This post may be reduced to the max: Hire better than yourself.
A startup is like an extreme sports crew doing team bungy jumping in the morning, some swamp soccer for lunch and a bit of high-risk river rafting in the afternoon to get clean again.
Do it alone? No chance.
To succeed you’d better be a good team. A really good team, actually. Your survival depends on your teammates. So you better select your teammates carefully. And ideally they are better than you. Because the moment you jump, you want to be sure that your mates fixed the bungee rope well; because your teammate may mark the goal that you missed; because with your power subsiding, they may still plough the river’s rapids.
Obvious truths you chip in?
Yes, and yet I observed quite a number of organizations behaving quite differently indeed.
A startup experience is a roller-coaster ride of failure and success, of sensations and passion, a mix of persistence and perseverance. Simply, intense emotions. It’s fun, it’s tough, it’s rough, it’s highly rewarding. Who do you want to have with you on that journey?
Guy Kawasaki, a renowned entrepreneur, puts it this way:
“In the Macintosh Division, we had a saying, “A player hire A players; B players hire C players”--meaning that great people hire great people. On the other hand, mediocre people hire candidates who are not as good as they are, so they can feel superior to them. (If you start down this slippery slope, you'll soon end up with Z players; this is called The Bozo Explosion. It is followed by The Layoff.) I have come to believe that we were wrong--A players hire A+ players, not merely A players. It takes self-confidence and self-awareness, but it's the only way to build a great team.”
It’s a bit like recruiting a squad of first-rate people and get them to do serious stuff. It’s a bit like selecting and training a football team. The selection of who’s in is essential. Yet, the quality of the players is a necessary but not sufficient pre-condition. It requires hard training to get to the top league and remain there.
At a recent event we were asked how we did it. There is not a single answer. Rather a collection of bits and pieces that form our experience.
Most recruitment talks last about an hour. The interviewer and the interviewee talk about the latter’s CV and the future job. Both sides have a strong incentive to cheat. The employer tries to paint the future job as interesting, full of opportunities, full of promise, full of perspectives. The job applicant portrays his past accomplishments in a jubilant tone.
This is mumbo jumbo talk, an unaccommodating palaver. Both sides are not much better than a greasy backyard car dealer. And worse to come, quite often an offer is made without any further clarifications or any further talks to future co-workers. No wonder that this turns sour quickly.
First observation: Get recruiting right.
Recruiting is like a blind date. Before the date, i.e. the job interview, both sides often know as much about each other as two hormone driven singles on the way to their first date: A basic profile, i.e. CV, a couple of E-Mails, a brief instant messaging chat. And dating experience shows: It’s a bad idea to commit with your brain sedated by a couple of gin tonics. The chance to upgrade to the next level is minuscule.
Recruiting needs time. Lot’s of it: Several rounds of interviews are our norm, calling up references, serious discussions with all involved, and sufficient time to let the decision mature before even entering into contract negotiations. Both sides want to be sure that it is a fit. Once you are committed, though, you should act decisively and proceed swiftly to get your new employee on board.
This upfront investment may sound expensive. Yet, any dismissal and subsequent re-hiring are way more expensive.
Once your new colleague is joining the ranks, you must make sure he or she is integrated quickly and thoroughly into the team.
Second observation: Get the assimilation right.
Quite often your first day is nice: Some flowers on your table, a brief meeting with your new boss, an even briefer encounter with your bosses boss. The secretary – nowadays lovingly referred to as office manager – walks you around. Later you sit in your cubicle, a white page with your IT credentials in front of you and you don’t know what to do. You feel left out. Over there you hear an intense discussion, here somebody passing, nodding in your direction yet not stopping, your first assignment (read the company manuals) completed and no other assignments in sight. A growing feeling of frustration sets in.
A company is more than its products. It’s an essential set of values, of believes, of rules and process. How on earth can you let that pour soul alone?! Sure most companies offer newcomer training, some get-together. But that’s it. By far not enough to pass on the company essentials.
How to do it differently? Do all of the above plus much more: Do assign someone from the team as mentor and make him accountable for a successful assimilation program, do regular meetings with all involved, create follow-up course, go to an off-site meeting, etc. etc. Basically invest time.
I call it the bow wave recruitment process: We willingly invest upfront seemingly unreasonable amounts of time for hiring and assimilation. The alternative: jigsaw recruitment. You save a few hours and bucks upfront, but you pay dearly later: People quitting, re-hiring, and so on.
Figure 1 - Bow wave versus jigsaw recruitment strategy
In concluding, it’s like forming and sustaining a wining football team: The player selection is essential; the continuous training is as essential. You have a bunch of stars (Get rid of those that just think they are stars). Now get them to play well: The coach recognizes the specific talents of each team member, and should be able to tease out the very best of each of them and in combination between them. The main question is: How to contribute to a compact, dependable, focused and hungry team? How can we get the very best out of each other? How can we surpass ourselves and do that bungee jump, master these dangerous river rapids, and score that unscorable goal.
Next in the series how to build a scalable startup: Rule #1.
Phongsak Yuhun is lecturer in Departement of Agricultural Science at a University in Thailanda and an avid Memonic user. We recently had the chance to talk to him and ask him, well, three questions:
Helene works as web designer and developer and writes about her discoveries, thoughts and much more on 
Joel is a software developer at 
Joel: I would compare : the capturing tool to the kitchenware the items to the recipes to use again and again the sharing collections to inviting friends for tasting your dishes the items editing to your the own touch you add to given recipes the items organizations to our freedom of mixing dishes the mobile access to.... ok that's harder... so I guess this is what's different with cooking. There's no app for using your mobile phone as a stove. Not yet.
