With a hat tip to Ben Horowitz's wisdom, we scrutinize the distinct competencies required to navigate the present waters of your business. Grasp the delicate dance of aligning immediate roles with future potential, and learn why viewing employment as a series of impactful two-year stints can revolutionize the way you and your team grow together.
As your company burgeons from a cozy startup to a thriving enterprise, the rules of the game evolve. In our candid discussion with Dave, we break down the organizational metamorphosis that demands a shift from all-hands-on-deck to a more specialized approach once your roster expands. You'll get an insider's perspective on the pivotal decisions leaders must make when cultivating talent, ensuring those who once propelled your mission can adapt or transition as needs change. Stay ahead of the curve and confidently steer your team through the exciting, yet daunting, thresholds of company expansion with wisdom gleaned from this episode's enlightening conversation.
With a hat tip to Ben Horowitz's wisdom, we scrutinize the distinct competencies required to navigate the present waters of your business. Grasp the delicate dance of aligning immediate roles with future potential, and learn why viewing employment as a series of impactful two-year stints can revolutionize the way you and your team grow together.
As your company burgeons from a cozy startup to a thriving enterprise, the rules of the game evolve. In our candid discussion with Dave, we break down the organizational metamorphosis that demands a shift from all-hands-on-deck to a more specialized approach once your roster expands. You'll get an insider's perspective on the pivotal decisions leaders must make when cultivating talent, ensuring those who once propelled your mission can adapt or transition as needs change. Stay ahead of the curve and confidently steer your team through the exciting, yet daunting, thresholds of company expansion with wisdom gleaned from this episode's enlightening conversation.
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Speaker 1:
this is unleashing leadership and I'm your host, travis moss. That's my co-host making me laugh. Our special season five guest uh, dave nuri. And we're getting after lessons learned from the book the Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz and we have a point today. That is, dave, what are we talking about today? I can't remember. You need someone who will be great now, not great in the future. I keep getting the intros wrong, so that's why we're laughing when we're coming in, because this is like take 55. But you need someone who will be great now and not great in the future.
Speaker 1:
Uh, that's brought to you by cutthroat college podcast, where they help people avoid going broke because of the cost of college, and they actually have a program called college prep boot camp and you can get more information on that at Seeds of Hope's website. Actually, it's a nonprofit program offered through it's sohteamorg. Sohteamorg is the website and there's actually scholarships available for this really kick-ass program that helps parents and kids actually go through and figure out the right college majors, the right type of school to go through private, public, community. Should you get into the trades? Maybe you should skip school altogether If you're going to school for athletics. What are the things that you need to know regarding your academics and some of the other harder decisions that you have to make about college life and that kind of stuff. So you can get more information there. You can go to our YouTube channel and see the podcast for yourself. You can go to that sohteamorg so it's the Seeds of Hope website, sohteamorg and you can get information about college bootcamp and scholarships that are available to help cover the cost of going through the program.
Speaker 1:
All right, dave, I did it Not too bad there. I think I got this. This is on this, the suits I have, steve, and he gets to do all that part and he's really smooth. And then I'm trying to do here and I'm not I'm not nearly that good, so we try a for effort. All right, so we need to get somebody who's good or who is great now, not great in the future.
Speaker 1:
And the point that Ben Horowitz is making in his book, where he's really getting after it is there is a tendency to hire people that will be able to run the company that you're going to have someday down the road, right, and so you say, okay, you know, I've got 30 employees, employees right now, but we're going to have 100 in about two years. So I need to hire somebody who knows how to manage a company with 100 people. Yeah, but you don't have 100 people right now. You got 30. So really what you need right now is somebody who can manage 30 people. The skill sets needed for managing 30 versus managing 100 completely different skillsets. So if you hire somebody thinking that just because they can manage 100, they can manage 30, chances are you're going to be disappointed. They're going to be frustrated because that's not their skillset. Their skillset is something much larger.
