Take These Three Steps to Build Your Team
Great
entrepreneurs don't just create great products. They create meaningful
organizations that give people the opportunity to succeed as well.
BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN
The best serial entrepreneurs - contrary to
most of what you read or the junk you see on the big and little screens -
aren't drug-fueled drunks, or one-shot wonders like Travis Kalanick and Adam
Neumann. Nor are they the manipulative, insecure and power-hungry
assholes in financial porn shows like Billions or Succession who
treat their people like disposable cogs, punching bags, or worse. The most
successful business builders invest in and build their people right alongside
their businesses because they know that, if their people aren't growing,
there's little or no chance that their companies will.
A different and better world can't be built by
indifferent people.
If there's a drug that drives the true
creators of new businesses and sustains lasting innovation and real change,
it's not heroin, it's hope. The best leaders are hope dealers; they're always
willing to bet on the best in people; and it's their commitment, passion and
enthusiasm that makes their hopes contagious. Not surprisingly, when you sit
them down and ask them what the absolutely most important and satisfying part
of their job is, they all say the same three words: bringing others along.
Hope combined with help is quite a heady brew. We ultimately succeed by making
others successful.
Now I realize this isn't quite the kind of
pithy phrase that commands the fleeting and fractured attention of the next few
generations of entrepreneurs, but the words speak clearly and directly to the
folks who've been there and who have repeatedly done precisely what they
describe. People don't sign up for slogans anyway, they don't commit to
companies or institutions these days (if they ever did), they commit to other
people. But only once they're convinced that those people are equally committed
to them. And then, they'll eat glass and walk through walls to get the job done
- whatever it is and however tough it may be.
Ask anyone who's lived through the ups and
downs of a startup, whether successful or not, and they'll have a million
stories to tell you about what they went through - together. How they
shared a dream and tried to make it real. How they reached back constantly to
pull others along with them to share in their own joy and excitement, to seize
the moments that might not ever come again. How they collectively built a
vision, a culture, and a team that was as much of a family and a part of their
very beings as any of their spouses, kids or other blood relatives.
The veterans of the adventure almost never talk
about the money they made or lost, or about the stress, loneliness and
heartaches that were part of the process. Rather, they will always tell you how
their leaders treated them and made them feel that they were part of something
bigger than themselves. No one ever forgets how you made them feel. Often, it
was bigger and better than they felt about themselves. They weren't simply
accepted, they were expected: to learn, to grow, and to become what they
were capable of becoming and not to settle for anything less than the best they
could be.
Entrepreneurs set out to accomplish many
things but leaving people better than they were when they found them - inside
and outside of their companies - is always high on the list for the true
believers.
With half the working world still remote, such
a task is going to be harder than ever. Yet you have to meet and reach your
people wherever they are before you can start the process of helping them get
to where you want them to be. In these frantic times, even the smartest HR
people can lose sight of the need to invest the time and energy required to
educate and mentor the key members of the team - especially the newbies - in
the company's culture, commitments, strategy and ethics.
Given a world full of chaos, the temptation is
to focus all the energy and emphasis on getting things moving again, putting
out the everyday fires and addressing the latest crises. But you risk losing
sight of how important it is to keep building your company's people advantage, which
is going to be so crucial for your long-term success. Don't let the
"urgent" stuff eat up all the time and space needed to deal with the
"important" matters as well. Your people will ultimately make the
dream come true, but only if you invest the time and give them the tools and
the attention needed to get them ready for the job.
There are three critical steps you need to
take to get the ball rolling in the right direction.
(1) Make the time
during working hours to do the conversations right.
These "talks" can't be some quick
watercooler check-in or a chat over evening drinks in some crowded bar. It's a
much more important conversation than that and committing "real" time
to it is the only way to send the right message. In fact, schedule two sessions
at a time because continuity and regularity are also critical. This is a solid
and serious slice of time carved out of calendars that's treated just as
importantly as any other event, meeting or commitment. It's not a favor or a
function or a checkbox item and it's also not a gift, obligation or
transaction. It's a sincere effort - first and foremost - to make an emotional
connection with someone you actually care about and whose future at the company
is important to both of you. And finally, this is one-on-one. Don't plan on
bringing a friend.
(2) Clear the table and
start from scratch.
The first meeting or two needs to be
agenda-less. If anyone walks into the session with a list - good news,
accomplishments, grievances, financial issues-- the whole process is off to a
really poor start. This is not a review or gripe session and there's no real
end point, immediate goal or clear objective. Those concepts are too narrow,
too directive, and too concrete. And largely beside the point. No one comes to
work to do a decent job. This conversation needs to be, at least initially,
about dreams, desires, and aspirations and not about means and ends. It's more
about why you come to work at all rather than anything you do at work. Purpose
and values are foundational elements of the talk.
(3) Talk about the person,
not policies, processes, or office politics.
Younger workers today bring their whole selves
to work. Honestly, I'm not exactly sure what that even means, but I do know
that when people come to work, they need to be connected to a vision...not just
a story...but a vision of how their efforts will make an important difference.
They take it very personally and, even before the pandemic, the distance
between their work lives and the rest of their lives was continually shrinking.
How each and every employee feels about their work has a great deal to do with
their own self-worth and also how they view and describe themselves to their
peers and others. The talk needs to be in a safe space and the topics are tough
and emotional by definition.
These are "new" collar workers, and
they require a much larger and serious investment on management's part in
addressing touchy-feely areas which - given all the accompanying sensitivities,
trigger points, and other woke issues - can be seen by older, more senior,
leaders as fraught minefields. Their own caution and anxiety lead to a tendency
to try to objectify the conversation and talk about policies, rules, and
regulations as a shelter and respite from the harder and more emotional
conversations. But that doesn't work. You can't phone this stuff in and if
you're not equipped to get down and dirty and to the heart of the matter, you
won't succeed in building the critical connections you're seeking.
But, far more costly than simply failing to
connect with your newer team members is the high likelihood that, if you miss
the boat and don't start acting now, you'll be spending the next couple of
years looking at tons of turnover, workers walking around with "whatever"
attitudes, and a business that's barely keeping its head above water
as the continuing waves of the Great Resignation wash over us all. It's not a
vision of the kind of future or business that any serious entrepreneur is
seeking.
MAR 8, 2022
The
opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of
Inc.com.