Or Are You Bringing a Wolf into the Tent?
An acquaintance who runs a large tech services business, asked me if he can hire one of the hot shot entrepreneur students I trained a few years ago. His worry? He is bringing a wolf into the tent. If you train an individual who is predisposed to becoming an entrepreneur, you could be training a future competitor.
This is a possibility, I agreed, but there is also another way to look at it.
Do you want an employee who has the skill set of an entrepreneur? Do you want someone who can: take initiative, doesn’t need a lot of direction, is innovative, can do everything in parallel, will find launch clients, knows how to build cashflow, understands the value of a client and customer, will use bootstrap capital, can sell/sell/sell, knows how to use guerrilla marketing and social marketing to build the brand and capture market share, is not afraid to try new things, knows how to build a sustainable business model with a lot of ‘pixie dust’ in it, can set goals and achieve them, is dynamic and has high energy, can create a business plan and be ready to change it when the market moves in sudden and unexpected directions?
If you answer ‘yes’ to the above, then, by all means bring the entrepreneur into the fold… he or she is now your resident intrapreneur.
But use them wisely. My recommendation—find a specific project or product management job that you need done, that will take two (or at the most three) years to implement and then put them on it. If they leave after that time, at the worst, they will have created a dynamic new division for you that will produce sustainable profits for a long time. Then, after that, what do you care if they leave?
My acquaintance liked this approach since it fit in with his overall philosophy—that after you get past the startup phase when the founder or founders are the only people working on the enterprise, your most important decision is whom you hire. I agree—always try to hire up.
Prof Bruce
Ps. We also discussed his priorities—he puts employees first, customers second and suppliers third. His rationale—it’s not the assets that you own that produce revenues and profits—it’s your employees. He puts a lot of emphasis on training and retaining his employees. I told him that we used to call our receptionist our CIO—Chief Information Officer. She or he might be the first contact that a customer or supplier ever has with your firm so that person should not be the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to training and compensation. Nothing is worse than when your firm announces an exciting new product or service, and someone from the media, a potential client or new supplier calls in and in answer to their questions, gets a puzzled ‘Huh?’ from whomever answers the phone. Bring them into pre-planning for these types of launches…