Growing Pains

It’s not just about the juggle of different hats that an entrepreneur must wear, although that aspect is a healthy bit of what any aspiring entrepreneur must learn to master.

Eventually, inevitably, there comes a time in every young and growing company where its shareholders (whether that’s one person, or many), its management, and its employees are faced with the chore of crossing a very tough paradigm. This paradigm is not an option, unless management chooses death of the business before true life can begin. It is the paradigm of a company (and all that encompasses) to become structured. To become more “corporate,” if you will. So the problems come when entrepreneur-minded people are faced with the desire to keep the entrepreneur spirit alive and thriving but also see the need to incorporate structure within their company. It’s a fence-riding phenomenon that is still beyond me.

Over the past month or so, I have been working with my management team to develop our first set of policies and procedures in writing... an employee policy manual. Granted, in a labor-intensive industry like the one we’re in, these were probably long overdue. Lucky for me, I’ve had some great employees along the way that allowed us to get by without them. But, alas, that time came to a head when we opened our second unit, which contained twice as many employees as our first. So, essentially, our company tripled in size in what seemed to be an instant.

It’s easy to just go on with the day-to-day and not see any immediate need for structure in this sense. That is, it's easy if you become good at letting the little things pass. However, the little things become big things and then employee morale hits rock bottom because there’s no longer a unified standard to guide them in their jobs. We almost missed this boat altogether.

We started noticing visually, verbally, and also sensing it in the air, that the company seemed to be somewhat divided. Those who did things “by the book” were viewed as the “bad guys” and the others were viewed as the obvious “good guys”. Funny thing is, there was no “book” to go by, so it made things even worse. Those who pushed others to do it the right way were simply seen as mean and unfair. And, therefore, there was no form of accountability for anyone else to do the right things. What were essentially the “right things” became an object of debate, personal opinion, and hearsay.

So then comes the process of going from a truly, pure entrepreneurial company to taking one closer step towards a uniformed corporate structure. It can be very ugly and hard, but this is what we faced… somewhat compressed:

Start with the negative. We had some issues of bad-mouthing coming from certain employees and even shift leaders regarding other employees and shift leaders (which we refer to as management). We had to deal with this directly and let it be known that this was by no means tolerated. We started with the most influential employee and worked our way down.

Uproot the weeds. If we couldn’t get attitudes and actions to change, we got rid of them altogether. This was the rare issue for us, thankfully, although we did have to do it. However, if you leave these people in position too long, things will go back to where they were and more than likely get much worse (because you fail to set an example for others to follow).

Start writing policies. In the midst of us correcting some unhealthy behavior, we were writing and re-writing our would-be policies. We started meeting once a week and soon we were meeting almost daily. It’s amazing what sort of things you simply don’t think of until someone does them!

Start over. We met with all our shift leaders Monday night and introduced them to their new policies and procedures and then met with all employees on Wednesday to give them their policies. It was a huge shift for them and a long list of to-dos and not-to-dos. And we were fairly extreme with our rules… but it’s easier to ease up than it is to tighten the reigns after the fact. However, on a positive note, this meeting represented a clean slate for everyone. Granted, habits - good or bad - are difficult to break overnight.

Get leaders to lead. The reason we met with our shift leaders first was to get them to buy into everything and get on the same page. Results come from the top. What leaders do in moderation, followers will do in excess. So make sure your leaders are leading in the right direction!

Follow through. The worst thing you could do is to implement all these new policies and procedures and not discipline those who don’t follow them. You have to anticipate the time when you will have to make an example of someone. In fact, that often helps set the tone of seriousness and expectations from upper-management. If someone breaks a rule, and no discipline results, then you should never expect anyone else to follow them either. You no longer reserve the right to.

Grow your manual. Never expect your policy manual to ever be complete. Things will change, new issues will arise that will merit a mention in the book, and new policies will often prompt new policies. I think that the more you can communicate to your employees through the manual, the better. This is, in essence, a roadmap of where the company is going and should communicate the overall culture and expectations of its management and shareholders.

Policies and overall structure are, without a doubt, inevitable to any growing company. And their presence doesn’t have to imply that a company’s entrepreneurial spirit is on its way out the door. In fact, good, thoughtful structure will make things much more seamless and should always be created to allow for change and adaptation. When this is done, then the entrepreneurial spirit can actually thrive within the organization.