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| | Brought to you by Alex Panas, global leader of industries, & Axel Karlsson, global leader of functional practices and growth platforms
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| | | | In business, hypergrowth typically means maintaining a rapid rate of growth over time. Start-ups often have the agility to do this, but they may become more stratified as they grow larger—often because their hiring practices may not have kept pace with the scaling needs of the business. For their part, established businesses may not have the flexibility to push growth to the levels they need. This week, we look at how both start-ups and incumbent companies can deploy talent to position their organizations for consistent and rapid expansion. | | |
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| | | Start-ups generally pay close attention to hiring the best talent to ensure the new company’s success. But as the business expands, the recruiting process can become more challenging, say McKinsey’s Claudy Jules, Shahar Markovitch, and Charlotte Seiler in a new article. “Talent needs inevitably change, skill gaps become more apparent, and it becomes increasingly difficult for founders and leaders to stay as personally involved in the hiring process,” they say. One possible solution is to conduct a formal assessment of the organization’s plans to scale and compare the current talent mix against those plans to identify any gaps. It may also help to hire talent in “functional areas that make the most sense strategically,” suggest the authors. “For instance, bringing new talent into sales, legal, and compliance teams may help scaling technology start-ups identify and lock in new accounts more quickly.” | | | | |
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| There’s no unique magic that makes start-up employees different from those in a traditional corporate setting, says venture capitalist Florian Heinemann in a discussion with McKinsey partner Philipp Hillenbrand on how incumbent companies can incorporate a start-up-like approach to hypergrowth. What’s most important, he says, is for large companies to offer employees the incentives and flexibility that entrepreneurial ventures tend to nurture. “What you need is a structure parallel to the current business, plus some kind of independent, small, multidisciplinary group that mimics the start-up setting,” he suggests. Small cross-functional teams are also essential to ensure effective marketing and sales: “Very few people can create a superior product/market fit,” says Heinemann. “But if you get these people together in a small, fully or partially cross-functional team, that really gets things going. That’s why I like this kind of team so much, because the intensity with which you can iterate and experiment really creates energy.”
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| | | Lead by planning for hypergrowth. | | | | | — Edited by Rama Ramaswami, senior editor, New York
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