How to Scale and Automate StartUps Right

Sometimes people scale too soon by hiring people too soon to automate the company. What happens here is the processes for the job are not well-established and expectations are not met. This is a mistake because good employees would want immediate impact and just quit the job when there’s no clear way they can do so.

It’s also a mistake to hire someone with a defined position without a clear purpose. This is because they may be too expensive for the little work they do as you don’t have much need for them. For example, CFOs are needed when you earn 500,000 USD otherwise helpful bookkeepers suffice.

On the other hand, some people hire too late as entrepreneurs are stuck in the habit of having total control. Entrepreneurs do not need to gate themselves and only hire after certain milestones but try part-time workers. Having part-time people running some parts of your business allows you to see if it works well. Then, seeing that you can afford to pay some more, you can hire them full-time to run some of your business. If you have one activity that is costing a lot of time in running your business, try to outsource that task and more. Your part-time workers can start with just one task then the position can grow as trust is established.

Additional personnel is especially important when getting leaders for the new branches you expand to. When establishing an organizational structure, it’s good to have about 5 people report to the CEO. Under these 5 people, the teams are arranged according to the business strategy you have for the company.

Promoting people confirms to them that they have chosen well to join the company to develop themselves. Some leaders you need are people who run admin tasks, hiring and scheduling, and customer experience. When hiring people to lead, it can be scary letting go of control and trusting the people you hired. Hiring leaders is especially needed when the CEO sees other activities that are more costly not to do.

The closest to certain work are the ideal leaders of that department as they have deep knowledge about. These newly promoted leaders would even probably be good at showing you things you may never have seen before. Without other leaders in the business, your startup team may not think they can speak up about issues. CEOs may be afraid of promoting people to be leaders since CEOs are afraid they’ll be less significant.

But as leaders are needed, they should be promoted temporarily at first before a permanent promotion. This is because you would not want to promote the wrong person so you have to test if this person is qualified. When making the promotion official, you need to gain the commitment of the person to stay long-term. This is because it is a significant commitment to stay with a company and closely help it grow over time.

Source: Shelli Warren