The needs of your employees change as your company matures. Members of the team that join when you’re in true startup mode know they are taking a risk. The company may not survive, but they are excited about being part of the journey. Everyone at a startup wears many hats. Being great at something is nice, but being really good at a lot of things is even better. These friends probably aren’t looking at your startup as a career, but rather as an adventure that will stretch them in exciting ways.
When you grow beyond the startup phase, all of that changes. People expect that the company will survive and that they will continue to get a paycheck. Their ability to pay the rent and feed their families may be dependent on your leadership. Increasingly, they aren’t joining your company to be part of a general team, but rather to do a specific job, and they expect to grow in that job as they build a career, with your company being at least the next step on that career path.
In a recent article on leadership and human resources, I outlined three key dimensions of leadership: how you lead, what people need from your leadership, and why leadership matters. In the article linked below, I share how those factors change as your company matures from pure startup to a scaling enterprise. I also look at Southwind, a growing home services company as an example.