Are You The One That Every Startup Looking For?
https://www.facebook.com/BuddyBits/videos/2126649954071700/
Recently there is one video posted in Social Media goes super viral. Reach to more than millions of people in the world with thousands of comment. If you have not watch, you should.
I receive some call from our customers and HR. We talk about the video and some of them worry this video may impact their staff performance. I told them they no need to worry too much. If you have the right staff there is nothing to worry. You need to worry only if your staff heart is not with you.
I decided to go deeper and analyze all those comment in Facebook. I found those comment very interesting. In summary, I can see there are 3 types of people you can find from those comments
Type 1: They think that they been bully by the boss, the company is crap, the boss is suck, and they swear they WILL NOT work extra for company
Type 2: They think a lot of “fake” people in the company. They spent time doing NON WORK related things during office hour
Type 3: They know what they want in their career. To them OT or not OT is not the key concern. Most important is they can learn, growth, and they feel it is their responsibility to delivery their job well.
How about you? What do you think of above?
In my opinion, there is nothing wrong or right of all comment above. It is just different people have different opinion. It is normal to have different perspective because everyone have different priority in their life.
For people that belong to type 3, i think your boss will like you a lot. Because you care about your job, you want to do your best, regardless is OT or not OT, that not important. You are hungry, you want to learn, you want to growth. This are the kind of staff every boss dream of. Keep this spirit, you will be success very soon.
For people that belong to type 2, I do agree some of the people they just act like hardworking by show their boss they work OT. But I can assure you, a smart boss will know whether staff are acting, or really working. Because a staff can cheat for 10 days, but they cannot cheat for 100 days; unless the boss is damn stupid. On the other hands, do not simply accuse people that work OT is fake. Some of the people are really care about the job, want to give their best, and don’t mind working late. Just like those response in type 3 above. So those simply accuse people acting without understand their colleague is equally not good.
For people that belong to type 1, I suspect you are not happy with your company. Basically you think you been bully and you think your boss crap or the company suck.
Again, you entitle for your opinion, Is your right to think so. Just that I would like to advice you, if you are not happy with your job, you should find another company that fit to what you belief, and what you like. So you can enjoy your job.
WHY?
Let me share with you why.
Do you know that you spent most of your time in life in the office (except sleep)? Chart below show how average people will spent their time, for each activities
In average, you are spending 28% of your time in your life in work! It means you are seeing your boss more than your family or friends!
Problem is now you are unhappy with your company, and yet, you are spending most of your time with the company. Think again, is this the life you want? Do you want 28% of your life to be unhappy?
You think yourself.
The relationship between Employee and Boss
Let look at another perspective. Husband and Wife
When husband and wife, become calculative with each other, how is their relationship will be? For example:
- Husband: “I have paid for yesterday dinner, you should pay for today one”
- Wife: “This new house that we going to buy, should be belong to me, put under my name”
- and etc….
Is this the relationship you want with your another half?
Same for the relationship between employee and boss. Remember above? You spent 28% of your time in life with your boss, more than your wife/husband. If your relationship with your boss have become so calculative, what kind of working environment it will become? Let me show you some example:
- Employee: “Boss, I work extra 1 hour yesterday, I wan to claim back”
- Boss: “Dear Employee, why you go back so sharp everyday? You seem like not committed to your work”
- Employee: “Sorry boss, I cannot deliver the task today, I have work 8 hours today which I was paid for for. I need to go home now”
- Boss: “Dear HR, get a technician to install firewall to block all employee from playing games and Facebook in company, we don’t pay for them to come office and play”
- Employee: “Dear Boss, now is night time, is not working hour. Doesn’t matter how urgent is the task, I will not do now. We can do it next week”
Ask yourself, as employee, or as a boss, do you like that kind of working relationship?
If a company full of this kind of employee, supervisor, manager and boss, do you think the company can grow?
Answer: It WON’T! When everyone become so calculative, the company won’t go far. The staff wont grow as well. Eventually the company will go downtrend and close.
Husband and wife should be together because they love and care each other. Not by calculate how much you care about me then only i will care about you back
Employee and boss should work together to achieve a common goal that both parties also believe in, instead of by calculate how many hours you work and is that working hour or not.
Then, what kind of Employee a Startup need?
I particular love this quote by Jack Ma below.
We are a small startup that trying to fight those GIANT.
Jobstreet, Mudah, Indeed, Quora, Zhihu. All are giant that
- Have more money than us
- Have more employee than us
- Famous than us
Why we so crazy and think we can win the war?
