As organizational advisors, we regularly help entrepreneurs achieve growth and improve the scalability of their organization. Because we want to share our knowledge about effective growth, we started this article series about the 6 focus areas for effective growth among scaleups. In this article, we will elaborate on the fourth focus area: 'The People'. We are talking about this area of focus Paul van Bekkum, one of the founders of Summiteers.

‍

The 6 focus areas for effective growth

In our previous article of this series, we told you how to make a plan for growth as a scaleup, how to improve your core processes and quickly transfer them to new people and about how you can change your organisational structure and consultation structure as you grow. In this article, we will discuss perhaps the most important area of focus: 'The People'.

It's no coincidence that the growth of scaleups is often expressed in terms of growth in people, because the people in your organization literally make growth possible. That's why it's so important that your scaleup is able to attract and retain the right people. As a founder, you have another important task: to keep a close eye on whether everyone is still in the right place, including yourself! In this article, you will find a number of tools for this, as well as tips for maintaining the (transparent) culture.

Within a scaleup, there are quite a few drastic changes for people who can act on growth. The company is going from adventurous pioneering to increasingly standardization, your role as founder often changes from a product developer to a management role, your first employees (who are often adventurous generalists) face more and more specialized work, and your corporate culture changes if you don't consciously maintain it. And that can cause quite a bit of friction and confrontational conversations!

If only we could grow while maintaining the informal atmosphere of freedom and experimentation, Summiteers often hear. “But running a five-man company like you're running a 50-man company is almost impossible. As you grow, so does your role as founder. You have to accept that,” says Paul.

‍

How your role as founder is changing

Perhaps the most discussed topic during our sessions is the role of the founder. Many founders have all kinds of pressing questions. What is expected of me now? Do people feel more distant from me than before? What do I need to do to be a good manager? Do I actually still like this new role? And that is absolutely right. “Such a startup phase of a company often gives a lot of freedom,” says Paul. “That's where all these phrases come from: pioneers, cowboys, trying something different every day. All things you associate with freedom and adventure.”

The moment you have a growing organization with many more people, the type of work you do suddenly requires much more rigidity, discipline, and management. In the beginning, everyone sits together, you will be involved in everything and there is a good chance that things will go the way you want. Now there are new people regularly, so you have to keep repeating where you want to go. You may be thinking, “I've told you this at least three times, right? Isn't that enough?” Repetitions are still part of the game, although it certainly helps to organize smartly and set standards that allow people to test the right decisions for themselves. Unfortunately, even though that's often not fun at all, you have to talk to people about that as a manager. “And before you speak to people, you should first think: hey, but did I actually make it clear to those people what I expect from them?” adds Paul.

In short, the job of a founder often changes dramatically. And that is exactly why we see these people starting to ask themselves: do I like this?

In each new phase of your business, it therefore makes sense to ask yourself the following things:

1. How does my role change now that my environment expects something different from me?
2. Do I know what it takes for me to meet that new role or expectation?
3. Now that I have a good idea of what the role entails, do I still want that role?

If the answer is' no ', there are of course a number of alternatives. What you often see is that scaleups bring in an experienced CEO or COO at a certain tipping point and remain involved in research & development themselves. Sometimes founders sell part of the company, or they leave, or you see that there is a disagreement between founders at that moment because some are doing better than the other. Take, for example, the series: 'The Playlist' about the rise of Spotify. This series beautifully illustrates the recognisable phases from startup to corporate.

Although Paul still finds his role as founder and manager at Summiteers really fun and challenging, he also had a number of things going on. Especially when it comes to self-awareness. “What I sometimes find difficult is that I am often completely unaware that I am seen as one of the managers,” says Paul. “For example, you need to be extra aware of the weight of your words as a manager. You are 'the boss' whose comments and suggestions sometimes weigh more heavily on employees. What I often see with other scaleups, for example, is that a founder has an idea and immediately shares it with a group out of enthusiasm. He often means that as: this is just an idea. Think about it and if you don't like it, you won't do anything with it, but that group thinks they've had an assignment to do something. That can lead to a lot of unrest.”

‍

Retaining the right people

Just as founders wonder what it means to them when the company grows, so do employees. Sometimes people want to leave because they no longer recognize the company or growth requires something from them that they are not suitable for or do not get energy from. Partly for this reason, many scaleups ask themselves the question: how do we become an attractive employer that talent wants to keep working for?

