Onboarding vs. Waterboarding

One of our new senior hires just said to me the other day that he has been enjoying his Onboarding process during his first 90 days at Return Path and that at other companies he’s worked at in the past, the first few months were more like Waterboarding.

At Return Path, we place a lot of emphasis on onboarding – the way we ask employees to spend their first 90 days on the job.  I’ve often said that the hiring process doesn’t end on the employee’s first day.  I think about the employee’s first day as the mid-point of the hiring process. The things that come after the first day — orientation (where’s the bathroom?), context-setting (here’s our mission, here’s how your job furthers it), goal setting (what’s your 90-day plan?), and a formal check-in 90 days later — are all make-or-break in terms of integrating a new employee into the organization, making sure they’re a good hire, and making them as productive as possible.

Nothing has a greater impact on a hire’s long-term viability than a thorough Onboarding. Sure, you have to get the right people in the door. But if you don’t onboard them properly, they may never work out. This is where all companies, big and small, fail most consistently.  Remember your first day of work? Did you (or anyone at the company) know where you were supposed to sit? Did you (or anyone at the company) know if your computer was set up? Did you (or anyone at the company) have a project ready for you to start on? Did you (or anyone at the company) know when you’d be able to meet your manager? Probably not.

Take onboarding much more seriously, and you’ll be astounded by the results. We have a Manager of Onboarding whose only job is to manage the first 90 days of every employee’s experience. You don’t need to go that far (and won’t be able to until you’ve scaled well past 100 employees), but here are some things you can, and must, do to assure a successful onboarding process:

1. Start onboarding before Day 1. Just as recruitment doesn’t end until Day 90, onboarding starts before Day 1. At Return Path, we ask people to create a “Wall Bio” – a one-page collage of words and images that introduces them to the team – before their first day. It’s a quick introduction to our company culture, and something the rest of our team looks forward to seeing as new people join. Your project can be different, but it’s important to get new hires engaged even before their first day.

2. Set up your new hire’s desk in advance. There is nothing more dispiriting than spending your first day at new job chasing down keyboards and trying to figure out your phone extension. We go to the opposite extreme. When a new hire walks in the door at Return Path, their desk is done. Their computer, monitor and telephone are set up. There’s a nameplate on their office or cube. They’ve got a full set of company gear (T-shirt, tote, etc.). To show how excited we are, we even include a bottle of champagne and a handwritten note from me welcoming them to the company. In the early days of the business, we even had the champagne delivered to the employee’s home after they accepted the offer. (That didn’t scale well, particularly outside of New York City.)

3. Prepare an orientation deck for Day 1. There are certain things about your company that new hires will learn as they go along: nuances of culture, pacing, etc. But there are some things that should be made explicit right away. What is the company’s mission? What are its values? How is the organization structured? What is the current strategic plan? These details are common to every employee, and all new hires should hear them—preferably from the CEO. You can present these details one-on-one to your direct reports, or do larger in-office sessions to groups of new hires over breakfast or lunch.

4. Clearly set 90-day objectives and goals. Other details are going to be specific to an employee’s position. What’s their job description (again)? What are the first steps they should take? Resources they should know about? People they should meet? Training courses to enroll in? Materials to read and subscribe to? Finally, and most importantly, what are the major objectives for their first 90 days? They shouldn’t spend their first quarter “feeling around.” They should spend it actively and intentionally working toward a clear goal.

5. Run a review process at the end of 90 days. Whether you do a 360 review or a one-way performance review, the 90-day mark is a really good point to pull up and assess whether the new hire is working out and fitting culturally as well. It’s much easier to admit a mistake at this point and part ways while the recruiting process is still somewhat fresh than it is months down the road after you’ve invested more and more in the new hire.

With that, the hiring process is done. Now, repeat.

[Note:  this post contains some passages excerpted from my book, Startup CEO:  A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business, published by Wiley & Sons earlier this fall.]

