Hire for Tomorrow…and Prepare to Lose People Along the Way

Published in

Scaling Pathways

7 min readOct 16, 2020

How do you ensure you have the right talent at the right time?

As organizations work to scale their impact, talent needs will rapidly evolve. The most effective social enterprises will plan ahead of their talent needs so that talent drives them faster and more effectively towards scale, versus lagging behind. On the other hand, as scaling strategies evolve, staff who were previously well-aligned may no longer be the right people to drive the work going forward. Navigating “hiring ahead” and letting go is a delicate balance for any scaling social enterprise. Here is some tactical advice from the field:

1. Assess gaps between current and future talent needs.

Health Leads CEO Alexandra Quinn recommended that senior leadership commit to taking stock of existing talent, envisioning future talent needs, and determining gaps. In Health Leads’ first major pivot (the “Proof Plan”), the organization realized that it needed to professionalize its program to be able to work more closely with health systems. Health Leads recognized that this meant having staff that could manage volunteers, design tools and trainings, and have credibility with the health systems partners — which necessitated bringing in professionals with clinical and case management experience to execute the work and manage Health Leads’ existing cadre of college- age volunteers. Several years later, Health Leads embarked upon its “Grow and Catalyze Plan,” which moved the organization to a systems change focus, including enabling health systems to design their own interventions. In this case, the organization did not spend adequate time envisioning future talent needs, which would require staff to shift from “doing” to enabling others and would demand more traditional business skills from different sectors. This oversight resulted in a mismatch between talent and strategy which required multiple dramatic shifts throughout the plan, including layoffs at several junctures. Quinn reflected, “If I could, I would go back to that period and redesign it. I’d do more explicit planning on talent and learning, I’d be more explicit with new people coming in about our value of ‘constant and courageous learning,’ and I would clearly articulate our foremost focus on health equity — meaning that DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) is a critical part of how we operate. The good news is we get to take that learning to the next chapter.”

Resource Highlight: A Competency Framework to Define Talent Needs. Boys & Girls Clubs of America found the Korn Ferry Leadership Architect — a global framework around the skills, competencies, and experiences that drive performance and impact — to be key in developing “success profiles” for each major position it was creating. See Korn Ferry’s Define. Distill. Employ: Adopting 21st-century competencies for high- impact talent and Leadership Architect™ Legacy Competency Mapping for more.

2. Hire for two to three years into the future.

By assessing the gap between existing talent and future needs, social ventures can more effectively plan for and hire the talent needs of tomorrow to help drive the scaling curve. As David Ellis, the CEO of EthioChicken, an agriculture social venture in Ethiopia, explained, “I see a lot of entrepreneurs hiring people who are a fit for the organization as it exists in that moment. Instead I think they should be asking themselves — can the organization grow into this person within the next 2–3 years? You don’t want to get into a situation where every 9–12 months you’ve completely outgrown the capabilities of the person you’ve brought on.”¹ Similarly, Ella Gudwin, President of VisionSpring, spoke of hiring staff that are “great for right now, but we will quickly outgrow them.” She concludes that “the real hire is the person who wants to stretch and grow — particularly for the director-level positions who are always on the leading edge of our growth curve.” Admittedly, this strategy generally requires availability of capital, but the concept can still inform the hiring process, even in the absence of additional capital.

3. Be clear with candidates about current and future needs.

Gudwin also spoke of hiring people she believed the organization would need in two years, hoping that they could “ride the journey” until that time. But the reality was that sometimes experienced candidates got excited about the social mission and their potential to make an impact — but had not come to terms with the real patience and basic foundation-laying work (e.g., setting up systems and whole departments) that must occur before the fun and transformational work starts to accelerate. Alden Zecha, co-founder of Sproxil, had similar stories to share. In one example, Sproxil attempted to hire ahead by bringing on a sales lead with experience managing effective sales teams. However, in the short term, Sproxil needed that person to work without the support of a team and recognized too late that this was a mismatch of skills and desires. Zecha’s lesson learned was that during the interview process Sproxil should have been more transparent about the short- term and long-term needs to help both parties determine whether the candidate had both the skills for the short-term work that still needed to be completed as well as the willingness to wait for and grow into the more complex longer-term work.

