Inc. magazine’s headline was “How to Fight Employee Turnover.” The article started this way.
“Over the past year, Big Fuel has seen its revenue more than triple, to $40 million, and its head count swell, from 70 employees to 140. But with growth comes growing pains. Like many start-ups, the New York City-based social-media marketing agency had never bothered with a formal orientation program and was finding it difficult to train all these new staff members—many of whom came from disparate industries and lacked experience in social media. As a result, Big Fuel began to experience a problem it never had: employee turnover.”
Our business culture lauds growth above almost everything else, but growth always brings challenges as well as successes. The talent development challenges don’t show up right away.
Entrepreneurial energy and drive carry a company in the beginning. The team is small enough for everyone to know each other and loose enough that everyone can pursue their own personal development agenda and help the company succeed at the same time.
The first crisis is usually a leadership crisis. The growing company needs to consolidate its efforts. One of the founders may become the key business manager or “adult supervision” may be hired from outside.
There aren’t any talent management systems in place yet, and that often creates the next crisis, the one featured in the Inc article about Big Fuel. Talented people leave. People you thought would be part of the future leave. Those are clues that it’s time for more formal talent management.
The first crisis point seems to me to occur when the number of employees gets somewhere around Dunbar’s Number, or about 150 people. Most companies respond to the crisis by doing pretty much what Big Fuel did. They add some programs that fit their need at the time. That’s worked for Big Fuel so far, but there’s danger ahead if they keep growing.
At some point companies that grow very big need talent management specialists. That’s what happened to Google. In early 2005, when Google had around 3000 employees, Sergey Brin decided that the hiring process was starting to be a problem.
So, in 2006, Google brought in Lazslo Bock (no relation) from General Electric to deal with talent development. Bock’s done a great job of improving talent management and fitting into Google’s culture.
Every company wants to grow, it seems. Just remember that rapid growth creates problems and many of them are talent management problems. The solutions to those problems will have to fit your company’s size, growth rate, and culture.