Help Me, Help You, Part II

Thanks to the nearly 100 readers who responded to my reader survey this past week.  While I’m not sure it’s a truly statistically significant base of OnlyOnce’s audience (I’ll have to ask my friends over at Authentic Response), I’ll treat it like it is.  Here’s what I learned.  First, the general results:

• Satisfaction levels are good – 46% are regular readers and love it, 48% read occasionally and think it’s ok, and only 6% gave it an “eh – wouldn’t miss it if it went away”
• Entrepreneurship is the most popular topic, with 86% interest, and Leadership/Management is a close second at 82%.  Online/Email Marketing came in at 61% and Book Reviews at 43%.  Current Affairs and Travel (which I almost never use) were 31% and 25%, respectively
• 72% of people feel frequency at 1-2 posts a week is on target.  Only 4.5% want fewer posts, and 24% (those kind souls) want it more often
• Most people other than Return Path staff found the site through a link on another blog rather than search

Next, the open-ended comments were interesting.  A summary snapshot:

• Positive comments were generally about tone and candid approach, succinct posts, and topics.  One nice person noted his/her favorite thing was “the author” (thank you Mom/Dad/Grandma/Mariquita/Michael)
• Constructive comments varied.  Some good ones are noted below:
• “assumes a level of knowledge not everyone has”
• “too heralding of the VC view of the world”
• “too much focus on email/marketing,” “too local/American” (that’s who I am, though)
• “ I would like to see more about what it takes to be a CEO in day to day operations. what skills do you find you need, what obstacles do you come across, issues with driving a company.”
• “A little too much PRish in regards to Return Path”
• “It seems like everything you write about is too positive. Or at least a negative story with a happy ending. Nothing about what sucks to run a company. I run one and a lot of it does suck.”
• “Not enough personal stuff — who is the author?” (see the About Me link on the blog)
  
• “The word vigilante is bandied around way too much by the author”
• And of course someone noted as constructive feedback that I haven’t yet mentioned my mother’s name (sorry, Mom/Joyce!).  And one person suggested I shave.  Thanks, really.

Finally, the demographics of my audience:

• 3 % are under 24, 45% are 25-34, 41% are 35-49, 11% are over 49
• 80% male and 20% female (surprising)
• Company data wasn’t so interesting, or I phrased the question poorly – but one takeaway is that about 1/2 of readers seem to be “in the industry” generally speaking, with lots of Return Path staff subscribing as well as lots of other entrepreneurs and a handful of VCs
• Level/title was more interesting – nearly half the audience is SVP-level or above at their company

Thanks again, everyone, and I’ll take note of this feedback for future postings!

Selecting an ESP

Return Path’s Ken Takahashi (formerly of DARTMail fame) wrote a great post today on the Return Path blog — the first in a series — about selecting an ESP.  If you are an email marketer who is thinking about selecting an ESP, it’s a great read.

Return Path Makes The List of “Best Places to Work” in Colorado

Long-time readers of this blog no doubt understand my central philosophy when it comes to management.   I believe that people come first.  When employees are happy they make our clients happy.  Happy clients happily pay for our services, which tends to make our investors happy.  When you start with the people, everyone wins.

At Return Path we invest a lot in our people.  And we invest a lot in Team People – what we call “Human Resources” – to support those people. 

So what a great honor to see all that hard work and investment pay off in the form of a “Best Places to Work” honor!  The Society for Human Resources Management named us one of its “Best Places to Work in Colorado” at an awards banquet last Friday.  You can read more about how we won this award on the Return Path blog.

Of course a CEO can set the agenda and make certain decisions to support a great work environment.  But it is the 150 people who come to Return Path every day who make it the amazing place that it is.  I could not be more thankful for each and every one of them – their passion, dedication, teamwork and kindness all come together to create a company that I would want to work for even if I wasn’t the CEO.

Use Your Powers for Good

Neil Schwartzman, our compliance officer for our Sender Score Certified whitelist program, wrote a great post on the Return Path blog entitled How the Sender Community Can Help Fight Spam.  If you’re a commercial mailer, I’d encourage you to read it.  It’s a great perspective from a long-time anti-spam leader.

Stamina

A couple years ago I had breakfast with Nick Mehta, my friend who runs the incredibly exciting Gainsight.  I think at the time I had been running Return Path for 15 years, and he was probably 5 years into his journey.  He said he wanted to run his company forever, and he asked me how I had developed the stamina to keep running Return Path as long as I had.  My off the cuff answer had three points, although writing them down afterwards yielded a couple more.  For entrepreneurs who love what they do, love running and building companies for the long haul, this is an important topic.  CEOs have to change their thinking as their businesses scale, or they will self implode!  What are five things you need to get comfortable with as your business scales in order to be in it for the long haul?

