From Start-up to Scale-up, and how a Chief People Officer gets you there

Learnings of a rocketship Start-up Chief People Officer.

There are many ways to tempt the otherwise sane professional to join a start-up. The runaway successes of companies like Netflix, Uber, WeWork and AirBnB help drive the trend to become the ‘Amazon of whatever’.

Whilst only mega failures hit the headlines, most Start-ups become another line on a CV and chillingly a greyed-out logo on LinkedIn. Perhaps all job profiles should come with a disclaimer stating that (according to Forbes.com) 90% of Start-ups fail, and 42% of those failures are due to a ‘Lack of market need’.

Hence the first and easiest learning is: A great idea without great execution leads to failure every time.

So much time and money can be wasted by failing to plan a commercial strategy or even validate what customers will pay for.  Is this a People Ops problem?

It depends. Commercial strategy, product roadmaps and customer engagement all form part of the scope of what a Chief People Officer is responsible for building, and they are one of the few people in the business who have a truly holistic view of how the whole business including how it can be built, scaled and organised to avoid problems and bottlenecks. Before agreeing to hiring plans, a good Chief People Officer needs to probe them and ask lots of how and why questions.

Second learning: People buy Mission and Vision, and those that don’t still need direction. 

North Star Metrics are important, but they aren’t the reason people turn up each day. You will get more out of people, for longer if they have a purpose. Make it clear, aspirational and ever-evolving (just not every month!). If leadership can’t articulate simply the ‘Why’, then neither will the sales team. With trust, shared purpose and clear objectives, amazing things can happen.

Third learning: People want to see leadership, get feedback and be listened to.

If managers aren’t having regular face-to-face catchups. There is no need for formality, a weekly call or better a quick coffee can unblock tasks, remotivate and provide an outlet for ideas. (Spoiler: The next ideas don’t all come from leadership!)

Fourth learning: Long-term (hiring) plans are pure vanity.

Especially when you haven’t hit PMF, start with the next 3 months. Every hire will change the business, every departure will alter the hiring needs. Planning 12 months or more ahead doesn’t work and sometimes leads to hiring in advance of a job being available, which inevitably ends quickly and badly.

Fifth learning: Internal comms are more important than external comms.

Staff want to know what’s going on. Why? Think back to the promises you made about joining your start-up. Your staff are more invested than those at larger companies (sometimes literally) and deserve to know who’s leaving, how sales are going, will there be a pension scheme or the mystical/mythical share options scheme promised. If you don’t provide information, the ‘grapevine of misinformation’ will. 

Sixth learning: Celebrate small wins, especially when there are no big wins.

Breed a winning mentality and a culture that gets used to achieving, and one where teams don’t want to let down others. Plus, it can be hard to maintain a positive environment without good news occasionally.

Learning: Get your teams out of the office.

It’s good to have a break from the ‘business as usual’ with the advantage of creating even more ideas and innovation. Get staff to as many seminars, conferences, meetups and social events as possible. Getting them to deliver learnings back to their teams is a complete win on so many levels.

 Learning: Take the organisation’s pulse constantly.

Look out for negative trends in your engagement analytics and consider communications that will affect them quickly. If you wait too long to act, it will be too late, people will leave. Quarterly engagement surveys are no good for Start-ups, in 3 months anything could happen!