The Paradox of Growth
Chip Wilson
Technical Apparel Expert. Founder of Westbeach Snowboard, Low Tide Properties, lululemon athletica and the Wilson 5 Foundation.
A young fast growing company will have many young, core, passionate employees with a strong love for the company culture.
As the company grows the need to bring in more experienced people who have "been there” seems inevitable and prudent. The question is: does bringing in “professionals” really make the company better? The professionals are experts at interviews and know what the interviewee is looking for and how to sell themselves. They can easily fake it to get the job.
Professionals who have survived larger company politics are savvy in the Machiavellian ways of obtaining and maintaining power. They may also have a propensity to keep power by undermining or not developing a successor. Professionals know how to fake culture while internally not accepting that the culture is for them.
On the other hand, professionals should steer the fledgling company away from common mistakes caused by rapid growth. They should bring in proactive business processes before the company needs them.
Now comes the big problem. A company grows and needs manpower. New professionals may need up to 40% more incentive than existing employees to move.
This creates an imbalance and a sense of unfairness among core employees. The core employees wait to see if the new employees are worth 40% more. The truth? They never are—because the professionals never know the company as well as the core employees. Professionals are older and come with a set unconscious attitude of “I know more than you do”.
The existing employees are valuable because they are the cultural glue and the ones with the institutional knowledge that can keep a company profitable for decades. The core employees know more than anyone what the mechanisms of making a profit are for their company. The professionals simply know what the profits could be, with the right mentoring.
The best professionals are those who mentor and develop the core employees to be the next set of company managers. These professionals have little ego and are team players. My observation is that these professionals are best at managing down but don’t often know how to manage up.
Unfortunately, in big companies the accolades for achievement usually go to those who are the best at marketing themselves. While most times the best employees are too busy doing a great job to spend what they consider frivolous time being fake and looking good for the sake of reputation or "looking good".
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this topic, and whether you're a core employee or a newly brought-in professional (or have experienced both), in the comments below.
Founder & CEO at CardCorp & BillPro - we open merchant accounts and provide billing software that gets you paid.
5 年Great insights.? Recently hired a senior exec to augment my core team, fired shortly thereafter.? Bad job on my part no doubt, but left me annoyed with Machiavelli and whoever wrote the 48 laws of power - reading them turns so many probably decent people into idiots in the workplace.
Cardiology Care Area Leader CT & Molecular Imaging - GE HealthCare
6 年Speaking from experience, when the new is hired to be a change agent and the core is resistant to the position and change that was requested at hire, the hiring managers need to be supportive of the position they just hired. A strong leader can manage the traditional culture and history and support change management simultaneously by making sure everyone understands roles, responsibilities and how the entire team fits into the corporate goals and strategy. A strong leader can also manage the low egos and power players as they are counter productive in every way. As long as the rewards for such games are greater than rewards for teamwork, the divisions will continue.
CEO of Treewalk
6 年Hi Chip, do you have any advice on strategies and/or tools for identifying low ego and team players in pre-screening and interview process to identify team players with low ego??
General Manager | Business owner | Cycling advocate
6 年I am the professional. I know what you want to hear. I live in politics. But these behaviors are neither productive at a MNC nor SME. I have made lots of mistakes - mostly absorbed by the larger entity of a MNC. Let me impart some wisdom and experience to you without dampening the entrepreneurial spirit. I have had the privilege of amazing mentoring during my career. Great people invested in me. It's now my turn. My reward will be my men-tee thriving and surpassing my own accomplishments. Perhaps Chip has left us hanging with purpose. We need to answer this paradox ourselves. For me, it is about the person. Their intrinsic drivers, morals, values, beliefs and passions. This is an almost impossible task during an interview. How do we measure cultural fit and or how do we convey our own beliefs to be juxtaposed to the organization for which we want to be a part?