Get more comfortable with not every employee being a rock star.  When you have 5, 10, or even 100 employees, you need everyone to be firing on all cylinders at all times.  More than that, you want to hire “rock stars,” people you can see growing rapidly with their jobs.  As organizations get larger, though, not only is it impossible to staff them that way, it’s not desirable either.  One of the most influential books I’ve read on hiring over the years, Topgrading (review, buy), talks about only hiring A players, but hiring three kinds of A players:  people who are excellent at the job you’re hiring them for and may never grow into a new role; people who are excellent at the job you’re hiring them for and who are likely promotable over time; and people who are excellent at the job you’re hiring them for and are executive material.  Startup CEOs tend to focus on the third kind of hire for everyone.  Scaling CEOs recognize that you need a balance of all three once you stop growing 100% year over year, or even 50%.

Get more comfortable with people quitting.  This has been a tough one for me over the years, although I developed it out of necessity first (there’s only so much you can take personally!), with a philosophy to follow.  I used to take every single employee departure personally.  You are leaving MY company?  What’s wrong with you?  What’s wrong with me or the company?  Can I make a diving catch to save you from leaving?  The reality here about why people leave companies may be 10% about how competitive the war for talent has gotten in technology.  But it’s also 40% from each of two other factors.  First, it’s 40% that, as your organization grows and scales, it may not be the right environment for any given employee any more. Our first employee resigned because we had “gotten too big” when we had about 25 employees.  That happens a bit more these days!  But different people find a sweet spot in different sizes of company.  Second, it’s 40% that sometimes the right next step for someone to take in their career isn’t on offer at your company.  You may not have the right job for the person’s career trajectory if it’s already filled, with the incumbent unlikely to leave.  You may not have the right job for the person’s career trajectory at all if it’s highly specialized.  Or for employees earlier in their careers, it may just be valuable for them to work at another company so they can see the differences between two different types of workplace.

Get more comfortable with a whole bunch of entry level, younger employees who may be great people but won’t necessarily be your friends.  I started Return Path in my late 20s, and I was right at our average age.  It felt like everyone in the company was a peer in that sense, and that I could be friends with all of them.  Now I’m in my (still) mid-40s and am well beyond our average age, despite my high level of energy and of course my youthful appearance.  There was a time several years ago where I’d say things to myself or to someone on my team like “how come no one wants to hang out with me after work any more,” or “wow do I feel out of place at this happy hour – it’s really loud here.”  That’s all ok and normal.  Participate in office social events whenever you want to and as much as you can, but don’t expect to be the last man or woman standing at the end of the evening, and don’t expect that everyone in the room will want to have a drink with you.  No matter how approachable and informal you are, you’re still the CEO, and that office and title are bound to intimidate some people.

Get more comfortable with shifts in culture and differentiate them in your mind from shifts in values.  I wrote a lot about this a couple years ago in The Difference Between Culture and Values . To paraphrase from that post, an organization’s values shouldn’t change over time, but its culture – the expression of those values – necessarily changes with the passage of time and the growth of the company.  The most clear example I can come up with is about the value of transparency and the use case of firing someone.  When you have 10 employees, you can probably just explain to everyone why you fired Joe.  When you have 100 employees, it’s not a great idea to tell everyone why you fired Joe, although you might be ok if everyone finds out.  When you have 1,000 employees, telling everyone why you fired Joe invites a lawsuit from Joe and an expensive settlement on your part, although it’s probably ok and important if Joe’s team or key stakeholders comes to understand what happened.  Does that evolution mean you aren’t being true to your value of transparency?  No.  It just means that WHERE and HOW you are transparent needs to evolve as the company evolves.

