The problems I see most often in start ups are:

Not thinking through what success looks like.  Although painful, business failure is relatively easy to deal with because there is generally nothing left but the crying.  However, success leads to all kinds of issues particularly as it relates to multiple shareholders/ founders. I encourage every start up to sit with a lawyer to develop a shareholder’s agreement which is basically a prenup for business.  Don’t think you need it?  “In love” with your co-founders?  Ask Sir Paul McCartney what he thinks.

Not having clear roles.  Again, it is easy if you are a company of 1, but as you grow, it is important to be clear about who is responsible for what.  Who’s on first and What’s on second is a famous comedy skit that I have seen come to life in start ups.  Take the time to draw out a map of who owns which functions and then stick to it.  That doesn’t mean you can’t help out in another area, just that when you are in someone else’s area, you defer to their judgment.

Not having a method to make decisions.  In the beginning, whether the company is one fearless visionary or a team of co-founders who “complete each other”, thinking about disagreement and designating someone with final say or veto feels completely unnecessary.  However, over time and particularly as the business grows , there will be disagreement.  Hopefully it is healthy and constructive, but even then, someone needs to make the final call because consensus decision making is too slow.  The solution is to designate a team captain (CEO, head cheese, grand Pooh-Bah, etc.), early and plan out how you will disagree and still move forward with everyone paddling the same direction.  Establish your decision making method before you need it and you will save yourself time and pain in the future not to mention set your business up to succeed.

Dealing with these 3 issues in the beginning when you have the time and they are just solutions to conceptual problems takes the heat out of the process and keeps the discussion fairly impersonal and business like.  Yet another example of the adage:

an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

Any thoughts on start up challenges, please comment.

The Perfect Employee:

• never complains
• does a great job
• needs no training, feedback, recognition or wage increases
• always takes initiative
• doesn’t need downtime
• is team player
• never gets sick
• has no friends or family to distract them

Sounds great in theory, but I think you have as much chance of finding a real live person to be this employee as discovering a unicorn in your kitchen.  Saying that, a few of these qualities hit my top 10 list for what to look for when hiring so don’t throw out the baby with the bath.

I mean that quite literally since for many owners, your business is your baby.  You gave it life and if you are one of the 73% of businesses in Canada owned solely by a male it is likely the only baby you will ever give birth to.  You nurture it, bandaid it when it bleeds, show up for every competition, and coach, cheer, yell, and sweat over every goal, win, loss and report card.  You love it.  Why don’t your employees?

Much like our children, no one is ever going to love our business like we do (except perhaps another family member, but this is not a blog about family business).  It is hard not to take it personal, but when it comes to hiring, managing and motivating employees, the sooner you are okay that they don’t love your baby like you do, the sooner you will move on to the next best thing which is your employees care enough to give you what you pay for.

Wow, that is a loaded statement, but it is true nonetheless. You have to be the judge of whether or not you are getting good value for what you pay, but that is the right definition for a Perfect Employee.

• It is hard to discipline or fire a friend.  Not only is it difficult to take those actions, but you can probably kiss the friendship good bye.  That being the case, if you are tasked with making improvements to productivity, then don’t try to be a buddy at work.
• Employees want to work with someone they feel they know and trust and who cares about them and respects them, so you need to approach and be approachable.
• It can be difficult to be objective about a friend.  If there is risk of perceived favourtism (the larger the team, the greater the risk), beware of being too friendly.
• Employees know you are human, but sometimes they forget because you are the company representative to them.
• Your company (and various legislative bodies) will hold you to a higher standard than your employees, particularly when it comes to things like employee safety and security, harassment, what you do outside of work, etc.
• Managers have the greatest influence over their employees perception of the company, so the connection you make with your people becomes their reality of the company (with great power comes great responsibility).

Clear boundaries are important to becoming a successful manager.  Being friendly without crossing the line means:

• Greeting everyone by name as you come in and leave each day (yes you must know their names!),
• Taking time during breaks or when grabbing a coffee to stop and chat with a couple people here and there (and over the course of a week or month ensuring you have connected at least once with everyone),
• Going out after work for a drink (likely paying out of your own pocket), leaving after one and on your way out, reminding your team not to drink and drive and you will see them tomorrow “bright eyed and bushy tailed” (i.e., none the worse for wear).
• Catching people doing something good and Coaching when you see something not so good (no looking the other way and no jumping down their throats either).
• Living and working in a fashion that would make your grandmother proud if it made the newspapers. (Strangely, this seems to make it all clear in my mind, how about you?)

Please reply and share your story about the right mix of friendly.