Speaker 1:
Let's be extreme. You hire somebody out of corporate America who's used to having like 3,000 people under them and you got 50 people in your company. That's like a fish out of water. Or you hire somebody who's been running a company or a division at a company that was in charge of like a $50 million budget, and then they come to your company in charge of like $400,000 or even a million dollars, and then they come to your company and charge you like $400,000 or even a million dollars. The rounding errors aren't even going to make sense to them, and so the whole point is that there's a there's a life cycle or, yeah, there's a life cycle your company is going to go through, where it's growing right, it's changing and the person who can come in and do a really good job at any position right now is probably going to be very different than the person who you're going to need four or five, six years from now. And you hope that the person in the role now will develop so that they can do that role. But chances are that you're going to have to reassess it kind of every year.
Speaker 1:
You and I did a I don't know if we did a book report with our new hires, but we got into this. I forget what the book was, but it was about a two-year tour, two-year tours of duty, remember, right? And it was this idea where we need to stop thinking I'm hiring a forever employee. It doesn't mean you're not going to have the employee forever, but you go and you say here's the job today. As the job sits today, I want to hire you to this job today and this is how long. I think what's your skill set and compensation is going to kind of keep you in that job, right and the needs of the business.
Speaker 1:
So this is a two-year tour duty. I'm going to hire you. You're going to come in for the next two years. This is what you're going to do, and if you do a really good job with this, we're going to pay you. And if you do a really good job with this, we're going to pay you. And if you do a really good job with this, we're going to ask you to find some or a really bad job. We're going to ask you to find someplace to leave or someplace else to go Right, and we're going to ask you to commit to this job. Though, and if you come in and you work really hard and you do a good job and we pay you, we want you to stay for the two years.
Speaker 1:
At the end of the two years, we'll look at it.
Speaker 1:
We'll look at you and your development. We'll look at the company and the opportunities within the company and we'll say, hey, man, you want to renew, and it could be renewing into the same job or it could be stepping up into the next job. But instead of saying, well, you're here, so every year you've got to get a raise and a promotion, and we're going to end up with the Peter's principle, where you raise to the top level of wherever your incompetency is, because we feel obligated, because you're supposed to be here for the next 30 years and when you do that, what's happening is you're you're destroying the flexibility of the business and the capability of the business to grow, and you're also sabotaging that person's career because they're not going to be in a position that they can get maximum satisfaction. If I'm really good at dealing with small teams, don't let me get promoted to the point where I'm in charge of a big team just because I'm there. Keep me with the small teams. Let me be what I'm great at, not what I'm bad at.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, the skills aren't always transferable to that new, you know that future. And, yeah, what happens is that person is going to become dissatisfied in their job. They're going to lose, potentially, respect or just the buy-in from the people that they are managing because they aren't doing the job well. People want patience for that. Right In your mind, you might think, yeah, well, in the future, right back to hiring like this person will be great in the future. There's no patience for the present, though. If they're not doing a good job now, or a great job now, it's not going to work for a year or two for that person to become great all of a sudden.
Speaker 2:
And we put that in the Torah duty concept. We put that into practice with our project teams. The Torah duty concept we put that into practice to see with our project teams, right. So we have these specialized teams that you know take different specializations in our business and they, their teams, assembled to help execute projects. And we have leads on those teams that are in that position for two years because they're, you know, we feel suitable for that position at the time, right In that moment. And part of that job is to start finding kind of the successor to that team and the next person who's going to lead it, for the current lead to move into, like you said, a new role, whether it's a management role or maybe another team. And that's the process where we're reevaluating that every year or two to assess where we should be at.
Speaker 1:
Well, there's a difference between building and maintaining right. There's times where you need somebody to build something. So the same thing with a CEO or any manager. If I need you to build a team, or build a system and a process, or build a product, that's different than if I hand you something already built. Right, think, and to make this super simple, if you move into a house with a beautiful lawn, it's a lot easier to mow the lawn than it is to grow the grass in the first place, right, right, if it you, it's a lot easier. If you have a house, it's a lot easier for you to do some cosmetic changes than it is to build a brand new house.