• Get more comfortable with process.  This doesn’t mean you have to turn your nimble startup into a bureaucracy.  But a certain amount of process (more over time as the company scales) is a critical enabler of larger groups of people not only getting things done but getting the right things done, and it’s a critical enabler of the company’s financial health.  At some point, you and your CFO can’t go into a room for a day and do the annual budget by yourselves any more.  But you also can’t let each executive set a budget and just add them together.  At some point, you can’t approve every hire yourself.  But you also can’t let people hire whoever they want, and you can’t let some other single person approve all new hires either, since no one really has the cross-company view that you and maybe a couple of other senior executives has.  At some point, the expense policy of “use your best judgment and spend the company’s money as if it was your own” has to fit inside department T&E budgets, or it’s possible that everyone’s individual best judgments won’t be globally optimal and will cause you to miss your numbers.  Allow process to develop organically.  Be appropriately skeptical of things that smell like bureaucracy and challenge them, but don’t disallow them categorically.  Hire people who understand more sophisticated business process, but don’t let them run amok and make sure they are thoughtful about how and where they introduce process to the organization.

I bet there are 50 things that should be on this list, not 5.  Any others out there to share?

Opening Night

My brother Michael, internet marketer by day and a writer by night, had his first play produced last night off-Broadway at the Manhattan Repertory Theater’s SummerFest.  The play is a romantic comedy called Fallout, and it’s my favorite thing he’s written of about 8-10 works I’ve read over the years, both screen and stage plays. 

This is the first time I’ve ever had a bit of a “behind the scenes” look at an Opening Night, and it was fun to be a part of it.  When I think about entrepreneurial pursuits in business, I’m not sure this even compares.  For Michael, it seemed to be the equivalent of a company’s founding, a product launch, and an IPO — all rolled into one.  It was more intense than any individual thing I’ve seen in business over the years. 

And it came out great.  The play was a big success with the audience (and not just among those of us whose last name is Blumberg).  Michael, the director Robin, and the incredibly talented cast did a great job, so much so that the theater company is extending the run to one extra night, this Sunday at 7 p.m., since the three initial nights are sold out.  Anyone interested, the number to call for tickets is 646-329-6588.

Poking a little fun at VCs

Fred posted a great slideshow this morning of “things VCs will never say.”  I can’t tell if the show is meant to be serious or not — some of the things would be great to hear from VCs, some would be terrible — though Fred’s comment at the bottom leads me to believe he thinks it was serious.

At any rate, it reminded me of the brilliant and hilarious “VC Calendar Calisthenics” post of Dave Hornick from 5-6 years ago, which you can see here.  Even if you’ve read it before, it’s worth a refresher.

The Value of a Break

I’ve written before about our sabbatical policy as well as my experience with my first sabbatical five years ago.

I just got back from another sabbatical. This one wasn’t 100% work-free, which breaks our rule, but after a few false starts with it, when I realized a few weeks before it started in January that I either needed to postpone it again or work on a couple of things while I was on a break, I opted for the latter.  The time off was great. Nothing special or too exotic. A couple short trips, and lots of quality time with Mariquita and the kids.

Re-reading my post from my last sabbatical now, I realize I have re-learned those same three lessons again — that I love my job, my colleagues, and what we are working on.

But I also recognized, in three different ways, the value of a break this time around maybe more than last time.  Maybe it’s that I’m five years older or that I’ve been doing the job for five more years.  Maybe it’s because the last couple of years at work have been incredibly intense and both physically and mentally taxing.  But regardless of cause, the outcome is the same — I return to work today rested, healthy, a little tanner, a few pounds lighter, and with more clarity, resolve, and ideas for work than I’ve had in a long time.

Not only did I recognize this with Return Path on my sabbatical, but during my sabbatical, I also reengaged with two organizations (Princeton and the Direct Marketing Association) where I sit on boards and used to be extremely active but have been pretty dormant for a couple of years. The perspective I gained from that dormant time not only gave me new energy for both, but I think very focused and creative energy that I hadn’t seen in a couple of years.

Even with a little work sprinkled in, 6 weeks off and disconnected from emails, the office, and regular meetings is a blessing that I hope everyone gets to experience at some point in his or her career.

Not Just About Us

When we updated our values this year, we felt there were a couple critical business elements missing from this otherwise “how” series of statements.  One thing missing was our clients and users!  So we added this value to our list:

Not Just About Us:  We know we’re successful when our clients are successful and our users are happy.

This may be one of the most straightforward statements of all our values, so this will be a short post.  We serve lots of constituencies at Return Path.  And we always talk about how we’re a “People First” organization and what that means.  I suppose that inherently means we are a “Client Second” organization, though I’m not sure we’d ever come out and say that.  We do believe that by being People First, we will ultimately do the best job for our customers. 

