Starting a new business?

Three suggestions for a great take-off (and growth)!

It did not happen by choice but each time I joined a new company, I was in the midst

of early stages of a business taking shape. Each new assignment was like a whirlwind

that shook me left and right and threw me up and down. This was the way my career

looked to me till 3M happened. I embraced 3M with a full understanding that I was

joining a company to start a new business. I expected it to be one hell of roller coaster

ride with no guarantee of nuts and bolts keeping the coaster intact as I moved ahead.

So, when I set out to decide on topic for the inaugural post for this group (Business

10Xed, started today), without thinking much, I knew that I would like to write on

starting up a new business. The following notes talk about three most important

lessons I learned in last 8-10 years while setting up businesses. It includes thoughts

and ways of working of some amazing colleagues in 3M, Castrol and some start-up

founders in Bangalore. Since I wanted to elaborate on each of the three points, I have

broken this article into 3 parts. This write-up is first of the 3 parts. I really hope that

the group members will pick one or two good thoughts from the read.

So let’s get started -

1. Hiring

Hire Slow: The first instinct one has when starting a business is to hire people and that

too quickly. The obvious reason is to get things moving fast. Starting business, what

worked for me, unknowingly, was having few team members in the early stages of

business. Few means 3, including me, for almost 8 months. As I said “unknowingly”,

I realized much later that having few people on the team was best way attain critical

speed for takeoff

The smallness of the team made allocation of responsibility and outcome

unambiguous and ownership of deliverables high. However, despite allocation of

responsibility, several items were discussed by all three of us to decide the best way

forward. To bring more perspective to various issues, we would often bring in known

people from outside the business to attend some of our meetings (often from other

divisions of 3M,

occasionally from outside as

well). We would make them

the customer and ask them

to critique our strategy or

thought. Example, we would

get in the store design

agency people to play the

devil’s advocate for our

customer experience

strategy and share their

point of view. Or we would have people from other divisions within 3M to look at our

product portfolio and make holes in our product strategy. This mode of operation,

surprisingly, helped us discover facets of business that we were otherwise oblivious to

us.

First few hires, get it right: Strange as it may sound, it took me almost 4 months and

30 plus personal face to face interviews to hire the first person. The subsequent hires

were also a result of many candidates getting interviewed before the right one was

selected. The thought was that if the first few members are great, the subsequent hires

would also be well selected. It was like starting a virtuous cycle of good candidates

entering the system who would in turn select good people. This cycle could be put on

steroids by encouraging existing employees to bring in worthy candidates they knew.

In-fact this was my preferred way of selection since it greatly eliminated the risk of

getting in untested/ unknown people into the system. Once the business started

scaling, hiring moved a note ahead of the business growth.

Good business managers continue screening each candidate that gets added to the

team for a long time. Some great managers are known to go up-to personally

interviewing 500th employee in the company. In 2015, Google added 6000 people to

the company and each candidate was approved by Larry Page for hiring (which means

many were rejected as well). And approving did not mean pressing on the “approve

button”. As a process, each week, Page is sent a report with links to extensive review

packets on each recommended hire with accompanying executive summaries. Page

takes a look at the highlights of what each reviewer had to say about the candidate,

and checks the candidate's portfolio if necessary. He would then send back his final

approvals or denials within a few days.

Look outside: Another practice I have seen with good managers is that they do not

necessarily hire from the same industry. The belief is that people from the industry

come with fixed thoughts. They look for people who are quick learners and have an

urge to do something new. I look for people who have worked in diverse industries

and have had an upward trajectory in their

career. I also seek out people who are deep

into subject they like. A candidate I

interviewed once expressed his unending

love for everything in North/ South Pole. I

quizzed him for almost 15 minutes on the

subject and the passion and knowledge he

displayed was outstanding (from him I came to know that a polar bear can often grow

to as long as 8 ft. and weigh equal to the weight of 7-8 average men). He worked for

about 14 months in my team. During the period he added tremendous value and then

quit to start his own venture. I was not surprised at all.*

An “average” hire amongst the first few employees can be debilitating for the

business. The work people do in early stages of business is so critical that people need

to throw themselves into the thinking process – heart, soul and mind! Anything short

of this can make a company die over time. Good managers spend a very large amount

of their time in hiring and retaining good people. With each good hire, they ensure

that they will have more time to do other thigs rather than handholding the people

hired. They build an echo system that has a bunch of highly self-charged people who

act as magnets for future hires.

‘ * This Poles enthusiast, started a company that conducts excursions to Leh –Ladhak.

I am sure he has expansion plans for opening a branch office in North/ South pole as

well

Take a dive!