20 years ago when Alibaba say want to fight EBay and Amazon, people also say they are CRAZY! Who is the real crazy now? Alibaba or those say them crazy one?
How can they do it? How can Alibaba grow to win the war?
The answer is: They have team of people that believe in that dream, work relentlessly chasing the dream. They failed, and failed many times but they never give up in trying. They never find excuse for their failure. They learnt and they continue try until it success
These are the Real Talent, Real Hero, that every startup need to have if they want to win the war. It is not about how much money you have, not how many staff you have, not how strong is your connection, it is all about whether your company have the Avenger type of Hero believe in your dream. These kind of Avenger employee are the one make a small company able to fight the big company
The same applied to other successful startup. I can guarantee you, behind those successful startup like Gojek, Tokopedia or Grab, there are team of Avenger that work behind them.
That is why Real Hero is damn, damn, damn hard to find. There are rare. Rare than Panda.
In our company, we are lucky to have few, but we need more. Because we know, when we put all these Avenger heroes together, they can make every impossible become possible
How difficult is your jobs?
The work you all doing now, are difficult. Challenging, pressure and always need to be fast. Let me give you few example:
Sales Team
- You need to bring in sales to our company, every month. You require to recruit new customers, while maintain good relationship with existing customer, make sure is happy. You need to make sure our sales growth 10% every month, fight with our competitor for the customer, and worse is competitor traffic is much better than us, and they offering their service for FREE! Crazy competitor!
Marketing Team
- You need to growth our brand from scratch, with almost zero budget. Sometimes you running out of idea, but no choice because the competition and pressure is there. You need to growth the traffic no matter how, at least at 10% — 20% rate every month. Worse is you need to multi task, find idea, prepare content, design the material, promote in social media, recruit influencer, guide the freelancer and etc. Where got time??
Technical Team
- There are many request from sales and marketing team every week. You need to deliver those new feature, fast! Sales and project manager keep pressuring you. Worse is you need to deal with some old code that is confusing, but you are given only little time. Some more you need to make sure your work quality is good, not buggy, else it will cause production issues. That’s insane!
Other department like video, content, customer service, HR, finance, R&D and etc also facing similar amount of challenges!
So, HOW ???
That’s is why so many startup FAILED, so many company FAILED. Nokia Failed. Motorola Failed. Every month also have startup close down.
To handle all challenge above, you need Avenger kind of staff. Only they can take the hit, take the pressure and take the challenge. Question is, are you the one?
Throughout the last few years in business, I learnt one thing. Avenger is not born. There are train. They are just like normal people, they can be fresh graduate, intern, or experience working people. BUT they have one thing that other don’t have:
They dare to do, they dare to try. They failed, but they try again. They may failed again, but they try again.
They not scared of failure. They not scare of pressure either. They don’t complain when face with difficult task. Instead they choose to face it with positive mindset. The more the difficult is the task, the more the power you can see in them. This kind of heroes will just keep try and try and try until they success. This is exactly what Jack Ma said: “A successful company will have a team of people, that willing to die for the dream”
Don’t get me wrong that Avenger = Someone who is expert, knowledgeable or skillful.
Expert, Senior, Team lead is not necessary Avenger. They purely someone who have more working experience than others. The true Avenger usually possess few characteristic below
- They NEVER give up
- They show good EXAMPLE
- They may not expert but giving them time, they will be
I want to highlight one more time, they set GOOD EXAMPLE.
Avenger = Influencer. People respect them, people like to work with them because they bring positive energy to the team, to the company.
If a senior or team lead are skillful, but everyday full of complain, full of excuse, always say cannot do this and cannot do that, they are NOT the real Avenger. In fact they are worse than normal staff, because they influence other staff with negative behavior, especially their followers.
It is like if normal people rob a bank need to be jail for 10 years. Then if a police rob a bank they should be jail for 20 years (x2). Because people expect Police to set a good example, not bad example.
Every company will avoid this kind of toxic leader, because company know their negative behavior will make the entire team become demotivated. When face with problem, they will blame the company, blame the boss, blame the people.
Let me assure you, blaming wont help you solve problem. A true leader, instead of blaming, true leader will take it up the problem and find a way to solve it.
That is why I keep say, Avenger is hard to find, it is harder to find Avenger than Panda.
However…..
Good news is, avenger can be train, if YOU WANT TO BE. And we are more than willing to train you to be the one, regardless you are senior, junior or intern.