 That said, we aren’t in business just to build a great company or to have an impact on our community.  Or even our shareholders.  We are also in it for our customers.  Whether we are producing a product for mailers, for ESPs, for ISPs, for security companies, for agencies, or for end users, we can’t forget that as an important element of our success every day.

Post 4 of 4 in the series on Scaling CFOs – other posts are How to Engage with Your CFO, When it is Time to Hire Your First Chief Financial Officer, and What Does “Great” Look Like in a CFO?)

While all the functions of a team are needed, perhaps the most critical function to make sure your company is able to scale is the CFO. Cash flow, investments into the business, compensation, budgets—nearly everything that happens in a company flows through the CFO—and it should. So, getting this role right is one of the most important tasks of any startup team. But how do you know if your CFO is up to the task of scaling?

For CEOs, one of the first things that’s a telltale sign is what I call the gut check: do you have an uneasy feeling about cash, either that you’re running out of cash, or that you’re unsure how much cash you’re burning through and how fast you’re spending it?  Do you spend a lot of your time dealing with finance-related issues like fundraising, debt, investors, or cap table questions? Are you on the hot seat during board meetings on finance-related questions, metrics, runway, cash burn, or other issues? Trust your gut. If you have even a little uneasiness about how your CFO is operating, it’s probably worth heeding. You might not have a person capable of scaling, or you might have to invest more resources (time, mentor, fractional executive) to level up your CFO.

For members of the executive team, a telltale sign is whether or not your CFO engages with you and your team to understand your part of the business. Do they spend time learning and steeping in the substance of the business? Do they interact with all the functional leads like product, marketing, and People? Do they spend time in-market with customers, partners, or vendors? Sure, a CFO can understand the business by looking at the numbers, but you’ll never be able to scale if that’s the primary focus of your CFO because the numbers—all of them, and all of the time—are lagging. It’s impossible to be proactive if your CFO is totally focused on the numbers but doesn’t understand your functional issues, timelines, upcoming events or expenditures—and why. A CFO who is capable of scaling doesn’t see their role as “corporate,” as “administrative,” or as an enforcement function. They see it as strategic and as a partner to other parts of the business.

Other Signs Your CFO Isn’t Scaling

One sign of a CFO that can’t scale is whether or not they’re scrambling to hit deadlines. Everybody has to pull an all-weekend stint or over-nighter—occasionally, but if it happens regularly…it probably isn’t going to improve over time as things become more complex in the business. There’s always a pending crunch time that requires their personal attention and a ton of manual work – the monthly close, the audit, the budget, commission planning, compensation cycles.  These things are not surprises, and they come up the same time every month, quarter, or year. CFOs who are mired in doing all these things personally and manually haven’t built the systems, teams, or processes required to scale the business.

Another sign that your CFO can’t scale is if their solution to problems is to throw more people at it. If the accounting teams swells in size you might have a CFO who can’t think strategically about creating innovative processes and systems. “Throwing bodies at the problem” is easy because it’s the path of least resistance, but would your CFO allow other teams to do that? Accounting teams in particular tend to be the most traditional, paper-based teams and don’t need to be. Your CFO should be thinking strategically about how to scale financial systems with process and procedure rather than adding headcount.

A final obvious sign that your CFO isn’t scaling is if they get forecasts wrong, or don’t even try to do them.  Especially while your startup is in burn mode and constantly calculating its runway and months until the next required financing, regular and accurate/conservative forecasts are critical.  Even without a ton of revenue visibility on forward looking sales, good CFOs should have enough of a grip on expenses, cash flow, and order-to-cash dynamics to produce good, rolling 12-month cash forecasts. Anything short of that and you’ll be blindsided in the market, unable to take advantage of opportunities, or limping along with so-so growth for a long time.

In many startups people are learning on the fly but at some point you’ll begin to wonder whether everyone’s able to keep up or, more importantly, whether the people you have will be able to help your company scale. The CFO role touches every part of the organization and it’s critical to figure out earlier rather than later if your CFO can scale or whether you need to go in another direction.

(Posted on the Bolster blog here).