1. Figure out what you are doing that could be handed off to one of your employees.  This could be a task, a project, or a responsibility.  Tip: Complete this sentence “Work would be better if I could find someone else to do …” and then take a hard look at what you said.  Assuming your answer was reasonable (i.e., not the heart of the job), then you can work towards delegating it.
2. Identify the standards and expectations for achievement as well as any parameters for the work.  It is important to be very clear on these because it is unfair to an employee to delegate a task and then get upset when it wasn’t done correctly. You can’t assume that because an employee has been with you a long time, he understands the right way to do things.  In fact, one of the beautiful things about delegating is your employee might come up with better ways and that is why if there is a reason you want something done a certain way, you have to explain that reason.
3. Consider which employee(s) would like the chance to take on more.  Perhaps you have had conversations about career development with your employees or maybe you have had your eye on someone who is always looking for more work.  Those are the ones to tap on the shoulder. In doing so, it is okay to be clear that taking on this task isn’t going to get them a raise, but rather it is a chance to prove themselves for future opportunities, e.g., promotions etc.
4. Arrange a time to meet with the employee to discuss hand off.  Be strategic about this as it is important to have time to discuss what you want to hand off, the standards of performance, as well as how or why you selected the employee to do it.  Employees will appreciate hearing you say you have faith in them and/or you heard their request for more career development and this new project or task is a step in the right direction.
5. Ask your employee if s/he will take responsibility for the activity and if s/he says yes, agree on deliverables and deadlines.
6. Agree with your employee on how to keep you informed of progress (to ease your mind and ensure the employee is successful) and how to ask questions.  Remember, just because you delegate the responsibility of doing the task, it doesn’t mean you hand off accountability for ensuring the task is done and done well.
7. Focus on your strategic tasks while the employee works on what you delegated but remain available and interested.
8. Don’t sweat the small stuff such as a different style of doing the work.  If the employee meets the standards and expectations for what success looks like while working within any parameters that were important to the business, the rest shouldn’t be important.

That’s delegation at LoveHR in a nutshell.  Is there anything you would add?

• Using your time wisely (i.e., enabling you to work on more strategic activities such as planning, organizing, streamlining, and removing roadblocks for your team),
• Challenging your employees to take on more difficult work,
• Developing your employees in preparation for career growth opportunities, and
• Building trust with your employees.

Implied in delegation is that the person who receives the opportunities to do the delegated tasks also becomes accountable to accomplish the tasks to the quality expected.  Thus, for a manager to effectively delegate, that manager must not only transfer responsibility for the task, but also communicate what success looks like.  Additionally, the employee must accept responsibility for the task and understand how to do it right.  Usually these two steps happen in tandem, but it is really important to understand that both need to happen for delegation to be successful.

The biggest reason cited for not delegating is that it takes longer to hand off the activity than it does to do it.  This makes sense since it is actually two steps and there is time associated with each.  While this complaint is often true (and logical) in the short term, you can’t let it ride in the long term because not delegating holds you back as much as it does the business and your employees.  If you are ready to start delegating, come back next week for a step by step on how to delegate.

What’s holding you back from delegating?

Have you ever hired someone who after a day or so you worry isn’t going to work out?

It happens.  No matter how carefully you select, sometimes people aren’t what they say they are (and sometimes the job and company aren’t quite what was sold to the employee either).

If you have spent a lot of effort in hiring, then starting over may not be very appealing.  Even if you have a second candidate you can easily call in, there is no guarantee that person won’t have worse problems.

In these times, I encourage you to think carefully about the root of the problem.  If it is a values issue (i.e., the employee doesn’t have the same values as your company), then cutting the cord early may be the best approach.  If it is lack of ability or skill, ask yourself if the person can learn it and if so how long will it take?  If it can’t be learned or would simply take too long to learn, then again, cut the cord sooner rather than later.

However, if the problem is the employee’s style of doing a task, take a breath because more times than not, the problems with the new hire resolve themselves once the new hire gets comfortable, gains confidence, and has time to practice meeting your standards and expectations.  You should definitely address the gap between your expectations and what is occurring.  A good approach is to discuss:

• Job standards and expectations (and the underlying reasons why they exist)
• Goals for the new hire, and
• Parameters to work within while achieving goals.

Once an employee can demonstrate understanding of those three points, then it is time to allow her natural talents and style to shine while she works towards a successful outcomes.  Your employee will appreciate your respect for her ideas and methods, and you might find you learn a new way to do the work in the bargain.

Good managers own what happens and doesn’t happen in their department.  That doesn’t mean they take all the credit in fact the best managers share or transfer the credit to their people, but take responsibility for what goes wrong as it happened ‘on their watch’.

Unfortunately, accountability isn’t easy to learn and if the conversations I have with owner operators are any indication, the lack of accountability in the workforce is practically an epidemic.

If you want to read a great book on accountability, check out The Oz Principle.  One of my favourite concepts in his book is the idea of operating under or over the line.  Under the line, you are not accountable and are living in blame, excuses and denial.  These are the people who say things like, “I know I promised, but I just ran out of time”, or “Operations dropped the ball and it delayed us all”, or the frustrating “That wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t told how to do it.”

