The Startup Journey

D. Shivakumar of Pepsico India has a nice presentation type summary in Founding Fuel from the book "Move Your Bus" by Ron Clark. The book classifies team members into high performers (" Runners " - who consistently go above and beyond what is required.), the dependables (" Joggers " who do their jobs well without pushing themselves), average workers (" Walkers " who just get pulled along) and deadweights (" Riders " - who put their feet up and slow down the whole enterprise). Here from the slides are the characteristics of "Runners"... Runners bring positive energy   Runners carry the load and provide momentum. They come early to work, never complain and bring a positive energy.  Runners go for excellence Runners are driven by the goal of professional excellence and take pride in contributing to an entity that wants to be top notch. Their impetus to work hard isn’t led by personal accomplishments, but is more abou...

If increasing pay doesn't work to motivate and retain your best people, what will? Try paying them less advises Atul Jain, CEO of US-based analytics firm Teoco. Extracts from the Business Line article by Teoco country head Srinivas Bhogle: The gratitude that you think you’ve earned after giving a hike or a bonus fizzles out very quickly. Within a matter of weeks the employee begins to take his ‘new’ compensation or incentive for granted. ...instead of slightly over-compensating our employees, we slightly under-compensate them. If this sounds crazy, hear how Teoco’s CEO Atul Jain explains why it might work. He says, “Assume that I’m the CEO, and let’s see it from my perspective. I see the under-compensated employee as offering me more value. I’m therefore always a little more cognisant of his concerns and requirements; and my sense of fair play forces me to offer him the more challenging or lucrative projects. So he usually ends up getting much better projects and learning th...

Extracts from a blog post by AnnMaria of The Julia Group (emphasis mine). 1. Show up when you are supposed to show up. ...The point is that if I say I will be in Fort Totten, North Dakota at 10 a.m. on April 10th, if you come into the office at that time, you should find me there. Reliable competence is worth more than unreliable brilliance. I can make promises to a customer based on reliable competence and know that those promises will be kept. ... 4. Don’t just do the bare minimum! Most jobs offer a great opportunity for people to LEARN and unlike college, they actually pay you to do it. What a deal! At The Julia Group, you can learn how to do everything from complex statistical calculations to use the video editing software. Specifics may vary from one job to the next, but the more you learn, the more valuable you are to us and the better it is for your future. Don’t just do only what you are specifically asked and then sit on your hands. Suggest something! Ask questions!...

Was wowed by this powerful quote I'd heard yesterday: " You are the average of the five people that you spend the most time with. " (It's attributed to Jim Rohn .) It seemed to be much more powerful than the famous Silicon Valley mantra of " A Players hire A Players; B Players hire C Players ." Since for most working professionals (and especially so for entrepreneurs) almost all the 5 people (that we spend the most time with) are likely to be co-workers, why would we ever hire a "B Player" again? 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. Includes the Free Deal Digest Weekly Newsletter: India's First & Most Exhausti...

From an article by Avery Augustine in The Daily Muse: 1. They Have the Numbers to Back Them Up ...I’ve found it helpful to have some sort of tracking measure in place to stay aware of employees’ performance, like a spreadsheet to keep track of project closures and client feedback. This will allow you to see patterns emerge (e.g., “Jennifer always manages to exceed her sales goal during the last week of the month”), so you’ll be able to immediately pinpoint the employees who should be on track for promotions. 2. They Don’t Clock Out at 5 PM ...Pay attention to the employees who are willing to jump in wherever (and whenever) they’re needed. This doesn’t mean they always need to stay late—but it’s nice to know that in a pinch (and when given more responsibility), they won’t leave you or their clients in the lurch. 3. They Voice Solutions Instead of Complaints ...In doing this, your employee is proving that he or she is ready to step up and take responsibility for what goes on with ...

Smart CEO has an article by Adam Leipzig where he describes how Disney and Dreamworks executive Jeffrey Katzenberg handles his team's successes and failures. The Monday after the big box office opening of the movie "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids": We were all full of laughter, high-fiving each other and passing around compliments when Jeffrey strode in. He took his customary seat at the head of the long table and looked around the room. “Congratulations,” he said, simply. Then, with barely a pause he said, “Next.”Next? That wasn’t what we wanted to hear. We wanted to hear praise for the next hour! But no, it was back to business. I thought I understood the meaning of “Next” that morning: we shouldn’t focus on our success or we’ll become complacent and self-congratulatory. But there was a deeper meaning, and I didn’t learn it until months later. We assembled for another Monday morning meeting, this time after we had opened a movie called An Innocent Man....But the movie d...

Lovely column by Devdutt Pattanaik in Economic Times with examples from Mythology - Ram and Bharat (humans) vs Vali and Sugriv (monkeys) vs Ravan and Kuber (Demons) - in answer to a question from CEO on succession planning. (Emphasis mine.) A yajaman is proactive in decision-making and responsible for its consequences. Did your CMO do what he was told to do or was he taking independent decisions and responsibility? Did your CFO just do his job, but go out of his way to take decision and take responsibility, not just for success but also failure? Most critically, did you see any one of them groom people to take their respective job. If they don't help people grow, if they don't think beyond their domains, if they are unable to think future and take risks, they are probably not good to be leaders. To be a yajaman, one has to take people along. Who amongst the two tries to take people along? This does not mean consensus all the time. Sometimes it requires force, a little pushi...

