Key Human Resources Practices for Start-Ups

This is the second of a series of four blog posts highlighting key practices for successfully launching a start-up business.   Each of the four blog posts will tackle a different functional aspect of launching a start-up:  Finance, Human Resources, Operations and Marketing.

 

HUMAN RESOURCES 

Staying Lean but Balanced

Savvy start-up entrepreneurs try to go with lean staffing while they are still proving their business is viable, getting team members to cover multiple roles when possible.   In order for this to be successful, it is important for the entrepreneur to know:

— which tasks can be deferred,

— which can be economically outsourced, and

— which team members have the ability to take on assignments outside their normal area of functional expertise and still accomplish them with excellence.

 

If many key roles are outsourced then it is incumbent on the entrepreneur to facilitate exchange of  information among resources who don’t see each other in person as often as they would in a more traditional business organization.

 

Getting Everyone on the Same Page

In addition to getting the right mix of specialties there is also the matter of getting people with the right attitudes, who will contribute to the culture that the entrepreneur has in mind for his or her company, and who are in synch with the challenges of a start-up.

 

One of the challenges of working for a start-up is that there is typically not a lot of money available to pay contributors, so being “in synch” may mean being willing to work on some sort of deferred arrangement.    This becomes more compelling when the business has a product/mission that the team members believe in, when it is easy to envision the long-term potential success, and when the entrepreneur has traits that build the confidence of team members.

 

It helps if the entrepreneur is good at orchestrating the talents of sometimes extreme extrovert or introvert individuals. On the TV show Silicon Valley, the mythical company Pied Piper is headed by CEO and founder Richard Hendriks who manages to keep a steady hand on the helm despite his soft manner and the array of brilliant but sometimes childish employees: hardware specialist Gilfoyle, software specialist Dinesh, dry-witted Ehrlich, and sensitive Jared.   This show is clearly fiction but it mirrors my real life experience in this one way: the best leaders communicate their company culture through their actions and just a word of coaching here and there.