Anne Giles Clelland

A Start-Up Evolves - The Hunter-Gatherer Stage

When I’ve worked as a contractor for companies, I knew I was a hunter-gatherer for hire.  I wasn't to be part of the metaphorical agricultural revolution of a company, but a task completer.  I was to find this herb for this purpose, deliver it, then done.

I found being a contractor very satisfying if these conditions could be met:

• Tell me what you want to have happen as a result of my work.
• Tell me what the rules are.
• Tell me the criteria by which my work will be evaluated.
• Tell me when it’s due.
• Praise me and pay me.

As I contractor, I knew it was the work, what I brought to that work, and my ability to execute with regard to these criteria that created my value.

When I’ve worked as an employee for companies, I’ve found the experience more complex.  A company expects an employee to be both contractor and team member, both hunter-gatherer and communal farmer.  Synergy is the goal.  I’m expected to be one of the parts that creates the greater whole.  Synergy requires that I not only generate good work, but build relationships, and interact within those relationships within the context of, and to further, the company’s mission.  What’s wanted of me, what the rules are, and by what criteria I will be evaluated, although occasionally defined in job descriptions, can be intangible and amorphous.  It's a rich experience, but different from that of a contractor.

As a contractor, it was my work that was valued, not my contribution to the synergy of a company or community.  Therefore, I was not tied to, obligated to, or necessarily loyal to the company with whom I contracted.  I had lots of gigs, worked for lots of companies, and could accept or reject a project to find this nut or that grain at will.  I didn’t have the context, connections, or benefits of “belonging” to a company but, at the time, that met my personal and professional needs.

But if I didn't work, I didn't eat.  Like a hunter-gatherer, I was free to wander, but I didn't have the safety of a salary and its hut full of food when a storm hit.

As the founder of a company with a one-year anniversary under its belt, what I need from those with whom I work - contractors, interns, even professional service providers - is execution.  I share this condition with a contractor:  My company is in the energy intensive hunter-gatherer stage of evolution.  If I don’t find food, I don’t eat.  As my company becomes established, we'll stage a revolution, domesticate our plants and animals, and develop a corporate culture of synergy.

In the meantime, I need contractors who can execute.  I need fruit right now.

What I give up by having contractors rather than employees is their loyalty, their commitment, their evolution into what they could become while planting roots in my company.  I lose the chance to have my own synergistic relationship with the employee.  I heard a new employee of a company within one week of being hired refer to the company as “we.”  No one says “we” about my company.  Not yet.

But as a company founder in the hunter-gatherer stage, what I lack is time.  If I myself, or contractors who work for my company, don’t execute - “find food,” a.k.a. generate revenue or directly support the generation of revenue - I grow weak from hunger.  The weaker I am, the less power I have to “find food,” to meet with potential clients, to design products and services for the demands of the market, to execute my company’s strategy.

The greater the maintenance required by contractors, the less time the founder has to found the company.  The greater the ability to execute by contractors, the more time the founder has to found.

I've heard a statistic for which I don't have a source:  80% of a manager's time is spent in human resources, i.e. in wrangling personnel.

I hear that and I feel hungry.

The ecology of a start-up can be fragile.  This is normal, natural, and expected in a company’s evolution.  Ultimately, the success of a start-up depends upon the strength of the founder.  Thirteen months after launch, this founder is feeling strong and is founding as hard as she can.  At times maniacally.  Always determinedly.

Tomorrow, she will welcome employees and synergy and revolution.

Today, she welcomes contractors who find and deliver herbs.

The Honest Boss

“Honesty lets me be myself.”

I was struck by how child-like I felt when I  happened to read these words on a school hallway poster on the way to the restroom at a triathlon. 

Being myself is wanted and valued?  The more honest I am, the more myself I am, and the more valued I am? 

I had been struck similarly a few days earlier by the honesty and directness of Tracy Wilkins, founder of TechLab, in a conversation before a NewVa Corridor Technology Council, NCTC, meeting.  He confers often and readily with entrepreneurs and candidly uses his own successes, tight spots, and failures as texts for lessons on starting and running a company.

When speaking with entrepreneurs, Wilkins sees a recurring theme when listening to their challenges.  He asks, “What’s your job?”  The entrepreneur will say “CEO” or “President.”  Wilkins answers for them:  “You’re the boss.  Be the boss.”

Why I felt choked up when I heard this, and why I do now as I type this, is that it’s true.

I am the boss.  By founding a company and hiring even one individual for even the smallest task, I made myself a boss.

"Be the boss."

With one year of on-the-job experience, I look back and see I have tried to be a facilitative boss, an enlightened boss, a boss who leads, not just manages.

“Honesty lets me by myself.”

I haven’t always been a boss who said the imperative two, strong, boss-like sentences that would have been a) honest and b) in accord with my vision for myself and my company.

“No.” 