You can point to the articles by Prof. Sreekumar Rao in his Economic Times columns here If your life is mechanical, it is because you have made it so. Human beings have a great capacity for making anything and everything routine and eventually, 'boring'. ... Why do you go to your 'mindless' job? It is likely because it gives you a paycheque. With this paycheque - inadequate as you may feel it to be - you support your family, pay your rent, save for retirement and entertain yourself. At some level, you know this. At some time, you were aware of this. But this knowledge has become buried in layers of the 'routine' that you now complain about. Dust off this knowledge and bring it to the forefront. Keep it there. and here Your knowledge of your current industry gives you an edge that you can use. In every industry, even the shrinking ones, there are some companies that are growing and gaining market share. What can you do to make your company one of the...

Richard Branson column in Mint Once your company is well established, keeping your employees engaged in their work can be tough, especially those who took the job because they were intrigued by the excitement and the challenges presented by the launch stage. Most of your best people will always be interested in developing their skills further, but they may find fewer new projects available, along with fewer paths to advancement. Working with employees to find solutions will be the job of every manager on your team. ... One day you might be a member of a team that is working on the launch of a new mobile phone network in Latin America or the Middle East, and the next week you could find yourself helping to develop one of our Branson centers for young entrepreneurs. I like to encourage all our employees to apply for jobs at other Virgin companies that they find interesting. ...Another way we keep our employees engaged is by inviting them to take part in company events...

Impresario Entertainment & Hospitality MD Riyaaz Amlani on the "best advice he ever received" in a Business Today article : The trouble: ...The same people who bring you from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2 in one's story sometimes don't elevate their own game for what is required to get you through to the next chapter. They get comfortable, become fat cats quickly, and don't seem to want to change. It seems that they needed me to ratify everything. I needed to be everywhere and personally supervise everything. I worked 18 hours a day. And couldn't do enough. It was frustrating and heartbreaking. I loved my people but I just couldn't get them to take full ownership. The solution provider: Tariq Ansari of Mid-Day, The solution: "Go on a two-month holiday." As soon as I began to protest, he explained: "It's a concept called 'benevolent negligence'." Leave. Go away. Take your hands off, and your people will be forced to s...

From a Mixergy podcast interview with Dr.Rajiv Kumar of US-based corporate wellness service ShapeUp. (Emphasis mine) What’s the one takeaway that you have? One thing that you say, hey you know, I am better because I have this one understanding after having built this business. Rajiv: Yeah, I think it would probably sound very obvious and maybe somewhat cliché, but at the end of the day, every single thing that a business does, successes and failures, are all about people, and can’t underestimate that. I think we know it, but we forget it sometimes. But it is the people that makes everything happen or makes thing not happen. There’s a huge opportunity cost to having a wrong person in a position, and you don’t realize that opportunity cost until that person leaves, and because either there’s a void and you realize that this person was actually dragging the company down, or someone who comes in that’s much better and you realize how much more quickly you’re accelerating. And when you hav...

From the Economic Times article : Vivek Ranadive, the founder-chairman of TIBCO Software, recently sacked his America sales chief despite the Palo Alto, California-based infrastructure-software provider surpassing market expectations. He had to because he grades his employees in a very contrarian way. "If you do everything you are asked to do and you do it very well, you get a C," he says. "In order to be a superstar (to get an A or Aplus)," he says, "you have to do things that nobody asked you to do." Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of data and analysis on private equity, venture capital and M&A deals in India. Click Here to learn about Venture Intelligence products that help entrepreneurs reach out effectively to the investing community.

From a guest post on OnStartups by Paul DeJoe, founder at Ecquire. ...You start to respect the Duck. Paddle like hell under the water and be smooth and calm on top where everyone can see you. You learn the hard way that if you lose your cool you lose. ...You begin to see how valuable creativity is and that you must think differently not only to win, but to see the biggest opportunities. You recognize you get your best ideas when you're not staring at a screen. You see immediate returns on healthy distractions. ...Your job is to create a vision, a culture, to get the right people on the bus and to inspire. When you look around at a team that believes in the vision as much as you do and trusts you will do the right thing all the time, it's a feeling that can't be explained. The exponential productivity from great people will always amaze you. It's why finding the right team is the most difficult thing you will do but the most important. This learning will affect your lif...

Great notes on people management and scalability. Had received this scanned copy of the relevant pages by email. Arun Natarajan is the Founder & CEO of Venture Intelligence, the leading provider of data and analysis on private equity, venture capital and M&A deals in India. Click Here to learn about Venture Intelligence products that help entrepreneurs reach out effectively to the investing community.

I attended a presentation on entrepreneurship by Satya Prabhakar, Founder & CEO of Sulekha.com, on August 31 at an event organized by TiE-Chennai and the Loyola Institute of Business Administration (LIBA). I found the points he made on hiring and retention quite interesting. He suggested entrepreneurs look out for "5Is" for hiring and 'three 4-letter words" for retention. The "5 Is" 1. Intellect 2. Initiative 3. Industry (ie, Hard work) 4. Integrity 5. Interpersonal Skills The 3 4-letter words: 1. Work (i.e., its content) 2. Love ("Am I valued and appreciated here?") 3. Hope ("Is this place enroute to something great?") Entrepreneurs should not allow an employee to settle into a comfort zone and keep setting the bar higher. 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. Click here to learn abou...