Two weeks ago, our assistant Catherine gave notice. This was after about five months of her being with our company. Let me say at the outset that she’s great, smart, intelligent, creative, and while she was here she added a lot.
That said, she discovered that she needed to move on. And, from our perspective, this was just after we spent 2-3 months training her, and just feeling like we were all in a groove together. Very painful.
While I think I know a lot about business, I don’t know a lot about hiring and managing. We’re definitely in a learning mode here. The lessons I’m taking away from this are:
1. Pay attention to warning signs. While things appeared to be going fairly well, there were a few warning signs, almost too subtle to name, where I felt like hmmm… are we really and truly clicking?
2. Set more measurable benchmarks. We did all the right conversations in the beginning, but we never really consistently followed up. I didn’t pay attention to whether she was coming up to speed as quickly as we thought possible, to whether she was truly happy and engaged with the core aspects of the job. In short, we could’ve asked more questions, more often, and earlier.
3. Don’t be afraid to act quickly. We have enough going on in our lives that we can let things go on and on. If something is working okay, better to just let it glide along. We did have some subtle warning signs, and we didn’t act. We just let it go.
So, we’re hiring again.
I’m actually enjoying the adventure of becoming a company. The months of having Catherine here, aside from the pure pleasure of working with her, were a real sense of team that was developing, and also a strong accountability that came in. I’m not ashamed to admit it, but when it was just my wife Holly and me, we could let business meetings slide for a week or more.
If you, or someone you know, lives in the Portland, Oregon area and might be perfect for us, have them check out this web page:
Heart of Business Many Hats Position.
What have been your experience with hiring and managing? Having you been part of a company that transitioned from basically self-employed, to having a team? What did you learn?
