How to hire a new team for a growing startup without rattling the old

One of the big questions that startups face as they begin to

scale

Use synonyms

is whether they should promote their own employees up to new roles or hire laterally. How should they hire these leaders? What traits should they look for? How should they manage the inevitable tensions between the newcomers and the

home-grown

grown or originating in a particular place

homegrown

rock stars? How does

this

Linking Words

impact the culture of the company? Hiring and assimilating laterals

is

Suggestion

are

a key success factor for a startup to

scale

Use synonyms

smoothly. Typically, a startup begins to refresh talent after the product-market fit has been established and the founders see an opportunity to

scale

Use synonyms

. By the time they reach

this

Linking Words

point in their journey,

founders

Suggestion

the founders

would have often recognized the inadequacies in the leadership team that could be an obstacle to

further

Linking Words

growth. While the early team is great at hustling and getting things done, its members often lack the

ability

Use synonyms

to put in place systems to keep the ship stable as the organization scales. I will touch upon

two

Use synonyms

separate but interrelated aspects of hiring and assimilating laterals. To start with, there is a tendency to be impressed by those who have the experience of

scale

Use synonyms

and managing large teams. But there is a world of difference between those who have managed in a

scale

Use synonyms

environment and those that can build for

scale

Use synonyms

. It is important to differentiate the

two

Use synonyms

and hire those who can build for

scale

Use synonyms

. They have

two

Use synonyms

traits that the former don’t have: a)

ability

Use synonyms

to roll up their sleeves and get things done even without support structures, and b)

ability

Use synonyms

to solve problems ground up. I can think of

two

Use synonyms

cases where I was involved in making the wrong call. In one case, we were hiring a global head of sales and

in

Suggestion

on

the other, a chief operating officer (COO). In both cases, we ended up hiring individuals who were managing

Use synonyms

scale but

Accept comma addition

scale, but

had lost the

ability

Use synonyms

to be hands on. In both cases, there were red flags all along—in the demands they made, the questions they asked, the way they steered the discussion to avoid deeper probing—but none of the individuals who interviewed the candidates raised their fears for the simple reason that there was tremendous pressure from the board to close the positions quickly.

This

Linking Words

created a false consensus of sorts because the candidates seemed so right in every other way and we made the wrong decision. Both individuals had to be let go eventually and

this

Linking Words

set back the growth journey by more than six months in each case.