Personnel Challenges Faced In A Start-up And How To Overcome Them

Personnel Challenges Faced In A Start-up And How To Overcome Them

Ashutosh Garg

One of the biggest dilemmas I was faced with as I built the company needed good management people but the good people were not willing to join a startup company. I found it to be a huge challenge to get strong professionals managers to leave large companies and join a startup. Good managers, I realized, are generally poor risk takers and only when they see the stability of a company and they see other professional managers making this leap of faith do they agree to make a change.

The human resource function of any retail company can make or break a company since retail companies are people intensive and our people are our ambassadors and our “face” in front of our customers.

This function must have a strong leader and must have complete support of the entrepreneur. The entrepreneur must outline his philosophy for this function but in words and in deeds because this is what will set the management culture of the company.

Since I am the oldest member of the management, I used to often have to stop younger managers coming in to touch my feet and “seek my blessings”. I would tell them that there was no need to touch my feet at all, no matter what the culture of our country in India of respecting older people may be. If I had allowed this to continue, other senior managers would have expected something similar from their juniors. It has taken me time and this practice of touching one’s feet in the work place has now been stopped.

Similarly, I was often requested that the company must celebrate Founder’s Day on my birthday. My response was that while I was the founder, we should celebrate the foundation day of the company and there was no reason to celebrate my birthday. We now celebrate 25^th August as the company anniversary where we honour our top performers.

Each time I walked into a manager’s room or I walked down an office aisle, people would stop their work and stand up. I have never understood how standing up and stopping work is a way to show respect to a senior.

To me, continuing with your work when a manager walks down the aisle is a much stronger way to show respect to the senior individual as well as the organization. It has taken me time but the message in the company is very clear – continue with your work when a senior manager happens to walk past you and keep sitting at your chair if a senior manager walks into your office to discuss some work.

Some of our guiding human resources principles that I established very early in our development were,

1.    Guardian would rapidly move towards professional management and that we would not build a family run organization.

2.    We would have professional growth based on meritocracy and not based on relationships or patronage

3.    Any relationships between managers would need to be disclosed at the time of hiring and approved by the management committee of the company. We also specified that two managers who were related would not be allowed to work in the same department.

4.    Performance management would be done based on agreed and quantifiable key result areas for each manager

5.    Salary increases would be based on achievement of results and not based on seniority.

The author is the Chairman of Guardian Pharmacies and the author of the bestselling books, The Corner Office and The Buck Stops Here. Twitter: @gargashutosh

http://www.businessinsider.in/Personnel-ChallengesFaced-In-A-Start-up-And-How-To-Overcome-Them/articleshow/25363127.cms

Asian Business Champions - Lufthansa

The Corner Office - at No 1 at WH Smith, Delhi Airport

Startup Losses And Cash Burn. What’s The Difference?

Startup Losses and Cash Burn

Ashutosh Garg

Every new business will lose new money. This has to be taken as a “given”. Making a planned loss is never a problem. Making an unplanned loss and then having to try and justify it is a huge problem.

Most entrepreneurs tend to look only at the rosy and optimistic picture without recognizing the problems that will be faced and without factoring in a number of unplanned costs that will have to be incurred. Inspite of the company growing in high double digits entrepreneurs are always on the back foot with their board of directors because they had not met their over aggressive business plans. No amount of growth over previous year is relevant if one has not met the budgets. This will always cause frustration at most board reviews for the management team of the company.

It is important for every entrepreneur to understand that making money is not going to easy. Don’t believe for a second that revenues will instantly start coming in and customers will start flocking to buy your products. The reality is far different, and you will fare much better if you understand this reality and plan for it beforehand rather than get surprised later.

It is better to plan for losses and state this in your business plan. When monthly reviews are held with the board of directors, it is always better to explain how you have over achieved your numbers rather than take high targets initially and start with explaining negative variances each month.

Always remember that it is easier to “under promise and over deliver” rather than “over promise and under deliver”. A wise thing to do is to build a “stretch” in the business plan which will give you the cushion you need to handle any contingencies

No one likes to lose money and yet it is a well-recognized fact that most new businesses will lose money. Some businesses will lose money for longer periods than others because of the nature of the business and retail businesses have very long gestation periods. There is nothing to be ashamed of if your business is losing money as long as you can see the light at the end of tunnel.

