainable energy, and self-awareness. The next step is to effectively and continuously communicate through multiple channels, including walking-the-talk, email, and really listening to feedback. Be sure to encompass all your constituents, especially including customers. The behaviors that you need to incent for the right culture to flourish can be summarized by the following principles that I recommend you follow: Create and maintain a sense of energy and purpose. Many leaders do this today by supporting and promoting a higher-level purpose, beyond profits, such as helping the disadvantaged, sustaining the environment, or Conscious Capitalism. Remember that actions speak louder than words, and your evident leadership role is the key here. Whole Foods, for example, has built their business with a commitment to natural and organic foods, and have a culture of loyal employees and customers, resulting in 500 stores worldwide. As a result, they recently were acquired by Amazon for $13.5 billion. Team members must feel motivated and enabled. That means they must believe in what you are trying to do, and feel they have the right tools, training, and reward system to do the job that needs to be done. Your role is to provide this enablement, through listening to their needs, and providing personal coaching and mentoring as required. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, attributes much of his success to building a motivated and enabled team. He is always open to the ideas of his team, and even if he doesn't agree that an idea will work, he'll say so, but he often supports and funds it anyway. Always maintain the very best talent for your team. I find that many business leaders are "too busy" to focus on talent, so they hire interns, available family members, or the first candidate, without regard to talent, experience, or dedication. Of course, even the best talent needs communication, training, and support to create the culture you need. In my experience, a level of disagreement among highly talented team members is a sign of a healthy team culture, allowing a business to survive and win in this age of multiple disruptive trends. Sometimes the last thing you need are people who always say "yes." Foster collaboration rather than competition. With the financial constraints on every business today, it is easy to convince marketing and development that they are competing for resources, rather than working together to offer the best solutions for customers. Even within teams, the culture must be collaborative rather than win-lose. Relationships are key to happiness and productivity. This must start with you really getting to know your team members, as well as partners and customers, and letting them get to know you. You can then facilitate relationships between team members, as well as with people who can help. Everyone and your business will benefit from this culture. Celebrate every success to include the whole team. In addition to individual rewards and bonuses, take the time and effort to include all teams in a public recognition of even small successes, including failures that resulted in learning. This fosters a positive team culture, and communicates company values that are important for everyone. Commit to delivering a positive customer experience. You can't build a positive team culture, while taking obvious shortcuts on your solution quality or customer service. Stick with what you know best, and show your team how to do it better than anyone else. Your team culture will coalesce to support your direction and drive business success.
Today your team and company culture are more important than ever in driving strategy and value, not the other way around. With the Internet and social media, your culture is no longer just an internal thing, but extends broadly to customers, investors, and vendors. You are the key to all of these constituents working together to win, especially in an increasingly competitive world. Marty Zwilling *** First published on Inc.com on 4/5/2022 *** |
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