Contrast that with accountable behaviours, i.e., above the line, and you have people who not only observe problems but seek opportunities to make improvements, take responsibility or ownership for those issues, figure out how to resolve the problem, and then implement, follow through and follow up to ensure the problem is resolved.  The Oz Principle calls this:

• See it
• Own it
• Solve it
• Do it

The secret of accountability is that there is no secret but it requires commitment and effort.  It can definitely be learned and must be practiced.

As a manager if you role model accountability and recognize and reward it when you see it in your employees, your people will learn accountability from you.  The best part of accountability is if your team practices accountability, you will find your team delivers on its promises.  Since a manager’s job is to get the team to deliver, accountability is one of the most important characteristics to cultivate.

Applicant tracking systems do a good job of establishing fit with the job, but typically don’t care about fit with culture, so there hasn’t been a way to escape the time investment required to hire.  This problem needed solving and over the last year or so, I have been working to develop a solution with the team at Fitabilitee.

Fitabilitee is an online tool that helps establish how well a candidate will fit in your company based on 6 criteria.  It is free to sign up for candidates and organizations and everyone who completes the registration process gets their own personal or organizational culture “horoscope” after doing the culture survey.

Fitabilitee only collects a $25 fee when organizations link a job posting through Fitabilitee.  Job postings linked to Fitabilitee request all applicants complete the survey to discover how well they match the company’s culture.  The company gets a summary of best fits and maps of how closely each candidate matches the culture. Your time in one interview is likely worth more than $25, so why not try it and save time focusing only on applicants who demonstrate a good fit with your company’s culture.

What have you got to lose?

• To receive respect, you have to give it. I often see new managers trying to do it all in order to prove themselves.  However, today’s employees want to be consulted and included and may have better suggestions than the manager particularly if they are experienced in the job, industry and/or company.  Inclusion and consultation are only a couple aspects of giving respect though.  You must also listen to your employees, care about them and build relationships with them, communicate with them, and value their time and knowledge.
• Respect doesn’t happen overnight.  It takes time and depending upon the collective memory of the people you are managing and how long it takes you to become effective as their manager, it can take a really long time.
• Respect like trust can be destroyed in an instant.  If you do things that make employees feel disrespected (e.g., micromanage, ignore, condescend, yell, gossip, backstab, etc.) you can erase any respect you have earned and poison the well of future respect.   By the way, your behaviour outside of work can affect how much respect you get at work as well, so be aware of how your actions and communications on your own time would be perceived by your team.
• Communicating and acting respectfully must be practised.  Look around at people who are respected and you may assume they were born that way or got lucky, but that is far from the truth.  People who are respected started practising at being respectful long ago so that it is second nature now.  While it is tough to hear that you have to work at it, the fact that it is possible learn means anyone can do it, especially you!  Ask people that know you well (and you trust) if there are any things you do that could be perceived as disrespectful (e.g., reflexive eye rolling, finishing people’s sentences, not making eye contact, interrupting, exaggerating, issuing orders, never saying thanks, bullying- the list could go on and on).  When you find something you do that isn’t respectful, define how you could do it respectfully and then practice until it becomes a habit.  Sometimes it helps to engage those people you trust in giving you feedback on how you are doing or identifying when you regress (in private of course).

Do you have any further comments on gaining respect in the workplace?  We’d love to hear them.

Benefits carriers are not all alike.  Like all industries, there is a lot of variation in style and philosophy to put it kindly. There are some I like to work with because they make decisions based on what is smart in the long term i.e., they care about the relationship with their clients- companies like yours! And, then there are others that have their noses so far up their shareholders butts that the almighty buck and getting the next sale take precedence over long term relationships with good customers.  They know it is a hassle to change benefits providers once you realize you have been scammed and you are usually locked in for at least a year anyway, so they figure the pain of switching in a year will outweigh the fact that they weren’t up front with you in the beginning.

One tactic of these providers is the “marketing discount” also known in my world as “buying” your business.  Beware, because once you have signed up and locked in, you will discover that the prices hurdle upward year over year. I am a capitalist so I am okay with prices going up because of inflation or because the going rate has gone up due to added value or as a function of supply and demand, but I can’t support prices going up simply because choices are limited (hope you are listening Rogers, Telus & Bell).

When it comes to benefits, good value means fair coverage at fair prices.   When researching providers, amongst all the other stuff you want to ask, ensure you get this question answered:

What is your track record of cost increases for clients year over year?

Ensure they can explain to your satisfaction why any significant increases have occurred by benefit they are quoting.  The good providers will and you don’t want to work with the bad ones anyway.

We’d love to hear from you on your benefits experiences.  Please comment.