A journey in a business is mostly unpredictable. Small businesses try to keep the risk low in order to sustain it for many more years. It’s not only about the profits also your team member that you have to take care of. One of my mentors earlier in my career advised me that whatever happens in the business your people should get their salary on time every month. The strategy that we use to implement is to have 1 year of salary in advance for the business. I later came to know that after Microsoft became successful they kept 10 years of salary of all their employee. I don’t know if they still follow that strategy.
The people section rightly highlights the key element: Who is on your team, and who is going to join your team. “Who” doesn’t mean their resumes; it means their attitudes and abilities and track record in shipping.
This is marketing by Seth Godin
We can do all the right things and create the right environment for the team however there will be over performers and underperformers. Some projects for our clients will be wins and some will be losses. The unpredictability of the market is unknown, especially in the current strange times.
Care
There was two incident recently that I want to highlight that reflects that we care about our people. The testimony of the care is always in the action that the people take in order to help the business move forward.
In one instance one of our Business development trainees left us to move into the banking industry. He not only informed us 1.5 months before his last date we provided him all the documents for him to appear in the interview on time. We made sure his appraisal was done right in case he did not get selected for the banking role. After a week he referred his sister who he thought could fit the role and she has almost 2 years of experience in sales. She was interested because this role is remote work (which means she would work from home) and the flexibility to work in her own time due to the nature of digital social selling. Let’s see how that goes but at least he referred which means we are a good place to work.
Another story is of one of our software developers from Pune. She is currently struggling with performing and is not the top performer in the team. She is dedicated and has shown good improvement in recent times. In her recent performance review, she told us that if there is an opportunity for her sister to work who is currently studying Master in Computer Application. We got in touch with her and she is currently working as an intern for an initiative of 100 Internships. She has performed well in the past 12 days and made the article reach more than 225 students. I think in the coming months we will give her more responsibilities. Later she may become one of our junior developers.
Our team is sharing references to work with us, could you care to share this article to your friends and family.
Vikram Shetty 