Skip to main content

Why It's Important to Let Go of Non-Performers

Image
By
From a post on OnStartups titled "Remembering 9/11: Leadership Lessons From Akamai Founder". (Danny Lewin, co-founder of Akamai Technologies, "a commando in the Israeli Special Forces counter-terror group, then a genius mathematics graduate student at MIT, and then a visionary billionaire entrepreneur", "was tragically killed on American Airlines Flight #11")

To Restore Trust When it Weakens: Hold People Accountable and Get Rid of Non-Performers.

Great leaders hold people accountable successfully by honoring an unspoken contract between them. The team members make commitments to each other and to the leader. Then the leader measures each of them fairly and by the same standards - by how well they did what they said they would do. The leader pays each member by how well they performed their part of the deal.

But when one member fails to execute, other teammates see it immediately. They lose confidence both in the non-performer and in the leader for failing to uphold the deal. To preserve the trust that the leader has inspired by example and spread with shared suffering, the leader must remove the non-performer from the team. This restores trust between the team and the leader because they see the leader honoring the contract between them. They feel reassured that they, and their remaining teammates, must be performing. Then they trust each other to do their jobs and can concentrate on doing their own. (Of course, removing a non-performer only builds trust when the team member has had a fair chance to achieve his commitments, fair notice when performance is sub-par, and a fair chance to improve.)


Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of data and analysis on private company transactions, valuations and financials in India. Click Here to learn about Venture Intelligence products that help entrepreneurs Reach Out to Investors, Research Competition, Learn from Experienced Entrepreneurs and Interact with Peers.
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Startup Funding: The Luck Factor – By Sanjay Anandaram

By
We hear all the time about the amount of money that's available to fund startups. For example, that private equity funds invested over $ 3.3 billion in just the first 3 calendar months of the current year. That VCs are always looking out for good deals as most of the plans they see merit little or no attention. That they invest in about 5-10 a year out of the 500-1000 business plans they get. And so on…But the truth is that a majority of deals that get funded are those that come through a referral or because the VC knows (of) the entrepreneurs; its natural because VCs don’t have the time to look at all the plans that they get to pick out the Rediff, Naukri, or Tejas Networks. Deals that come through some trusted source or through a trusted filtering process are therefore valued higher and rise to the top of the pile of business plans. It is therefore easy to see how many plans don’t get funded. And also how competitive the race to secure funding really is. Given this situation, wh
Read more

How I Raised Funding - Priyanka Agarwal, Wishberry

By
You have to be confident and shameless while crowdfunding. Priyanka Agarwal, Wishberry shares on how to succeed in crowd funding with Venture Intelligence in this  interview. Priyanka also candidly shares how the team built Wishberry, raised funding from top angel investors like Rajan Anandan, on pivoting, and difficulties in raising capital for entrepreneurs operating in niche spaces not chased by VCs. Q: What does Wishberry do? Priyanka Agarwal : In its latest avatar, Wishberry has pivoted into crowd financing of low budget films (INR 1-5 Cr). We are essentially trying to create an internet platform for investment opportunities for HNIs in films including Marathi, Tamil, Kannada, or films targeting the global diaspora. L-R: Co-founders Anshulika Dubey & Priyanka Agarwal, Wishberry Given that you are building a marketplace, how did Wishberry solve the Chicken and Egg problem? Beyond the “all or nothing” model what did Wishberry do to pull in more artistes and inves
Read more

Profile of Career Forum founder

By
The Starship Enterprise column in The Economic Times (not available online), featured Sujata Khanna of entrance exam training institute, Career Forum. The company, which started with just seven students in Pune, now covers over 39 cities reaching over 15,000 students. ...The most important milestone I think was in 1995 when we decided to incorporate Career Forum into a Company. This brought in a lot of professionalism and we also went for expansion. ...Strong technical network is our unique selling proposition. We have a strong ERP system running across all centres in all areas of business from distribution to logistics... Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of information and networking services to the Private Equity and Venture Capital ecosystem in India. View sample issues of Venture Intelligence India newsletters and reports.
Read more