Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Melissa Rosenthal

Moving from survival mode to growth mentality

Photo Credit: Oladimeji Odunsi

You’re a founder. An entrepreneur with a passion for solving a problem. You had an idea and you’ve turned that idea into a business. With unwavering belief, determination, persistence and plain old hard work you’ve convinced yourself and others that your idea has merit — enough merit to invest time and money building it into something real. Something tangible that customers will buy and value.

Working with founders over the last 10 years it clear that their initial focus is on 3 inescapable and interrelated dimensions :

Survival —aka money. How much, how long it will last and when to start asking for more.
Product — defining, building, testing and refining the offering. Getting it into market.
Market — finding and reaching the customers who buy, use and value the product.

When the 3 come together the magic starts to happen. The venture grows. And as the venture grows, the team needs to grow -which means you’ve got decisions to make.

The time has come to transition from survival mode to a growth mentality — to make talent your 4th dimension.

The typical response to this is “I’ll just hire the people I need when I need them”. But here’s the rub — how will you know when you need them? And who will you need? In other words, what’s your strategy for acquiring and retaining talent? And how does it relate to your growth plans?

Making talent your 4th dimension requires a strategy and a roadmap, just like all the other elements of your business. Only this time it’s personal and should be purposeful.

Here are my top 5 tips for building your talent strategy:

1. You’re the leader — you set the direction, tone and pace.

Who you hire depends on who you are and how you do what you do. Knowing where you need complementarity and where you need contrast will determine how well the team works. In essence this will create the culture of your organisation.

2. Strategically align the timing of hiring.

Decide whether to level up early and run the risk of temporarily over-resourcing or act your stage and run the risk of being overrun by the growth snowball.

3. Understand the trade-offs you’re making.

It’s incredibly rare to have the luxury to hire all the people you need at the same time. When choosing Marketing over Sales, or Design over Production, be clear about what this means and how you intend to mitigate the inevitable challenges that result.

4. Outsource and automate to create capacity.

Make sure the basics (like getting paid!) happen seamlessly but don’t consume headspace of your best people. Let them focus on the places where they can make the biggest difference to your vision.

5. Understand the difference between strategic and operational HR.

The time will come to hire your first full time HR person. And it will be important to decide the trigger for that hire. When you do, don’t assume that “if you’ve seen one HR Manager you’ve seen them all”. Like all disciplines, there is a vast difference between the skills, preferences and style of HR professionals. Often the tendency is to hire the most senior person you can afford — but this may not serve your immediate needs.

If thinking about talent as your the 4th dimension doesn’t come naturally to you or you’re resisting developing your people playbook, consider the implications if you don’t. Without the right team in place at the right time you may end right back at survival mode before you know it.

If you’d like to know more or if this was thought provoking, let me know by leaving a comment. Thanks!

Is it time to move to the 4th dimension? was originally published in prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Is it time to move to the 4th dimension?

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