In my recent discussions with founders leading small businesses they’ll say “my HR is all set up - we have systems in place and our culture is good.” When I dig one layer deeper I usually hear about an employee or 2 who is integral to the company's success but is causing some problems. Maybe they don’t show up to work as often as you would like or as on time as you’d like. Maybe they can catch an attitude with their coworkers. Maybe they aren’t understanding the urgency of the work and taking it a little too easy. And typically these founders don’t know how to deal with this scenario so they’re letting it linger. What I have said to those founders is this:

You don’t have an employee problem. You have a culture problem. And more specifically you have a boundary problem.

Let me explain:

1. If you are the founder of an early stage startup, YOU are the culture. It feels like you’re all a group of people sitting around together making magic and fighting hard for it. And you definitely are those things. But as a founder you hold a different role. You are setting the tone. You’re teaching these people how to behave and what success looks like. Right now you know everyone and these early employees will hopefully be your “culture creatures” down the line. Teach. Them. Well. I know culture feels like a later problem but please believe me that it is very much a now problem.
2. You need better boundaries. When you are asking people to take risks with their career and probably work their buns off it can feel weird to correct their behaviour. You couldn’t do it without them, so a little slip up here and there never hurt, right? Wrong. Your culture is the best behaviour you reward AND the worst behaviour you let people get away with.  Let me say it in a different way - You are telling people how they can treat you by how you let them treat you. And that will spread and grow as the team grows. I encourage you to have strong, kind and reasonable boundaries with the early members on your team in a way that builds deep and trusting relationships. This is not as easy as it sounds. Send me a message and we can chat about how to do this.

In the early days - you are working so hard on a million different things and constantly triaging what is important or urgent and what you can push off to later. In my conversations I hear that founders push these “people things” off for something more urgent. I completely understand that. But it can easily get out of hand. Investing in these things early will teach other people and your emerging leaders how you like to work and what’s important to you. This will pay off in spades when you reach the inflection point where you aren’t able to make all the decisions in the business.

I know it’s hard, and I also know you can do this.

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