I was thinking about the challenges that come with growing a startup and in my opinion it all comes down to two things:
- Leadership
- Getting (the right) Things Done
I know you’ve heard about this power couple before, but maybe not the part of the equation that is often left unsaid — engagement. Without it, you can lead all you want, but it’s not really leadership because no one is following you. And if no one is following you, you’re going to have to do everything yourself. Which definitely Does. Not. Scale.
In general, I think we talk a lot about startup challenges associated with getting things done:
- What should we do and when? (strategy)
- How should we do it? (implementation)
- Doing it. (process)
- How can we do it better and faster? (iteration)
But you hear a lot less about:
- How do we get empower and engage people as we grow so the things get done?
- Internal communication
- Hiring and on boarding
- Creating new functions
- Knowledge institutionalization
- Rewards and recognition
This is paramount to success. And the only way to make it happen is Leadership. But developing leadership sounds kind of soft. And it doesn’t directly impact growth like sales or product development. So in startup land, I think it often gets set aside or lost.
And then the company has a major inflection point (a nice way of saying an “Oh s#*t meltdown”) at 20 or 50 or 100 employees and things come to a grinding halt. And none of the (right) things are getting done. And then everyone starts screaming about leadership. And the leaders are going “huh?” “I was just doing the things. Why isn’t it still working?” And there’s a major slow down while this gets worked out and the company designs a new normal.
Why not bake leadership in from the beginning?
Instead of prioritizing whether the CEO or team has the grit and tenacity to get things done, perhaps we should also ask if they have the leadership skills to empower other people to get things done in a sustainable manner. (I’m going to go out on a limb and say that having meltdowns and coercing people is not sustainable.)
Unfortunately, we–as a startup community and especially women–are not flush in startup leadership role models. So the only way to do it is through introspection, trial and feedback. We need to discover the types of leadership that work for us and for the people that work with us. But the reality is that at a startup we can’t do that independently of Getting Things Done. So we have to do it simultaneously. Bottom line? It may take some A/B testing before we figure it all out. And that’s ok. I think we can all agree that small setbacks are preferable to grinding halt.
I believe engaged employees are the single-most powerful competitive advantage you can maintain over time. Because even if you have a world-changing idea and a huge amount of passion, over the long haul you have to keep people committed and excited about doing things. And not just the easy things. The important things. The hard things. The things that if they happen on a regular basis are the ones that lead to success.