All businesses will burn money and it is necessary to have sufficient funds in the bank to meet the burn. Most entrepreneurs and startups should plan for their losses and understand what the monthly burn is likely to be so that at no stage will the business run out of funds.

“Cash burn” should be defined as the amount of money that is committed to be spent each month, irrespective of whether or not a business is generating any cash flows. This is also the amount of money that is needed to be put in every month to meet the cash losses of the company. These expenses are for basic necessities such as salaries, rentals, utilities and communication costs as well as for expenses of a capital nature such as store build out and fixed assets.

All businesses will be confronted with several unplanned costs which will throw the entire cash planning out of gear and that is when the entrepreneur will have to scramble to raise additional funds.

The author is the Chairman of Guardian Pharmacies and the author of the bestselling books, The Corner Office and The Buck Stops Here. Twitter: @gargashutosh

http://www.businessinsider.in/Startup-Losses-AndCash-Burn-Whats-The-Difference/articleshow/24874599.cms

The Corner Office - Continues to be in top 3 best sellers

Build an Organization with Integrity, Ethics and Honesty

Integrity, Ethics And Honesty Should Be The Most Important Aspects Of An Organisation

Ashutosh Garg

http://www.businessinsider.in/Integrity-Ethics-And-Honesty-ShouldBe-The-Most-Important-Aspects-Of-An-Organisation/articleshow/24544197.cms

Laying the foundation of an honest organization built with strong integrity and ethics is important to set the culture, direction and priorities for any new company.

The lead has to be taken by the leader of a company by setting the right example and setting the right standards.

Honesty is Black or White - There is no Grey

To me, honesty is a simple black and white subject. There neither is grey in honesty nor is there any shade of white and black as I have heard many people say. Either you are honest or dishonest.

I tell my young colleagues that before they leave home morning when they are alone shaving and look in the mirror, can they look at themselves directly in the eye and tell themselves

“I did no wrong yesterday and I did not knowingly harm anyone yesterday and I was honest with myself”

This I believe is the only explanation they would ever need to give to themselves. What anyone else thinks of them or their actions is of no relevance and does not matter. My advice to my young colleagues is

“If someone asks you to compromise your own ethical standards or asks you to do something you don’t think is correct, hear them out. You don’t have to implement their decision if you disagree. Go with your conscience. What you think is right is what the organization expects from you. You can’t please everyone”.

Threshold of Conscience

As I progressed through my early working life, I began to understand that honesty had shades of grey and each person had his own threshold of conscience.

I have often argued with colleagues and others whether using a company car to drop children to school or to take your wife shopping or charging a personal expense as official entertainment or converting a business class ticket into two economy tickets when travelling overseas on company work so that your partner can fly free is right or wrong.

These are examples of when we change our own threshold of conscience to suit our own needs. We accept a position that we would normally not accept for our subordinates. We would also not accept this as correct if we hear someone else has done something similar. Then how can we rationalize this for ourselves?

As long as my own conscience is clear and as long as I know that I am doing what I think is right, I will keep moving forward.

I have recognized that very often in order to get work done, I have to accept what is the normal pattern of working in our country and I have learned not to question why most times, favors need to be done to get what is yours by right and not because you are asking for something to be done that is incorrect or out of turn.

A senior bureaucrat in a South East Asian country once told me that there was no corruption in his country. They believed in the philosophy of Cooperation, not Corruption.

“If you are going to do business in my country and make a profit, you need to cooperate and share a part of this profit with us”, he said. Quite an interesting perspective though not necessarily something to be emulated anywhere.

Gifting is another area where can always interpret several shades of grey. In our country, it is almost a culture to give gifts at Diwali every year and if a gift is not accepted, it is seen as an affront by the person giving the gift. Yet, if the person who the gift is for makes it abundantly clear that gifts are not welcome, then the practice of giving gifts comes to a stop.

In conclusion, the leader sets the standards for integrity and honesty in any organization or indeed in any family. If the leader willingly compromises his ethical standards it is impossible to expect people down the line or other members of the family to comply to a dual standard.

The author is the Chairman of Guardian Pharmacies and the author of the bestselling books, The Corner Office and The Buck Stops Here. Twitter: @gargashutosh

Lufthansa - Asian Business Champions - Ashutosh Garg - 2011