Momentum

Building and compensating the organizational team

This week’s FastTrac session was about building and compensating your organizational team with a visit from Bruce Los of Gentex. John and Sandra began the session by discussing all of the things to consider before beginning to build a team:

• Understand roles your company requires/will require; evaluate founders’ ability to fill these roles.
• Plan to build a management team that can meet your business’ needs as they evolve.
• Focus on “Selecting” Talent. Hire people who are smarter than you and give them full autonomy.
• Recruit happy people who love their current job; as a start-up, you want to attract people who are coming to you because they are excited about what you are doing. Not just because they need a job.
• Ensure a “start-up mentality”; candidates must know in advance that working for a start-up is different than working for an established, larger company. There are many unknowns, risks and employees must be prepared to wear many hats.
• Leverage advisory board for credibility and connections, manage them like your “lead team”
• Create a compensation plan that will help attract/retain top talent. What can you offer when you can’t offer a lot of money? Positive work environment, perks, a challenge, flexible schedules, fun activities, profit sharing.
• Outsourcing-don’t bring people on until you have to.
• Have a succession plan in place.

Our guest speaker this week was Bruce Los who is VP of Human Resources at Gentex. Bruce began his career at Prince Corporation the day after graduated high school and stayed with the company until it was purchased by Johnson Controls. He stayed on as VP of HR for JCI for 3 year and then left to pursue his own company, TwistThink. Bruce sold TwistThink in 2003 and has been with Gentex ever since. He shared his thoughts on recruiting and company culture.

• Culture is the special sauce of every company. Develop it through who you hire and who you do business with. Your culture is defined about how people talk to their neighbors about your company over back fence.
• When recruiting, define what you want in a role, a person. Choose people that will compliment you, then be critical by that standard. Be careful not to get enamored by someone just because you like them, but does not have anything to do with what you really need.
• Best way to interview is shut up. Ask very few open ended questions, then decide if it is the right person. Don’t make decision in first meeting.
• Choose people who have specific skills, but can also act as a generalists. Business models change, so be careful not to pigeon hole someone into a specific role.
• Small companies can offer better recognition than large corporations. Offer kudos in front of customer and other members of the team.
• Allow people to use their gifts and give a feeling of ownership. Use tools like profit sharing and bonuses.
• Be deliberate about diversity. Don’t be walking clones of each other.

Thanks to Bruce for stopping by to share his insight!