Often new business owners have
this idea that magic will happen and they will end up with an instantly
successful company that runs itself and makes you enough money to afford a new
Mercedes within the first month. New entrepreneurs who set up a business to
create and sell an idea they have may severely underestimate the time and
effort it takes to build a company. Building requires energy. It is a process.
Like building a house, building a
business requires a solid foundation and while you may be able to build a house
from scratch on your own it is far easier if you get some reliable help.
The foundation will be a clear
vision and the ability to cast direction for others. There is a small but
significant difference between vision and planning. Vision allows you to plan.
Plans shift on top of the blueprint of vision. The vision is what you are
building, the end product or desired outcome. ‘We provide affordable
telecommunications to rural Zimbabweans’, ‘We provide simple yet effective
payroll solutions for small businesses’, or ‘We make your information easy to
handle’ and examples of condensed vision. The plan is based on that. Plans can
change, vision will probably not. I started a business on the cusp of the
hyperinflation era that characterised the later part for the 00’s. Investors
wanted a 5 yr cash flow projection and a plan. So I popped one out for them. We
all know how that ended up. Within a year I had to seriously revise any plans
and projections frequently as inflation blew any ideas out the water. The
vision though stayed the same throughout the period.
Regardless of your vision there a
point where you have to outsource or hire for skills. I would suggest that a
great time to start is when you have to begin dealing with ZIMRA (the Zimbabwe tax authority) because even
if you can do it on your own you really do not want to get your taxes wrong.
Outsourcing avoids the costly overheads of a salary. You pay per project or per
unit time to get a job done and only use the person when you need them. It
avoids office space, company cars and packages. In the long term though you
will probably have to get your own team of people. There are trust issues that
outsourcing may not fully resolve. Jack Cator, the creator of HMA, a web
service that provides virtual proxy addresses, was profiled by the BBC recently. He recently sold his company for 40 million British Pounds. He
started off outsourcing, but made the switch to hiring when a contractor tried
to steal his idea and start a rival company.
When he began getting people on
board he had the fantastic benefit of being able to pull in his free lancers as
full time staff. Because he had worked alongside them and knew what they were
capable of he avoided the whole murky interview process that is involved when
hiring. You know exactly what you are getting when you bring someone on board
using this approach.
Cold hiring is a whole other
board game. You have to get the interview process right. It is worth a trial
period with the successful candidate for the same reason that converting a
freelancer into staff succeeds. If you get it wrong you are saddled with
someone you may regret for a long time.
The other option is to head
hunt-to recruit other people who already have a job they are happy with and
make them a better offer (not just financially but in the work and experience
they will have) that they are willing to jump ship to join you.
Letting go can be hard,
especially when you let someone else take some of the bigger roles. You need to
balance between operating as a dictatorship micromanaging everything or being so
hands off that you wake up to a company flying without a pilot. Decide which
areas you need to hold onto that will give the greatest growth and impact for
the organisation and hand over the others. Clearly define expectations. Paint
the vision and its accompanying values in a manner that they can be run with.
Inspect the work being done, call things to account. At the same time allow the
flexibility for employees to achieve the goals that are set in a creative
manner and the freedom to bring ideas to the table.
The process of building may vary
in the length of time it takes. Take the time and effort to make it work. Do
not cut corners on it or in the long term the roof may fall off the ‘house’ you
are creating.
