Scaling Your Business Right: Maintaining a Culture of Accountability and Connection
This article was adapted from Episode 9 of the Elevated Entrepreneur Podcast. Click here to listen.
In today’s episode, we are joined by Gwenevere Crary, the founder and CEO of Guide to HR.
Gwenevere is a highly accomplished HR executive with a proven track record of leading HR plans and corporate initiatives. Gwenevere is a results-driven leader and is an expert in developing programs that boost employee engagement.
She offers a wealth of knowledge and experience to ensure her clients have the people, practices, culture, organisational design, and inclusive work environment to enable and sustain rapid growth and development.
In this article, you will learn how to build your team, engage your employees, and create systems that can help you scale your business and be in a place where you can mentally, emotionally, and physically last.
Read on!
HR Is an Important Part of Your Business
We often get bogged down by the idea of what HR is.
With corporate-experience thinking, we often believe we don’t even need it — and those that have it wait until the last minute. However, when scaling and growing a business, HR is the most important part.
If you want to build your business on sand and rebuild it every time a tide comes in, Gwenevere says, you can go for it. But if you want to build on a foundation, you are going to need assistants behind the scenes in order to make the business run.
Setting Boundaries Around Your Work
No matter how much you enjoy your work, entrepreneurs need breaks and time to be with family and friends.
Sometimes, we get so focused on the next thing that stopping to do something non-work-related (even for self-development), makes us guilty. But if you want to grow and be in a place where you can mentally and emotionally last, you need to understand that it’s okay to take a break and set proper boundaries for yourself.
Hiring a Coach
When starting your business, you don’t have to hire a coach.
But if you don’t have the discipline and self-starter drive, you will probably need one. Everyone has different needs, but for Gwenevere, she prefers going in and figuring it out on her own.
Most starters don’t like following directions or re-creating a will when building something. However, reaching out to people in your network and learning from their mistakes and what worked for them can help you align with your passion and put yourself out there.
This helped Gweenevere find her niche, make it work, and get clients within the first six months.
Scaling Your Business With People
Scaling your business is all about understanding the systems and processes that need to be put into place.
It’s also about doing it in a sustainable way — a way that will help you protect what you already have and the people you have on board.
“Scaling is about what your company is doing and where you want to go, and all ties into doing what you and your team love,” Gwenevere says. By identifying what you and each of your team members love, you will be able to understand where you are, your capacity planning, and HR strategy planning in order to set a clear road map for you and your employees.
How To Captivate And Prevent Quiet Quitting
What happens when your employees lose interest in grinding, or are only working for the paycheck?
Is your culture the problem?
The problem is the people.
According to Gwernevere, these are the employees who are in there for a job. All these people want is to come in, do the job, and go.
They don’t like growing
They don’t like what they do
They only see it as a way to focus on other things — their families, travel, or hobbies.
To handle this, Gwenevere helps clients bring more accountability into their organisation.
When you have accountability and are maintaining it throughout conversations, with numbers, and in team interactions, quiet-quitting employees become less passive.
How To Hold Your Employees Accountable
Accountability is about:
maintaining productivity
doing what you said you would do (on time)
the ramifications if they don’t meet deadlines
and finding ways to track what it being done
By hosting weekly meetings, setting up calls to action, assigning due dates, and analysing the quality of work are all great ways to maintain accountability. According to Gwenevere, implementing these things will help you track the productivity of your teams even when they are not operating on numbers or producing a certain result.
Accountability is more than meeting the deadline, though.
It’s about being honest with yourself, your manager, and your team.
Hold people accountable for what they say they are going to do, and make sure you put a deadline on it.
The Biggest Mistake That Most Founders Make
Gwernevere shares that the biggest mistake she sees most founders make is not bringing their employees and teams along in the decision-making process.
“There’s a disconnection when typical founders are too busy thinking about what they will do tomorrow. They don't reflect on what they are doing, don’t care what their team is working on, or celebrate their successes because they are always thinking about the next thing.”
Not bringing the team along the decision-making journey is where many founders miss the board.
As a leader, you need to be connected to your team.
If you are 10 years ahead and forget to bring your team along that journey, you create a culture of chaos.
-Raylen
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