Business growth is a wonderful thing – or is it?
Too often, you’re half way to the top of the mountain trying to figure out whether you should aim for the summit or throw yourself off. And, it has to do with people, because every difficult issue you deal with in business has something, somehow to do with people doesn’t it? Building a business is hard enough, but growing a workforce to meet the demand of that increased workload is harder – because finding the right people, ones who will extoll your virtues, and live and breathe your values and culture isn’t easy.
Whether growth comes from adding employees, or through M&A, most companies put little to no thought into the “soft” aspects of employee growth. They spend time crunching numbers, and reviewing legal paperwork; virtually ignoring the one thing that will trip them up faster than anything. The fastest way to kill success is to ignore the human aspects of business. We don’t mean to over-simplify, but the answer is pretty simple. Give it thought, plan it, have a road map. How do you hope to hire against your purpose, values and mission if you’re not really sure how to articulate them? How can you be sure the individuals you’ll hire (or bring on board through M&A) will understand this brave new world you’re introducing them to if you can’t really tell them why and how it’s going to be great, or even what their role might be?
Have a Plan
Hopefully you have at least the semblance
of an organizational chart. First, start forecasting out what growth will look like in terms of the manpower needed to get it done. Surprisingly, the addition of employees doesn’t add up to effective execution, unless they’re well-directed and well oriented into your company. Not only do you have to figure out how many you’ll need, but what their individual roles will be. This takes time, effort, and intent to make sure that you get it right. It’s even more difficult when it’s a merger or an acquisition, because you often have duplicate roles in both organizations and some daunting decisions to make to ensure success. It’s really important to figure out how many consolidated seats you actually have on the bus, then look at individual talents to see if you can’t get the right people in those right seats. If you don’t take the time, effort and forethought needed to determine what your bus looks like in the first place, how can you possibly hope for success?
Who Are You?
If you haven’t truly decided on your vision, purpose, intentions and can boldly articulate your culture, it makes finding the right people virtually impossible. Anyone might last a little while, but you’re going to increase your retention odds exponentially if you develop your internal brand before you ever go to market. With organic growth it’s extremely important. In a merger situation it’s imperative. When it comes to an acquisition, rather than just looking at numbers and legalities, take a look at the way businesses operate, the leadership styles of those at the helm, the benefits, the environment, the….well, the list goes on.
It might be that there isn’t a way for those styles to blend. Better to find that out now before proceeding. Dealing with Differences We’ve seen so many rapidly growing or merged organizations that look like Utopia from an outside perspective – until a year or two down the road when it’s discovered that there was no integration at all and they’re virtually operating as different companies under one roof. And, it could all be avoided if the human issues were tackled up front.
Truth is, some people might lose some things, and some might gain. But, if you’re up front and deal with those issues head on (at a minimum, know about them) then people will feel as though they were treated fairly, and that’s all that any employee wants. And don’t tolerate an employee’s intentional reluctance to embrace your new world – make it a performance expectation and part of the language of your culture – because ultimately it will have a negative impact.
There will be differences in the way new employees think and operate, whether they’re coming to you from the open market or through your acquisition of another company. If you have a strong, cultural foundation from which to build, it might still be a little bumpy but growth won’t derail the train, assuming you’ve done your homework and laid the right cultural tracks.