Do You Still Have the Right People as Your Business Grows?
When a business grows, it's natural to focus on what needs to be added: more customers, more capacity, more employees and perhaps another layer of management.
It's just as important to look at the team you already have.
The people who helped a business get from 12 employees to 25 may be exactly the people who can help take it to 40 and beyond. But that shouldn't be assumed. As the business changes, roles naturally change with it. Managers will take on more responsibility, employees need different skills to succeed, and the informal ways of working that were manageable with a small team become increasingly harder to sustain.
That means periodically asking a question that isn't always easy:
Do we have the right people, with the right skills, for where the business is going next?
We talked about this during our recent Scaling Almost Broke Us webinar, where we looked at the same growing company from the People, Finance and Operations perspectives. One of the people issues we discussed was the importance of looking at both an employee's productivity and how well their behavior aligns with the values of the organization.
Productivity only tells you part of the story
When Jackie works through this with business owners, there are four broad combinations to consider.
The easiest is the employee who is highly productive and aligned with your values. These are your A players. They perform well, contribute positively to the organization and are the people you want to retain and develop.
Then there are people who are aligned with the values but aren't delivering the level of productivity you need. In the webinar, Jackie referred to these employees as “puppies.” They want to do the right thing and may be a good cultural fit, but something isn't working on the performance side.
That calls for a closer look. Do they need training? Are expectations clear? Do they have the skills the role now requires? Are they in the right seat?
The most difficult group can be the people who are highly productive but don't align with the company's values. Jackie used the deliberately provocative term “terrorists” for this group during the discussion.
They're difficult precisely because they get results.
It can be tempting to overlook poor behavior when someone is your highest salesperson, manages an important account or delivers numbers that seem difficult to replace. But their individual productivity doesn't show you what may be happening around them.
Are other employees spending time managing the fallout from their behavior? Are good people becoming frustrated? Is the manager reluctant to challenge them because of the results they produce? Are you effectively telling the rest of the team that values matter only until they interfere with someone's numbers?
Those are business issues, not simply culture issues.
The final group - low productivity and poor values alignment - tends to point to a much clearer decision.
The point of the framework isn't to put permanent labels on employee, but to stop looking at performance in isolation.
The people who got you here may need to grow with the business
This becomes particularly important in companies that have grown quickly.
Small businesses often build their early teams through relationships. Someone the owner knows comes in to help with sales. Maybe a friend takes on an operational role and a trusted employee becomes a manager because the company needs someone to step up.
Those decisions can make perfect sense at that stage of the business.
But a role at 40 employees may be very different from the role that existed at 12.
As the business grows, people’s roles often need to grow with it. A great employee doesn’t automatically become a great manager, and someone who worked well in a small, informal team may need support as roles and expectations become more defined. There may also be people on the team with strengths you haven’t fully tapped into because no one has stopped to reconsider where they could contribute most.
The answer isn't to assume that long-standing employees can't grow with the company. It's to make sure you're giving them the opportunity and support to do so — while also being realistic about what the business now needs.
Your A players can help you find more A players
There was another useful point in the webinar discussion: good people tend to know good people.
When you have employees who perform well and fit the organization, they can become some of your best sources of future talent. They know what good looks like inside the business, and they often know other people they'd be willing to work alongside.
That makes the people you choose to build around especially important.
A strong team can reinforce the culture you're trying to create. Equally, continuing to tolerate behavior that undermines that culture can send a very different message about what the company actually values.
Don't wait for a people problem to force the conversation
One of the challenges of growth is that a company can appear to be doing well while weaknesses are developing underneath.
Revenue can be increasing. Headcount can be increasing. Customers can be coming through the door.
Meanwhile, roles may have become unclear, managers may be struggling, hiring may still be reactive and some of the people decisions that made sense at an earlier stage may no longer fit the business.
That's why reviewing your team shouldn't only happen when someone resigns or performance becomes a problem.
As the business grows, take time to ask:
Do we have the skills we need for the next stage of growth?
Are our strongest performers also strengthening the people around them?
Who has the potential to grow into a larger or different role?
Where would training, coaching or clearer expectations make a difference?
Are we overlooking poor behavior because someone produces good results?
Are people still in roles because they're the right fit, or simply because they've always been there?
These aren't always comfortable questions, particularly in a business where people have worked together for years.
But growing a company isn't only about adding more people.
It's about making sure you have the right people, in the right seats, with the right skills for where you're going next.
This article grew out of the people discussion in Scaling Almost Broke Us, where Jackie Gernaey of SevenStar HR joined Dr. Frumi Barr and Judy Wilks to look at what happens when a growing company begins to experience pressure across People, Finance and Operations.
Want to see where growth may be putting pressure on your business? Download our free 10-question Scaling Stress Test here.