Don’t Define the Specific Role Yet. Define What the Business Needs First.
A Little Structure Leads to a Lot of Momentum
Before you write that job description take some time to zoom out. A little bit of structure now leads to a lot of momentum later.
In my last post I shared a hiring process framework. This week I share how a little structure upfront will help you move quickly and scale fast in a sustainable and meaningful way!
When you are building your startup hiring can sometimes feel like a race. You have just raised. You are feeling (very excited!) but overwhelmed. You are told to scale and therefore hire fast.
The instinct is to post jobs, get candidates in the funnel and go! But, if you have not first defined what your business really needs how do you know what you need and therefore who to hire?
Many early stage teams skip this step because they think it slows them down. In reality, this is the step that speeds everything up.
Why this Step Matters?
Even in small teams, organizational complexity can start to creep in quickly.
People start to gravitate towards the work they are best at and what they enjoy the most and not necessarily what the business needs.
Hires get made reactively
You duplicate skills, miss gaps and slow down decision making
The fix does not necessarily need to be a heavyweight org design process or reorg, or expensive planning software and systems. At this stage it can be a quick and very clear organizational design conversation.
A Mini Org Design Framework for Founders
Here is a framework to help you get started.
Step 1: What are you trying to achieve?
Start with where you are headed. What is your vision? What is your mission? What are the mission critical outcomes you need to deliver over the next 6-12 months? Think product launches, revenue milestones, customer growth, fundraising goals etc.
What are the non-negotiable outcomes you need to hit?
What will make the biggest difference to your runway, growth or next raise?
For this post we will use the example ‘triple revenue in the next 12 months’. That is the ‘what’ and so now let’s tackle the ‘how’.
(Need help defining your company goals and objectives? Look out for a future series from us on defining and implementing these!)
Step 2: What capabilities are required to deliver them?
For each priority ask the question, what capabilities are needed for us to achieve this?
Continuing our example from earlier, on the surface this may sound like a sales challenge, but it is rarely that simple.
You quickly realize that revenue growth depends on:
A stickier product (users are churning early)
Clear positioning and messaging (sales are spending time clarifying)
Consistent onboarding (customers are not fully activating)
These are capabilities and not roles:
Product execution and iteration
Messaging/positioning
Onboarding and customer success
The takeaway here is not simply “we need more sales people”. It might be “we need stronger product foundations, tighter messaging and clearer delivery”.
In early stage teams especially, every function is so closely connected and those interdependencies have a more significant impact on ability to achieve company objectives.
If product is not ready, sales cannot close consistently
If sales lacks clarity, onboarding suffers
If onboarding is weak, marketing efforts do not compound over time
That is why hiring must start with capability mapping and not titles.
Step 3: Who is doing what today?
Now you have your set of capabilities you need to map out:
Which team/individual owns each capability right now?
Where are we strong?
Where are we stretched or uncovered?
This reveals your true organizational picture beyond a specific role or title and identifies bandwidth constraints and gaps in repeatable delivery.
Step 4: What should you hire, hold or delegate?
Once you have gone through the exercise of mapping capabilities and gaps:
What needs a full time focus?
What can be covered by a contractor or an advisor?
What can be augmented?
What can/should wait until later?
In our previous example you may choose to:
Prioritize a Product Manager to improve stickiness and product market fit now
Hold off on a full time sales person until messaging is tighter
Work with a fractional Customer Success Manager to improve onboarding in the interim
This is where you define the roles you actually need and not just the ones you assumed. It is about designing a team that can execute together.
Step 5: Build a lightweight organizational design
Before moving forward with determining what roles you need to hire for create a simple now/next/later view of your team plan. You can map this into a table. Your column headers could be for e.g. capability, purpose and timeframe.
As you work through each capability list them in the table, include a brief description for the purpose and determine whether it is needed now, next or later.
This not only gives you the foundation for determining what skills and attributes, and therefore roles (next week we will cover how to translate capabilities into roles), are needed for hiring but also gives you clarity and a narrative you can share with your board, your investors and your team.
This Speeds You Up!
We get it. This can feel like it is going to slow you down. But it will help you to accelerate your growth! Your first 5-10 hires set the tone for your next 50 and so on. Doing this work early:
Aligns your team
Speeds up your hiring
Avoids expensive mishires
Makes onboarding easier
Builds clarity and trust
This is how you hire on purpose.
Need Something to Help you Get Started?
Check out our ‘Mini Organizational Design for Startups’ cheat sheet to help you get started.
And Excelerate can help!
Let’s Talk!
If you are building a startup and want to do it with intention, we would love to connect. Reach out to us at hello@excelerate.work and check out our website, www.excelerate.work.
How you hire is one of the most important strategic choices you will make as a founder. Let's make it scale!
