Talent is the most expensive commodity in today’s business world, with the decentralization and increasingly remote nature of the global workspace, the rise and fall of businesses largely depend on their ability to attract, engage and retain quality talent. The story of the Fairchild traitorous eight is a vivid illustration of how ill talent management can reshape an entire industry. Personally, I’m motivated by the Paypal story – the possibility of working with an A-list team, who can individually lead and build corporations.
As a founder, I experience talent mobilization daily. I have had my fair share of losing great talent, mis-hiring, talent transformation, and unfortunately, letting talent go. Recently, I had a chat with a few friends about how I’ve managed the talent and I thought it might be helpful to other aspiring founders.
A little caveat before we deep dive – what I’m sharing are hacks that have worked for me and not a Midas touch. However, I’m optimistic that if properly studied and implemented they can help businesses improve their talent conundrum.
- The Commanders – In describing the successes and failures of organizations, we cannot underestimate the impacts of its founder(s) and/or CEO.
In leading organizations, I have experienced that the impact of top management (employees answerable to CEO/founder(s) directly) is critical because they translate the objectives of the business into actionable goals and assign drivers for each goal.
Personally, when hiring these sets of individuals, I look out for individuals with demonstrable levels of impact (Executors) within or without the job ecosystem, and who possess enough drive to learn in our fast-paced ecosystem. When these hirings are successful, I equip them with the required tools and give them sufficient autonomy – I do not micromanage. I recall when we started Vendease, I could tell you top-off my head the daily occurrences around the company but as we began to experience growth, we knew it was time to bring on-board commanders so that we could scale if at our desired rate. That singular decision to step back and watch other people nurture your baby has seen us experience exponential growth.
One example I have found interesting is Liverpool football club (I’m a Manchester United fan), when Fenway Sports Group (FSG) bought the club in 2010, they had one objective – do “whatever is necessary” to guide the Reds back to past glories. They hired a series (3) of managers and spent hundreds of million pounds on players like Christian Benteke, Andy Caroll, and Stewart Downing to name a few. Yet, the team was languishing between 8th – 12th positions (I was very happy). To re-write this trajectory the owners knew they needed a commander, someone with a demonstrable level of impact and a willingness to learn the FSG Way, they got that person in Jurgen Klopp and today the rest is history.I’m hoping Manchester United can do that with the recent hiring of Erik Ten Hag Sir, Alex Ferguson, Eric Schmidt, Steve Jobs, and Nelson Mandela are examples of how a commander can not only impact an organization but an entire industry.
- Unity of Command – In order to keep talent happy and engaged, they must have clear reporting lines and KPIs. However, talent will be frustrated when reporting lines are unclear.
Unity of command is a principle of management that provides a hierarchy of delegation. It ensures the responsibility of an employee is clearly laid out and the employee reports to only one supervisor. The employee’s responsibility is distributed by their supervisor and they are answerable to that specific supervisor. On the other hand, the supervisor is also answerable to another supervisor and that is how the unity of command is built.
In implementing this principle, I have noticed three things:
- Decision – knowing employees have requisite control, issues are addressed at the lower level of management by the supervisor or task owner at that level. This gives top management enough time to handle more complex issues of the organization.
- Ownership – enacting this principle also helps ensure responsibility in supervisory duties, the task owner or supervisor takes ownership/leadership of the task and is held responsible for any issues arising at that level of management.
- Management – the unity of command principle is incubatory where I have seen talent climb the corporate ladder.
3. Culture fit – When hiring talent, ascertaining, his/her culture fit is always my first point of call. No matter how good a person seems, if they’re not a culture fit, we do not hire them.. By culture, I mean the ethics, ethos, nuances, and guidelines of the organization. Culturally unfit employees are not just cost-intensive, their impacts can derail others, lead to loss of time, and ultimately retard the organization. In founding businesses, my co-founders and I have always spent ample time outlining the business culture and then sourcing talents that match. In fact, no one gets hired without interviewing with at least one of the co-founders for a culture fit.
A lot of organizations fail not because they had bad strategies, lacked funding, had incompetent employees, or had bad leadership, they failed because they allowed culturally unfit employees to erode their culture.. Personally, knowing that culture triumphs over strategy and funding have always kept me in check.
Finally, I believe that talent management is an ongoing concern and winning is not a zero-sum game. We can all win!
Co-founder and CPO of Vendease Africa.
