When you hire people who are better than you at your job, and then they take your job....

It's an amazing feeling ??

So 15 months in startup, how’s it going?

People keep asking me ”How is it on the other side” - after 10 years in venture, going back into startup sounded like a lot to take on. My answer to everyone is:

“It’s AWESOME” - it’s fun and exciting and frightening and exhausting and exhilarating and that’s just one week. ?? The last 15 months have been a great journey of fast execution, great challenges, and - the real challenge for me - balancing my focus between the operational and commercial responsibilities that my role came with.

All those who know me know that I’m super good in getting things done and organising chaos into clear and simple plans, however where I really thrive is in a commercial role driving the numbers that are the lifeblood of the business and making it sore to new heights. And ultimately, focusing on this has been my goal at Wefarm, too.

With that in mind… I’m happy to announce that I now get all the time I need to focus on commercials. I’m the new Chief Commercial Officer at Wefarm! And with the same breath, let me welcome Wefarm’s new COO - the amazing and one-of-a-kind Michelle Davies.

The journey so Far..

When I joined Wefarm in 2020 as COO I knew I had a lot to take on with both commercial and operational focus. we were thinking about restructuring based on our strategy, focusing on digital and building a scalable digital proposition, (getting to 2m Farmers on SMS was just the start) as well as moving the entire company remote - where the key focus area for us was the keeping the company’s authentic culture. Doing all these changes as well as moving fully remote was not going to be easy, and we needed to build trust across a remote first company by demonstrating more transparency, taking hard decisions with authenticity and keeping our members first - to drive our reason for being, and empower all Wefarmers to move faster and be better for our community of small-scale farmers.

15 months in the role and we’ve managed to achieve most of what we set out too from both commercial and operational perspectives. The company is stronger than ever and Wefarmers are more aligned and trust each other without needing to be in the same office. We managed to reach our focus and alignment while growing the team across 3 continents and 8 countries.

This change was a huge team effort, It was led by the execs and different leaders across Wefarm. The amount of work put in by Kenny, Adam (our CTO), Anita (our CPO) and Martha (VP of Business development) to make sure our values and behaviours are clear and acted upon was inspiring to watch. However, from an operations perspective the person who glued it all together, followed up on all the details big and small and enabled us as execs to be our best selves was Michelle.

Why Michelle is awesome and we are lucky to have her as our COO

Michelle joined the company as VP of People a month before I joined Wefarm so I didn’t actually hire her ?? but I did promote her to VP of Operations (well technically she just ended up taking all the ops work from me, so she kind of promoted herself but that’s what you want when you hire people better than you ??) we’ve been working together on a daily basis and I believe over the past 15 months, I spoke to Michelle more then to almost any other person in Wefarm, Kenny included ??

During this time I have observed her in many situations that gave me these insights

• Michelle is a great leader, she drives clarity and focus in all departments and enables people to get on with their job as fast as she can. She inspires people by being a role model of what we want to see in a Wefarmer and people look up to her as an example.
• She’s a great manager, she knows managing people is about caring for them and not avoiding the hard discussions but also coaching them through the tough decisions and uncertainty they face.
• She believes in our mission and vision and takes the hard decisions but does it with kindness and compassion for the people these decisions impact
• She has a keen understanding that operations are there to enable the business to move faster and not to be a blocker
• She’s the best person you want by your side when you drop a ball, cause you won’t even notice and she’s already juggling it right next to you, matching your pace and allowing you to keep running without breaking a stride.

Everyone says “hire people better than you” or “only hire A players”, but when you start doing that and you face someone better than you, it’s terrifying!! In your head you know they can do the job better than you?and you can see them replacing you.

What you discover over time, when you hire a lot of people better than you, is they make you better in every way, they challenge you and allow you to focus and drive the company in the ways that you can most impact - moving the entire company to greater heights, together.

Michelle is the best example I can think of when you use the term “Hire people better than you” and I couldn’t be more happy or proud she is taking the mantle of COO and allowing me to focus on driving the commercial side of Wefarm.

Wefarm is in a stronger position for having her as an executive and I know this is going to be a great journey to travel together.