Are you joining a start-up after a long career in a BIG Corporate?
The tech entrepreneurs of India who are in an exciting phase of growth are importing talent from the established IT/ITES sectors and MNC arms in India. It is important for those joining these start-ups to realize that they will have to change a lot more than they will change these companies.
The start-ups are getting bigger and are attracting leadership talent from the IT/ITES firms and the MNCs (multi-national companies) with mixed results. In their early years, the start-up companies thrive being the “insurgent”. Most of them want to create a culture which positions them away from the established IT/ITES companies and the multi-national companies (MNCs) who have their operations in India. This positioning serves them well. It helps them to attract the disillusioned talent from these companies as well as hire top candidates from good colleges. But as they grow, their revenue grows faster than the management talent. The investors become more active and want some “adult supervision”. This invariably leads to hiring senior people from outside – from the same places where the start-ups don’t want to import the culture.
As this management talent leaves their home cultures and move into these new age companies, there are few established corporate beliefs they should leave behind or adapt to fit in the new environment.
1. Empowerment for results vs. Inspection for behaviour
If you ask any good leader in the corporate world what their leadership style is and the answer invariably will have the word “empowerment”. But it doesn’t work in the new world they walk into. In most cases, the KPMs (key performance measures) are not well established, the accountability is shared, and hence inspection is extremely important for successful execution. The shared ownership of results will force the leadership to differentiate people based on effort and attitude. It is an uncomfortable place to be for the corporate types who thrive on objective based management and they will need a strong inspection based management style – roll-up your sleeves or perish.
2. Balancing systems/processes vs. Heroes
Start-up companies are built on heroics, people making things happen against all odds. Systems and processes intimidate them. These heroes will kill any attempt from outside hires to create these systems and the collateral damage will be the credibility of the new-hire as well. Better success can be achieved if the heroes themselves bring about the change. It will be incremental and slower than desired. It will call for an “invisible leadership” style where the new leader needs to stand behind the loyal soldiers.
3. Governance rituals which allows for both speed and scale.
The management rituals around forecasting, planning and performance management are designed in the big companies to manage scale. The calendared meetings and templates drive predictability. Predictability is the least valued commodity in the start-up world. Those rituals need to be adapted for speed. For e.g., a weekly performance review should be done in daily five minute calls. Asynchronous conversations will have to replace formal reviews.
4. Inorganic talent growth – balancing loyalty vs. novelty
The first reaction from the new leaders from outside will be to hire talent. The chaos they see will scare them to hire quickly. The first place they will turn to hire are places where they came from which will be met with disaster. If they have to hire outside talent, they should look for companies which are small but in unrelated industries and hire for fitment to behaviour rather than skills and experience. More importantly they should make the loyalists own the new hires and ease them into the environment.
5. Urgent is sexier – make important initiatives into urgent tasks.
The work-life balance mindset in the corporate world can’t deal with too many urgent things. The start-up world thrives on dealing with a lot of urgent issues. The heroes love their mid-night calls and week-end offsites. Rather than trying to change the quantum of urgent issues, the better answer lies in making the important initiatives into smaller tasks and make them urgent. For example Instead of coming up with a big talent development initiative with multi-quarter plan, the new leader should put an easy to implement performance review process first in a week, on-boarding process in two weeks etc.
The new leaders should walk into these start-ups with a sense of gratitude and a strong appreciation of the context they will operate in and leave behind their resume. It might be a stressful honeymoon but will result in a very happy marriage.
Source:linkedin.com