Failing to Delegate
“Entrepreneurs tend to want to do it all themselves. The best entrepreneurs, however, hire people who are smarter and have more expertise in the areas where they are weak. Then, they get out of the way and let the newly hired experts carry the torch from there. Resist the urge to re-insert yourself in the day-to-day activities of someone’s role. If you must get involved, be a coach and guide them to success.”
Not Creating a Management Structure
“Once you hit a certain point, you’ll need some type of manager to oversee those team members because it will be too much for you to do. It’s difficult to know that you need this, even if it still feels like a small team, but it is necessary for continuing to add the next 10 people after that and so on. Bite the bullet and hire a manager to oversee those people and to accommodate more people.”
Not Scaling Your Culture
“Once you get past 10-15 people, you cannot scale culture by osmosis, which is where there is simply an unspoken way ‘we work’ passed to each employee because they are sitting shoulder-to-shoulder. It becomes imperative to be intentional about culture — ensuring that everyone is bought in and on the same page. Then, it must be reinforced consistently and improved through feedback.”
Failing to Keep a Personal Connection
“As more employees come on board, it can be challenging to have the time to interact with each one personally for as long as you might have previously done. It can also be difficult to remember those same details about everyone. However, it is important to put together monthly check-ins that maintain that connection, so that employees feel they can still talk to you. ”
Not Maintaining Clear Lines of Communication
“Moving from a small team size to a medium team size is an exciting and challenging time for any business owner or entrepreneur. The biggest hurdle is maintaining clear lines of communication as you adjust from smaller to larger. The structure of a 10-person team is pretty fluid, compared to a team of 20-50 people. ”
Losing Who You Are
“The hardest part for me was keeping our message on point. The more you scale, the more diluted your message and goals can become. Knowing this, I worked tirelessly to ensure all new hires had the same drive and priorities I did when I began.”
Failing to Encourage Bonding
“Getting a small team to mesh well is more difficult than you’d think. Everyone works with each other on such a personal level, and one or two black sheep not fitting in can make things difficult for the rest of your employees. Make sure to involve as many of your co-workers as possible in the hiring process, so you can weigh all opinions before extending an offer.”
Wanting It Done Fast Instead of Right
“Google is notorious for irrational level hiring. The CEOs analyzed every single hire for years. They know you are only as good as your team. The biggest challenge I see is if the founder wants it done fast instead of right. But employees are like marriages — easy to get into and hard to get out of. It is worth being irrationally diligent in your hiring.”
Failing to Stop Silos From Forming
“The larger you grow your company, the more space you’ll need and the more departments get created, and so on. With more personnel, more friction between cross-department communications arises without active management to facilitate it.”
Not Maintaining a Team of A-Players
“As teams grow, it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks, but it’s important to take steps to ensure people are not one of them. Hire a great HR professional to help you build a team of A-players, and as long as you have the bandwidth, continue to be involved in the hiring process.”
Not Creating Effective Processes
“When you have a small team, you are able to work quickly with little process in place. However, the bigger the team gets, the more important processes become because you don’t want people overlapping what they are working on. You need to start creating clear goals for everyone and select important processes that are crucial for efficiency but won’t slow down your business. ”
Losing Talent to Bigger Companies
“Once your team grows beyond the original founding team, both new and old employees will be more susceptible to being recruited by other companies that are able to offer higher salaries, better benefits and more security. Make sure that you’re able to compete and employees have a reason to stay: team culture, strong mentorship and flexible work schedules are some of the things you can offer. ”
Allowing Redundancy and Inefficiency
“Redundancy and inefficiency creep in when more people are added because a lot of the closeness has disappeared. There may be more people who are not talking to each other or sharing information. ”
Losing the Ability to Adapt Fast
“When a company hits above 10 employees, although that seems small, it can lose the ability to react to changing market conditions quickly, which is what makes small companies so dangerous. Bureaucracy and politics can emerge and what was once a quick decision becomes a dragged-out debate. Keeping decision-making processes short and concise can help neutralize this hurdle. ”
Not Trusting Your Processes
“Getting comfortable trusting your processes and the team members who are focused on managing them. With a small team, you can still micromanage and get away with it. With a bigger team, that becomes impossible and if your processes are lacking, you will find out that the hard way and encounter a lot of stress along the way. ”
