How to Build a Management Team – Part 7 of a 7-Part Series

Recap of First Six

This is the seventh and last of a 7 part series on How to Build a Management Team. Here’s a recap of the key issues of what we have covered in the first six blogs:

1. Senior Sales Executive – You need to determine your sales goals long-term. If your goal is to bring in large accounts, you need to go with a connected results oriented closer. If your plan is to grow through adding a sales team over time as sales grow, then you need to look for someone with actual sales experience but also a knack for working with people and building teams with a vision in mind.

2. Chief Financial Officer – How do you go about finding an excellent CFO? Use a quality CPA firm as a backup or help to your initial bookkeeper and then attempt to hire away one of the CPA firm’s employees whom you have observed and feel will be a good fit for your company. Or you may choose to go the traditional route of referrals or a retained recruiter with experience finding CFO type executives.

3. The Director of Marketing – Involve employees handling the marketing efforts in understanding the importance of having the right efforts and expertise in the marketing and branding of the company. Get them involved in the planning, search, and screening of candidates to whatever degree possible. This ensures that the employees understand the objectives and goals of the company’s marketing efforts. This also enables the new marketing director to come in with a refreshing outlook by all parties to work on developing an exciting and progressive marketing and branding program for the company.

4. Director of Human Resources – The primary function of HR is policy … that is rules, regulations, legalities and the scope and parameter that guide a company’s personnel issues. The Director of HR is responsible for ensuring that proper language and directives are clear, unambiguous and binding.

5. The Chief IT Officer – You must keep in mind that the key to producing great results in IT depends in large part on your ability to chart a strategic vision for the business. This requires you to be able to set and explain a clear interpretation of your vision of what your plan is for the company to achieve in the next 3 years … 5 years … 10 years … and what technology you envision to accomplish these goals.

6. The Chief Executive Officer – This position is a very important decision and anyone you bring to lead the team must have the style and temperament as well as business acumen to know when to challenge you and when to defer to your judgment as the founder and owner. At the same time, you must acknowledge that this is a two-way street. With responsibility, one must have equal authority to perform their duties and execute the plan for success.

Thoughts on Additional Resources / Proper Planning As you build your management team, you need to keep in mind their career paths – your top managers have ambition … and their ambitions usually do not culminate with their current positions. Smart succession planning is a good way to provide key executives with an incentive to remain with your company for the long term. It can also provide you, your investors, your top customers and suppliers with peace of mind. Finally, always provide motivation and incentive … holding out for the perfect candidate for each position can be frustrating and unrealistic, time consuming, and costly, but making a mistake in hiring can be disastrous. Remember … prior planning prevents poor performance.

What are your ideas for building a management team?

© Phil Hoffman 2012. All rights reserved

How to Build a Management Team – Part 2 of a Series

Subtitle: The Chief Financial Officer

The role of a chief financial officer has changed significantly the past ten years. What use to be a glorified bookkeeping or scorekeeper position has evolved into a strategic position of importance since the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley in July 2002. It is not unusual for the CFO to become extremely close with the CEO … maybe even serving as partner … definitely as an officer with fiduciary responsibility. Today the CFO helps to manage the business toward its goals, achieve buy-in from key investors, and assesses the wisdom of pursuing new business ventures. Once your startup business starts growing at a rapid pace you will know you need a good CFO. This normally would be when you start looking at outside financing or careful cash management, need to start doing a formal audit, when your payroll reaches the 30+-employee level, or when you are contemplating a complex transaction such as an acquisition or merger … or maybe an IPO.

Seek Integrity and Excellence

So how do you go about finding an excellent CFO? Some companies use a quality CPA firm as a backup or help to their initial bookkeeper and then attempt to hire away one of the CPA firm’s employees whom they have observed and feel will be a good fit for them. Or they may go the traditional route of referrals or a retained recruiter with experience finding CFO type executives. Whichever route you choose to take, I always advise that you look for work ethic as the number one ingredient. Someone with work ethic is a worker, a doer, a fixer, and a thinker who is always scheming how to do better with a commitment for excellence and teambuilding. Furthermore, this person needs to be a good fit with your personality because you are going to be working together closely for many hours and, hopefully, years. In addition you want someone with the highest integrity and who has an excellent grasp and understanding of economics and how the markets work … globally.

What are your ideas or experiences in deciding when a startup has reached the CFO point?

Next: Part 3 – Top Marketing Person

© Phil Hoffman 2012. All rights reserved