Strength­en and expand your team

To man­age your grow­ing start­up, you need a strong team. This means not only attract­ing new tal­ent, but also train­ing exist­ing employ­ees. Ask your­self what skills you are miss­ing and how you can close these gaps. With clear plans for skills, fur­ther devel­op­ment and new team mem­bers, you can lay the foun­da­tions for sus­tain­able growth.

1. defines the required skills

Iden­ti­fy the key qual­i­fi­ca­tions required for each role in your start­up. Pay atten­tion to hard skills (tech­ni­cal skills) and soft skills (social and per­son­al skills) as well as future com­pa­ny goals.

Typ­i­cal hard skill gaps are:

• Tech­ni­cal skills: Lack of knowl­edge in pro­gram­ming lan­guages or AI can hin­der the growth of solu­tions.
• Finan­cial man­age­ment: Insuf­fi­cient knowl­edge of finan­cial cal­cu­la­tion and account­ing can jeop­ar­dize the sus­tain­able devel­op­ment of the start­up.
• Project man­age­ment: A lack of skills in the struc­tured plan­ning and imple­men­ta­tion of projects can impair effi­cien­cy.
• Impact mea­sure­ment: Lack of abil­i­ty to mea­sure and report on the social or envi­ron­men­tal impact of the start­up

Typ­i­cal soft skill gaps are:

• Dif­fi­cul­ties with team­work or com­mu­ni­ca­tion can affect col­lab­o­ra­tion in the start­up, with cus­tomers or tar­get groups.
• A lack of prob­lem-solv­ing skills or cre­ativ­i­ty can stand in the way of devel­op­ing inno­v­a­tive approach­es and over­com­ing chal­lenges.
• A lack of lead­er­ship qual­i­ties or man­age­ment skills in cor­re­spond­ing posi­tions can have a neg­a­tive impact on struc­tures, process­es and orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture.

2. eval­u­ates the exist­ing skills

Once you know which skills you need, it’s time to check which of them are already present in the team. You can find this out, for exam­ple, through employ­ee eval­u­a­tions and self-assess­ments by team mem­bers.

3. iden­ti­fies where there are gaps

You can use a skills matrix to com­pare the skills you have with the skills you need. You should pri­or­i­tize the result­ing gaps.

4. ana­lyzes the caus­es and effects of exist­ing gaps

Exam­ines the rea­sons for skill gaps. Eval­u­ates the impact on orga­ni­za­tion­al goals and per­for­mance.

5. devel­op an action plan

Then devel­op an action plan. Plan tar­get­ed train­ing mea­sures, hire new team mem­bers or com­bine the two. Set real­is­tic goals and time frames.

Struc­tur­ing process­es and clar­i­fy­ing role respon­si­bil­i­ties

Unclear process­es and respon­si­bil­i­ties can quick­ly lead to inef­fi­cien­cy and mis­un­der­stand­ings. By struc­tur­ing your process­es and defin­ing clear roles, you increase trans­paren­cy, sim­pli­fy col­lab­o­ra­tion and cre­ate the basis for sus­tain­able growth.

1. decide which process you want to ana­lyze

Select a cen­tral process and set clear start and end points for the audit. Ask your­self which steps are real­ly nec­es­sary, who is respon­si­ble for the indi­vid­ual tasks and how the process influ­ences your impact. Process­es can be, for exam­ple

• Pro­duc­tion process
• Mar­ket­ing process
• Pur­chas­ing process
• Sales process
• Impact man­age­ment process
• Meet­ing process
• Feed­back process

2. cre­ate a SIPOC dia­gram to visu­al­ize the process

You can use a SIPOC dia­gram to visu­al­ize and ana­lyze your process­es. It helps to iden­ti­fy all the impor­tant com­po­nents of a process and to under­stand which ele­ments con­tribute to suc­cess or can be improved. SIPOC stands for the fol­low­ing five cat­e­gories:

• Sup­pli­ers: Who sup­plies the resources need­ed for the process? This could be exter­nal part­ners, inter­nal depart­ments or oth­er stake­hold­ers.
• Inputs: What resources, mate­ri­als or infor­ma­tion are need­ed to start the process?
• Process: What steps does the process go through from start to fin­ish? The main activ­i­ties are list­ed here in a clear sequence. There should be no more than 5–7 steps.
• Out­puts (results): What is the result of the process? These can be prod­ucts, ser­vices, infor­ma­tion or oth­er results that the process gen­er­ates.
• Cus­tomer (clients): Who receives the results of the process? Exam­ples: exter­nal cus­tomers, inter­nal depart­ments or oth­er stake­hold­ers who ben­e­fit from the out­puts.