I have said yes when my heart, mind, spirit, gut, intuition, and integrity screamed to say no.  As a start-up, I was so hungry.  I feared missing a meal more than I trusted finding one.  I compromised in ways I regret.  Not in ways that directly hurt others.  But in ways that hurt me.

“This won’t do.”  I have accepted work and actions that were not acceptable. 

Sigh.

And yet.

• I take chances on people. I have ultimate faith in them. If my work with them now isn’t a good fit, they’ll find a good fit down the path. No doubt in my mind.
• I believe people evolve. Good work now can become great work later and heartbreakingly astronomical work down the road. I’m willing to pay wages now for the chance that will happen later.
• I value honesty and integrity. If my path is out of alignment with my values and principles, I can see it, or be shown it, and move another way. I make mistakes, but I don’t want to, and I will make corrections and amends.

“Be the boss.”

The challenge, of course, is that when “Be the boss” is implemented and boss-like statements are made, the boss risks not finding his or her “myself” particularly valued at the time, to the point of losing the person, the work, the project.

Honesty lets my company be itself.  If I, as my company’s leader and boss, am honest in line with my vision for my company, then, although I will experience losses and challenges and crises along the way, ultimately, I will end up working with people and doing work and creating products and services that are honest, too.

Dear Meddling Employee

When I came home from the very first day of my very first job as a teenager, I told my mother, "They don’t pay me enough!  I did this and I did that..."

My mother said, "The company doesn’t work for you.  You work for the company.  And your job is to make money for the company."

As an adult, I can see the complexities of the employer-employee relationship and note that, taken to an extreme, "make money for the company" can result in a sweatshop.  Still, my mother taught me two fundamental business principles:

1. To be a company and to stay in business as a company, the company needs to make money.
2. To be able to pay an employee, a company needs to make money. An employee practices enlightened self-interest by helping the company make money.

***

Ninety-eight percent of my work career has been spent as an employee and one percent as a sole proprietor.  That last one percent - this past year - has been spent as an employer, as “the boss.”

I have thought often over the past year of writing a letter of thank you - and of amends - to each of my employers.  I had no idea the price they paid personally and professionally to create a salary and benefits for me.  I had no idea how my work habits, occasional defiance, and occasional personal crisis disrupted the process by which they were able to create that salary and those benefits for me.  For whatever the reason, when I wasn’t working or was working inefficiently, I wasn’t making money for the company.  I was costing it money.

I write a workplace advice column for Valley Business FRONT, and the column on the meddling employee has generated several comments and a thoughtful response by Jim Schweitzer. 

A central issue of the discussion is the role of the creative employee - who may seem on the surface to be a meddler - in an organization.

I’ve worked at several organizations that treasured creativity.  At the finest, as employees, our continuing education - of our own choosing if accepted by a review committee of peers - was paid for, including transportation and lodging.  In-house, we had expert guest speakers in a variety of fields, quarterly workshops, and annual retreats.  I thrived in that environment and, through those experiences, created more valuable products for the organization.  The organization’s investment in my creativity yielded significant returns.  I made money for the company.

I have written that, as the founder of a one-year start-up company, I have taken no salary.  I yearn to provide creative opportunities for the contractors and interns who work for my company.  I simply do not have sufficient revenue to do it.  Currently.

I see a very difficult tension between creativity and profitability.  On the one hand, a company is dependent upon innovation to create products and services for which the market might clamor with demand.

On the other hand, if a company doesn’t execute its innovations, it won’t generate revenue to support itself.  If it doesn’t have revenue, it can’t support its creativity and innovation.

Therein is the daily judgment call - even the moment-to-moment judgment call - of company leadership:  How do I foster space for creativity and innovation for my organization at the same time as I foster execution of the more linear demands of staying in business?

***

As I mentioned in my comment on the meddling employee post, I have meddled and I have been meddled with, and I suggest a self-examination of motivations for each party.  Answering "What are we doing and why?" can be hugely instructive.

Elements of the “why” are universal.

I heard this at a workshop years ago and haven’t been able to find to whom to attribute it, but I think it expresses the essence of being human:  “What we most want is to know and be known, to love and be loved, to touch and be touched.”

And my husband is the first I’ve heard to articulate this principle this way, so I do attribute it to him:  “Ultimately, each of us wants to be valued.”

So I’ll conclude this way:

Dear Meddling Employee:

Value your work, this company’s work, and my work by contributing your work to this company in a way that helps it continue to be financially successful. 

If you are frustrated, please let me know directly and as specifically as possible what could change to free you to do your best work.  If what you request aligns with the company’s vision, and it’s within my power and the company’s means, I will do my best to make it happen.

If you feel as if you’ve tried to communicate this to me, and I haven’t been able to hear you, then maybe that’s a limit on my part, or a mismatch for both of us, and our work together is not a fit.

I hired you, or my predecessor hired you, because you and your work are valued.  My greatest hope is that we can continue to work together for the good of each of us, all of us, the company, and the greater good.

Sincerely,
Your Employer