Speaker 1:
Yep, the, the type of person who can come in and do some maintenance on your home and the type of person who's going to build a new home for you completely different type of people, right. Completely different skill sets, temperaments, everything, right, yeah, and so you know, you're really looking at that. You're saying I got, I need people who can build things. Now, if I was going to bring in somebody to build a small home, that's fairly kind of basic, not necessarily custom. You know work and I was looking for, you know, a fairly modest home, or if I was going to drop a million dollars at a house and build, you know, a custom home with custom features and all kinds of fancy stuff in it different contract, right. So I, the guy who could do the fancy stuff I worked for a guy like this in high school. He hated doing the generic work. He hated when people went up by the good quality materials. He absolutely was disgusted by it. He hated that work versus somebody else who has no idea what to do when it's got fancier materials right, like, like just no idea how to even work with them. Yep, um, and that's a reality with business and a reality with you know, when we're looking at hiring somebody to do a job right now is this is the job right now. This job does not promise to stay the same. Tomorrow is not going to look like today, right Back to an earlier episode. It is going. What we are doing now is going to make us different in the future.
Speaker 1:
If you're worried about job security, you get that by developing personally and professionally and you get to keep the job, you know, by doing a good job and developing personally and professionally Like if that's, if that's what you want. When it comes time to re up or read you know, do another tour of duty. We're going to look at that and say are you prepared? Like, if you want more money, let's say you do the first tour of duty and you make X amount of money, and then you say, okay, I'd like to stay and I'd like a promotion. The first thing Are you capable of doing that job? And then the second thing is is okay, you want that job? You know, compensation wise? Is that in alignment with what that job actually is worth?
Speaker 1:
Right, you know, and, and, and I think that that's that's the hardest part, because we've somehow been tricked into this mindset too, that we're supposed to have a forever job, we're supposed to have a forever house, we're supposed to have our forever. You know this, that and the other thing. And it's like no, no, no, no, no. You know like you're doing yourself a disservice. You should take a job as an opportunity to grow, and if you can continue to grow with the organization, that's an awesome situation.
Speaker 1:
And if the organization outgrows, you then find an organization that fits where you're at. Or if you outgrow the organization instead of raising hell, it's where you're at. Or if you outgrow the organization instead of raising hell, find an organization that will push you harder, right, but it's not a marriage. You're not married for life. You should be looking at it saying, look, I can do this really well right now, better than just about anybody. Let me do it, and let's talk about it as this evolves. How can I move, maybe horizontally, through the business? Or if I can move vertically you know what does that look like?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, You're assessing the growth. The company changes every year or two, or probably more frequently than that, right, but on a just a general scale. Every year or two the business is going to change or grow. So the people who are in management or leadership roles are really anybody at that company. You could look at, well, how are they growing every year or two and where do they fit? And you're kind of putting that puzzle together as the company changes as well.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think PWC. I've got this language from a consultant who was a PWC consultant and you were PWC, so maybe you can fill me in too. But it's gateways. You know, like when you have 10 employees and then you progress to 30 employees, you are actually past 15 employees. You actually pass through a gateway where at below 15 employees, everybody's friends, everybody knows each other and there's there's too much work to go around, so everybody's just doing whatever they can. You pass through 15.
Speaker 1:
Now all of a sudden you got to have a manager or two, because there's too many people that we need to make sure that they're getting things assigned and you start to specialize a little bit. You get up to 20 to 30 people. Now all of a sudden you're worried about career tracks and stuff, because there's like people are intimately involved in everything, regardless of their specialty. Now people are looking at it, saying this is, this is what I'm really good at and I'm growing, and how do I keep having opportunities? And then you go through another one. You know probably a 50 and a hundred and 150, you know, as the company grows and the mentality that you have to have when you have, let's say, five to 15 people is and we can say this because I've gone through it night and day and you've been through it too with us night and day difference.
Speaker 1:
Um, when you go through that first gateway or even the second gateway, it's you have to migrate your skillsets very, very quickly or you will break the company Right, Right, Like you have to look at it and say, even if you've been here from the beginning, or something like that, these are the skill sets now required to support the company at its current status. And so this is what somebody would have to do to be in the positions that that they're in. Um, and the same person that got you to the first gateway may not be the one to get you to the second one, just because it's. It's a completely different skillset, and I think. But Ben's point is is don't look at the third gateway and say hire the third gateway person first, right, Because that's a different person than who's probably going to be willing to get you to the first and second gateway. You know what I mean. So there's a place for everybody and the leader's job is to figure out okay, how do I get the right help in the right place at the right time?