Your competition is juggling thousands of employees, sweating quarterly shareholder expectations, and managing disconnected systems from acquisitions. They are simultaneously watching out for the challengers next to them, in front of them, and behind them. They are moving at a slower speed.
All you need to worry about is building a product or service that drives revenue.
To be fast, and to stay agile as you grow, you have to hire great people and then get out of their way. When we’re hiring new employees I respect experience, but it’s one of the least important traits on our list. Our hiring priorities are, in order: person (character and enthusiasm), skills, and then experience. This isn’t an industry-specific mantra, it can be successful in all types of companies. In his famous book Setting the Table, restaurateur Danny Myer explains how he went from opening one little café in New York City in the 80s (with little previous restaurant experience) to becoming one of the best-known entrepreneurs in the industry. His secret? Hire great people.
After reading a competitors’ quarterly shareholder update recently, I noticed that they hired 400 people in three months. It’s not hard to imagine that their priorities are in the exact opposite order as ours, making their beefiness a lot less scary. Your heavyweight competition is hiring at a scale to “fill seats.” If you attempt to follow them and hire only for experience, a whole multitude of potential issues will arise, like silo’d thinking and an entitled work ethic, which result in higher turnover.
The larger your competitor is, the more red tape and “processes” they have, and the slower they move. Here’s where your pace can work a little to your benefit. Because you’re hiring on a much smaller scale, every single person on your team can really move the needle up and down and affect the company. Take the extra time during the interview process to find people who fit, not just people with skill-sets that fit. Then get the heck out of their way. A great example of an enterprise that has grown smart and avoided this common pitfall is Zappo’s. Why? It’s a people-centric business.
Hire well and empower your team to get in the fight, then they’ll move as fast as you need them to in order to get the job done. They won’t be hamstrung by reviews, memos, and layers upon layers of approvals. While you’re competitors are going through the motions, your people are throwing punches at them they didn’t expect and are too slow to block.
