People
This is the greatest challenge for any CXO. Getting the people aspect of the business right never stops getting tricky. The culture has to be established at the time of hiring along with other factors that form the CV to ensure the longevity of the placement with establishing the right career progression expectations
Payroll
Paying your employees on time and meeting expectations on the payroll is very critical. Fair compensation based on the value an employee brings to the organisation is very important. Especially for the early-stage funded startups out there overpaying for talent, neither does your organisation nor the employee any good when you run out of money you have to fire that person. Another aspect of payroll is ensuring the salary credits are on time every time. It’s one less thing any worthy employee should worry about and knowing that money is going to be there in the account on a specific date helps them plan their month and year better
Process
I have come across a lot of early-stage entrepreneurs who care less about processes and a lot of mature-stage business owners who struggle to implement processes. Make the process a culture in the organisation and tasks flow smoothly. Push the adoption to when you are a bigger company and resistance to change only increases with each new employee you add.
Passion
Passion is a crucial unquantifiable necessity for a business. The passion of the promoters to grow the business, and of the employees make them crucial stakeholders responsible to grow the business. Lack of passion makes any task in a company mechanical and hence the outcomes are always just about meeting expectations if you are lucky.
Profit
While passion is great, passion without profit is merely a hobby. The core of any business is its ability to generate profits to invest in growth and the sustenance of the business. This basic about a business has lost its way in the chase for valuations. While it’s not necessarily wrong to think about valuation the concept of it is broken if that’s all the focus of the business is.
Policies
Policies are to a company as laws are to a nation. It has be created considering the diversity of the organisation and enforced equally. Educating the employees about all the policies is critical and merely having them as a manual is of no use. The danger to any policy is the discretion provided to folks responsible to enforce them.
Perseverance
Be an employee or a boss, you won’t always have a smooth sail in the course of building a business. You will hit obstacles and encounter people who will nudge you to doubt your ability in conquering the hurdle. The moment you give in to that is the moment you have lost everything you have worked hard to build. Perseverance coupled with pragmatism is a deadly combination that is likely to help you scale new heights of professional success
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments
