Scale Your Business Fast Without Growing Pains

It is well understood that growing a business requires people. If you want to grow a business fast, therefore, you have to source, filter, and hire of a lot of people very quickly. Identifying the right people, with the right capabilities, and the right cultural fit when the hiring engine is in overdrive requires a special set of safeguards.

Tightening Recruiting Is Critical to Grow a Business Fast Without the Wheels Falling Off 
You have managed to create a well-oiled business, firing in all its cylinders, with a motivated, accountable, talented, and driven workforce. If you want to scale that successful business quickly, you must take steps to protect the processes that make the business work so well.

Top 10 Safeguards

Here are 10 battle-tested safeguards to be able to grow a company while maintaining the quality and culture that you have so painstakingly created:

1. Protect the Door

If we had to select the one thing that explains 80% of the issues businesses find when experiencing a period of hyper-growth, if would be letting people in that should not have been let in.
Recruiting Requires Special Attention During Fast Growth
You must protect access above all things. If you hire well, no time will be wasted later on managing issues, drama, misfits, and/or sub-par performers.

2. Involve Everybody

There is nothing more powerful than a proud “tribe” actively participating and protecting who is allow to join in. So, engage everybody in the recruiting and hiring processes.
Involved the Entire Team in Protecting What Is Already There During Periods of Fast Growth
There is nobody better at protecting what you already have than the people that have made it happen.

3. Go Deep

Go deep during the interviewing process. Be skeptical of resumes, be skeptical of one-on-one interviews, and be skeptical of third-party recommendations. During good times, the talent pool out there is wide and shallow. You must dig methodically to find the gold nuggets.
Use case studies to test a candidate’s various competencies (e.g., analytical skills, creativity, programming) in real-time discussions. Go deep and observe how the candidate navigates the situation. Ask questions, give written tests (e.g., coding, aptitude, creativity), challenge answers.

4. Fail Quickly

Develop a clear evaluation framework that identifies dealbreakers quickly. Once a candidate hits one of them, quickly send a nice rejection letter and move on. Do not get hooked on things that are not relevant to the success of that person at your business thinking that they may compensate for deficiencies in other key areas.

5. Onboard Flawlessly

Once you have identified the high-performers that you need to hire, protecting their interest becomes paramount. Make sure that the onboarding process is flawless and professional. It is time to start winning the new hires’ hearts and minds.

6. Check Early

Conduct a quick but thorough performance review of each new hire 60-90 days after they start. The objective of this early review is to primarily test whether the new hire is meeting expectations. Testing for cultural fit is also important as you embark in what will hopefully be a long and productive relationship.

7. Offboard Fast

If somebody has made it through your very stringent recruiting and onboarding process, but is not meeting expectations or is not who you thought they were, then initiate the offboarding process immediately.
Keeping a new hire that sucks energy from a business is one of the costliest mistakes many businesses make. It might be painful, but offboarding quickly is worth it in the end.

8. Drive Accountability

A workplace with a strong culture of accountability creates committed workforces and high-performance organizations (HPO). Organizations like these are naturally inclined to protect themselves as they grow. Employees tend to want to be involved in the hiring process as they want to make sure the HPO is preserved through the period of hyper-growth.

9. Execute Flawlessly

Using task management software that not only manages a process but also drives accountability can take over some of the effort required during hyper-growth moments by handling the whole process more efficiently.

CommandHound Is a Task Management and Accountability Tool Designed to Support Fast Growth Effectively
CommandHound is an accountability and task management tool that make sure things get done, on time, as expected, and consistently every time. CommandHound also drives accountability by tracking completion performance at the individual and team levels for performance review or incentive purposes.

10. Mentor, Coach, and Reward

Once you have onboarded a keeper, make sure the organization provides the necessary support to nurture the relationship for the long-term. Proactively assigning mentors, access to executives, team leaders, and subject matter experts all help ensure a successful and enjoyable onboarding for new employees.

Next Steps

Would you like to learn more about how CommandHound can help you grow fast while protecting what you already have?