3. takes a clos­er look at the indi­vid­ual activ­i­ties in the process

Doc­u­ment all tasks that are required to car­ry out the respec­tive process. To clear­ly define the roles and respon­si­bil­i­ties in the main process steps and thus increase effi­cien­cy, you can use the RACI method. RACI stands for the fol­low­ing four cat­e­gories, which you can use to cre­ate a matrix:

• Respon­si­ble: Who is direct­ly respon­si­ble for car­ry­ing out the task? There can be sev­er­al respon­si­ble roles per task, but ide­al­ly the num­ber should remain man­age­able.
• Account­able: Who has final respon­si­bil­i­ty for the task? There should only be one account­able role for each task.
• Con­sult­ed: Who is con­sult­ed when car­ry­ing out the task? The con­sult­ed role should be involved before impor­tant deci­sions are made.
• Informed: Who needs to be informed about the progress or results of the task? The Informed role does not have to be active­ly involved, but should be kept up to date.

4. check how each activ­i­ty influ­ences your impact

Every­thing you imple­ment in your start­up can have an impact on your social, envi­ron­men­tal or eco­nom­ic impact. To ensure that you make the best use of your resources, pro­ceed as fol­lows:

Eval­u­ates whether the activ­i­ty has a pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive impact and to what extent. Use spe­cif­ic cri­te­ria and data for the eval­u­a­tion, e.g. on a scale of 1 to 5 or by means of KPI track­ing (reg­u­lar mea­sure­ment of key val­ues). Togeth­er with your sys­tems map­ping from the chap­ter “Impact man­age­ment” / LINK), you can iden­ti­fy unde­sir­able side effects. This refers not only to neg­a­tive effects caused by your busi­ness mod­el, but also to your behav­ior in your entire val­ue chain (see note). As soon as you dis­cov­er weak­ness­es, devel­op tar­get­ed mea­sures to elim­i­nate them.

Reflect on your orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture

Your cor­po­rate cul­ture is the back­bone of your start­up. It not only influ­ences team­work, but also how you are per­ceived exter­nal­ly. A strong, con­scious cul­ture can pro­mote inno­va­tion, attract tal­ent and make your vision tan­gi­ble.

1. defines a set of val­ues

Think about which val­ues are impor­tant to you (e.g. hon­esty, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, inno­va­tion) and how you can rec­on­cile these with your start­up. Orga­nize work­shops or brain­storm­ing ses­sions with your team to joint­ly devel­op val­ues that are rel­e­vant to every­one. This pro­motes accep­tance and strength­ens employ­ees’ iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the val­ues. Select 3 to 5 core val­ues that should shape your orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture. These should be specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to your start­up.

2. out­lines a tar­get cul­ture

Ana­lyze the cur­rent state of your cur­rent orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture — e.g. through anony­mous sur­veys, feed­back dis­cus­sions and inter­views with your employ­ees. And then think about what your tar­get cul­ture should look like: This refers to the cul­ture you strive for in order to achieve your vision and goals in the best pos­si­ble way. The tar­get cul­ture describes what col­lab­o­ra­tion, val­ues and behav­iors should look like in your start­up.

Ask your­selves: Where do we want to go? What should change? What makes strate­gic sense?

Takes into account the busi­ness strat­e­gy, the busi­ness envi­ron­ment and cur­rent chal­lenges. Iden­ti­fy strengths of the cur­rent cul­ture that should be retained and weak­ness­es that need to be improved. You can use the keep-start-stop method for this:

• Keep: What should be retained?
• Start: What should be start­ed?
• Stop: What should be stopped?

3. oper­a­tional­ize your orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture

Trans­lates the defined val­ues and the tar­get cul­ture into con­crete behav­iors and deci­sion-mak­ing guide­lines that can be lived in every­day life (e.g. “sus­tain­abil­i­ty” means: pre­ferred coop­er­a­tion with envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly sup­pli­ers). Deci­sions should always be aligned with the val­ues and adapt­ed to chang­ing cir­cum­stances. Devel­op a clear vision for your tar­get cul­ture, e.g: “Togeth­er we will cre­ate a feed­back-ori­ent­ed and inno­va­tion-friend­ly cor­po­rate cul­ture.”

You need mea­sur­able goals to be able to mon­i­tor progress towards your tar­get cul­ture. You can for­mu­late them with the help of the S.M.A.R.T. method:

The indi­ca­tors should

• Spe­cif­ic: Clear­ly defined and unam­bigu­ous
• Mea­sur­able: Quan­tifi­able
• Attrac­tive: Rel­e­vant for your tar­get
• Real­is­tic: Achiev­able with avail­able resources
• Sched­uled: Lim­it­ed in time

be.

Next step: Mea­sure KPIs

You have start­ed to pre­pare your team for the growth phase of your start-up, devel­oped effi­cient struc­tures and process­es and laid the foun­da­tions for a sta­ble orga­ni­za­tion­al cul­ture.

Before you move on to mea­sur­ing KPIs and cre­at­ing a ref­er­ence sce­nario, you should devel­op a plan for the eco­nom­ic growth (LINK 1) of your start­up and opti­mize your impact man­age­ment (LINK 2).