Resource Highlight: Fire Fast. At any stage, organizations may have mis- hires (i.e., wrong skill set and/or poor mission fit) and the chances of this may increase as organizations try to hire ahead. When this occurs, entrepreneurs warn, it is important to acknowledge poor fit as soon as possible so that top performers stay motivated and so that time, resources, and precious employee slots are allocated to top people rather than underperformers. Gudwin articulated the importance — and challenge — of “firing fast” in mission-driven organizations: “The things we’re trying to accomplish are just too big and too important. Sometimes we can coach people who are struggling in their roles and sometimes we just have to cut our losses. It’s hard when people are committed to the mission but are not effective. There’s a tension there. We want to be human and kind and understanding, but we also need to be purposeful and keep moving; we have important work to do.”
The Management Center, an organization dedicated to providing effective management resources for social change organizations, provides additional tools to support leaders in addressing employee performance problems, including termination: www. managementcenter.org/tools/ performance-problems

4. Recognize when you evolve past long-term staff.

Many interviewees expressed surprise at how much more challenging letting go of people can become at the scaling stage, as it often involves longer-term staff who are not able to keep up with the pace of work or do not fit with shifting scaling strategies. Leaders shared that this process can be even more “painful” because, as Alexandra Quinn of Health Leads shared, “most people doing this work are highly empathetic” and most have a deep commitment to the social mission of the organization.

However, Health Leads has recognized that while its ultimate focus on social determinants of health will remain the same, how it achieves that vision and who it achieves it with will continue to change as the market changes. Given this reality, the team needs to be comfortable with the idea of different talent needs at different times — although these shifts take time and are not easy.

As Quinn noted, “Not all employees can make the shift — some because there are skills that can’t transfer and some because of the emotional toll of shifting away from a model in which they are deeply invested. These shifts require many conversations — and ‘people managers’ skilled to help navigate the individual journeys of the staff — and thus take considerable time.” Health Leads has become better at communicating transparently about changing skill set needs and makes an effort to bring its people along through development and mentoring as it pivots.

Zecha also talked about the changing needs of talent as Sproxil scaled, including a story about Sproxil’s original CTO, who was an excellent employee and well-suited to be a solo manager of Sproxil’s early technology needs. However, as Sproxil scaled and grew to a four-person IT team, it needed someone who was more comfortable delegating and managing a team. It became clear that — despite excellent work from the CTO — Sproxil had evolved past his strengths and interests and needed to bring on new leadership to play the CTO role.

“During one of our strategic shifts, a staff member said, ‘You hired me as a ballerina and now want me to become a basketball player.’” — Alexandra Quinn, CEO of Health Leads

5. Exit staff kindly.

For mission-driven organizations where culture and commitment to mission is so integral, interviewees spoke about the importance of taking the time to celebrate past contributions, being transparent about staffing changes, and helping staff who are no longer a fit make a positive exit. For Health Leads, creating a positive and dignified exit can look like celebrating departing staff’s contributions in weekly newsletters, saying goodbye with a celebration of the staff member’s choosing, and supporting the staff with severance packages and coaching following the exit.

Do’s and Don’ts of Hiring for Tomorrow

Acumen,“+Acumen: Human Capital Strategy for Social Enterprises [online course],”Module 02: Human Capital Strategy: 15. https://www. plusacumen.org/courses/human-capital-strategy-social-enterprises. This course is taught by Anne Claire Broughton, Principal of Broughton Consulting, LLC. Broughton Consulting has additional guides highlighting strong employee engagement practices on its website: http://www. broughton-consulting.com/business-action-guides/.

This article was written by Erin Worsham, Kimberly Langsam, and Ellen Martin, and released in July 2019.