I'll go ahead and state the obvious: We are immersed in an ever-advancing digital age that requires constant innovation, and it is extremely difficult to attract, hire and retain the technical talent needed to support that constant innovation — even for stabilized companies. For startups or those needing to scale quickly, the challenge can seem almost impossible at times.
However, it can be done — and done well — if done intentionally. Quickly strengthening a technology team is something that I have tackled firsthand as CEO of Fortress. In the last year, we grew our team from eight members to 43. How did we successfully scale in today's extremely competitive market?
As you grow, you must transfer responsibilities and trust to an executive team. Doing so can be very scary (especially for us Type A's), but focusing on your "why" and "how" during this stage can help you drive the decisions on "who," especially at the top.
In building our team, we defined our mission by answering our "why": to propel the real estate industry forward by partnering with our customers and providing impactful solutions. Then we defined our "how": through entrepreneurial, driven, focused, innovative (mindset), compassionate, vocal, fun (culture), technically skilled in modern technology (skill set) and awesome (culture) team members. We then used our "how" to help us determine our focus in defining our executive "who": mindset, culture fit and skill set.
Onboarding new team members can be costly, time-consuming and risky. Conversely, promoting current team members who are already familiar with the company's "why," "how" and "what" can be advantageous, and showcasing promotions can build trust and rapport with the entire team.
However, this can be tricky because your team members may not be "ready" for that next step — but you won't really know until you try. For us, this means offering promotions with extreme transparency: "I don't know if you are ready for this new role or if I'm capable of coaching you into it. However, if you are motivated to try and are open to making new mistakes with me, then let's try it. If it doesn't work, then we will work together to quickly pivot."
Sometimes, the early promotions work out. Sometimes, they don't. However, we all evolve and transition together. The objective is to be transparent on the front end and compassionate on the back end, creating positive — even if not ideal — experiences for everyone.
With technical team members, you are constrained by certain skill-set requirements. Past that, you need to focus on the person and how they fit into your team. Things that can help when scaling quickly.
Fire quickly. If you give yourself permission (preferably, the requirement) to fire those who are not a good fit extremely quickly (but always with compassion), then you can hire quickly with less reservation. This is incredibly important; the only true way to reward your overachievers is by not burdening them with underachievers/bad fits.
If you ask anyone at our company why they are there, everyone's answers will include the words "team" or "people." This tells us two things.
You can do anything with the right team, but the greatest thing is that the right team with the right executive leadership is easy to scale. You should be confident that when the right candidate meets your executives and team, they will leave that meeting ready to do anything to join your team. That's when scaling truly becomes easy.
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