What, how and who

0:03 Welcome to business purpose and clarity with petri I'm your host we talk about startup life insights practical tips mistakes failures and everything between done can we hire more people this is the topic today we talk about when it's time to hire and when you need to do something else when you're just a few people in the everybody does everything and you focus on the big pixel type of things making sure that the product works trying to find the product market fit pretty much that all the different in the company are somewhat operating a new building that's the focus and this mode is okay for a while you just take a few people everybody knows everybody communicates with everyone so the information.

1:07 Flow goes nicely you need to hire people who are more or all around us because there's just too much to do and you cannot specialize so you need people with the specs that are impossible it's hard to find those people who can do everything well when you're getting more customers or you're getting more investor money obviously you want to grow you need to do more stuff maybe the customers are demanding more and they are more customers or whatever it is what do you do but basically the thing is that you need to scale somewhat it's easy to start hiring more people copy paste the current mode the current roles and just duplicate it copy paste but there's a time when this actually doesn't make any sense anymore you're just starting to make the company.

2:15 There's just too many people you just cannot keep on doing the way you're doing those things people don't know everything the info information doesn't flow there's a lot of miscommunication repeated tasks reinvention of the same things something needs to give something is usually that you have to stop a bit and start to think is there a smarter way to do these things one could say that there's three phases or at least three phases when you're growing your company first you focus on the what the product what are we actually doing why we're doing it putting it together so that there's some offering you're selling and trying to figure that out and and find a market then there's another states where you already pretty much at least have an idea and know what you're doing and you have more people so then you have to start to.

3:18 Focus on the how how you deliver how do you do these how does everything function and and the final state so at least the third stage if it's not final is then who who are the people doing those things and if you're the ceo the founder first obviously you are involved with everything and you're pretty much there the person who who waves the what we're doing what we're doing and making sure that the company's mission is on track then the next stage is where you have to put your focus on the processes because processes you to scale to the next level you put those processes in place in order to hire more people more specialized people in order to make sure that the information flows also that there's more knowledge in those processes because previously the knowledge was in everybody's inboxes and in their heads.

4:23 And that works fine and there's a limited amount of people and everybody contributes and nobody leaves or gets sick or disappear but the reality is that you need more people you need to get them up to speed quickly you need to mobilize that intact which is invisible it's the know-how you have accumulated over time but it's not codified anywhere it's just the way we do things around losing that information you have to turn it into processes it sounds bureaucratic and boring but that's just how it is you need to make sure that everything functions and you are less dependent on any particular person and this means that if you had a certain roles before.

5:27 For certain tasks you need to pause and think is there actually a clever way to do can we do this completely different do we actually need this at all can we automate this thing what are the assumptions behind the things we're doing now and this oftentimes saves you a lot of time money and effort because you realize that hey we don't need to do this at all or we can automate this we can make it so much more quicker and faster we can use this way to do it which we couldn't do before because now we have this awesome platform or capabilities we didn't have before and this also allows you to redefine the roles in the company because it's hard to find those macriverse generalists who can do everything well now you can start to look for more specialized people talents who are really good at doing.

6:33 Which you couldn't do before because it was too expensive you just couldn't have too specialized people due to the fact that you only have a very limited amount of resources available and it was just too early to do that and this is the states the scaling which is really hard because it can creep in you just become frustrated as a leader because things are not working as they used to be people are not getting it don't get the output you desire to do with the company slows down you feel like a parrot talking all the time about the same they are reinventing the wheel they are talking about things you thought were resolved already year or two ago this is trust the nature of the it grows and nobody has the same knowledge as the.

7:34 People who were there before and the final states or the third stage is then the who states when your companies bigger you cannot anymore do the processes yourself or be involved with those you start to move the next level in your leadership and that's where you start to focus on the who who are the people who you can hire who can do those processes and go to the deeper level what you used to do before obviously it's always important to pick the right people and focus on the and all around fit for your organization but this is particularly the case which is like a twofold task first of all you have to realize that you have to back off a bit your role has changed you need to change.

8:38 You need to transform you have to let go and you have to allow other people to new people you're recruiting or those in the organization who are growing to that new role to take over and define and do those things for you.