“I would especially recommend that everyone see the growth of your company as a means to give people a nice job and a nice life,” says Paul. “If you look at it that way, you're also going to make choices in that light. If you start seeing the people themselves as tools, things will ultimately go wrong.”

Let's start by saying that retaining people should definitely not become an end in itself. For example, you often see that the ambitious people who started such a company are used to an incredible amount of freedom and a broad 'span of control'. When a company grows, this sometimes leads to more specialization, and that does not always make it more fun for those people.

So some people end up in a specialty and don't like it, but on the other hand, it just gives some people such a challenging job that they can't keep up either. For example, a CEO of a scaleup told us that it is difficult to hire someone now on the competencies they should have in 1-2 years (after strong growth)!

Anyway, you have to talk to your people about it, you have to guide them and finally accept what the outcome is. “In our view, someone's happiness in life comes first. So if another job makes someone happier, break up in a pleasant way and make sure they leave as ambassadors. There's nothing wrong with that,” says Paul. You shouldn't keep talent in at all costs.

‍

Attracting the right people

When you are growing fast, it is important that you are able to attract enough suitable people. If you are through the startup phase and are growing well, you will undoubtedly have the right 'vibe' in terms of culture, but in general, we see that people will work at a scaleup because they feel a strong drive and motivation for what the company stands for, the culture, the people and/or the impact you make as an organization. “What I've definitely noticed about the generation we're working with now is that they want to work for a company - to use the terrible word - with a 'purpose'. They want to know: what do I get out of bed for now? That's also the case with us,” says Paul. So you have to explain very well what your contribution to the world is. By the way, that doesn't have to be pompous at all. For example, we have the internal slogan “doing fun things with nice people”. In light of this, it is logical that we focus much more on job satisfaction, personal development and challenging assignments than on the number of hours someone works.

In a broader sense, when it comes to culture, it is important that you really pay attention to people and to people's development. Even if you can't (anymore) do it all yourself. “As intensively as I spoke and worked with my first employees, I simply can't do that intensively anymore. I can't welcome or take everyone by the hand so extensively anymore. So we made sure that there are other colleagues who take over these tasks. We've created a process for that,” says Paul.

This way, you can maintain all kinds of things that are important to your culture by continuing to organize things together as the group grows. It may soon be time for an HR person or department, but that doesn't have to be necessary. At Summiteers, these tasks are still divided among various consultants and, for example, we specifically have someone who is about “employer happiness” (in addition to her job as an advisor)”. In addition, it doesn't hurt to instruct someone to monitor whether the group's salary and remuneration are in balance. In the beginning, there is little attention to whether everyone is paid according to the value they generate and pay per hire is considered. If you don't do that properly, it can also really ruin your culture.

What you can also play a major role in as a manager is maintaining a flat organizational culture and transparency. According to Paul, that's in the little things. “I'm immediately thinking about all the ways I could do that better. That also has to do with air in the agenda, but what works very well for us is to keep working among your people. What my colleague does very consistently, for example, is working in a different place every day. And that's why he does that. Of course, as partners, there are things that we should discuss with the three of us, but we often do that in between in a separate room in the building. But we want to create as open and transparent an atmosphere as possible out there. So we're not going to set up a management office or pull the curtains down,” says Paul.

Of course, company culture isn't everything people are attracted to. Make no mistake: fringe benefits are still a top three decisive factor for applicants. Therefore, compare your secondary employment conditions carefully with other companies so that you know when you are seen as an attractive employer by applicants in your market. For example, we found it important to already make a pension plan for our first employees. In addition, think about how you can onboard people properly, offer them a career path and, above all, ensure that people can continue to develop internally. And that is also possible without making an extensive HR policy document!

‍

Want to know more about the challenges of effective growth?

In our next articles, we will discuss the other two areas of focus in order to grow effectively. In the next edition, you'll read more about 'The Cockpit', where we'll tell you how to measure whether you're on the right track and how to use people-oriented KPIs to make sure you measure what (in any case, in our opinion) is really important.

The six-part model that this article series is based on results from the scale-up organization scan developed by Summiteers. The scale-up organization scan helps companies to zoom out, quickly identify possible pain points and reveal any noise between founders and the organization. If you want to exchange views on your challenges to grow effectively or explore whether the organization scan is interesting for you, please contact Paul whether Casper.

Of course, you can also get in touch with us via LinkedIn and our website.