5 tips on building a company – Dragons’ Den’s Steven Bartlett
Steven Bartlett, entrepreneur, founder of The Diary of a CEO podcast and participant on the BBC investor show Dragons’ Den shared his top 5 tips in a recent webinar with YuLife.
1. Build the right culture
Culture building happens right at the company’s genesis, Bartlett says.
“Each one of your first 10 people represents 10% of your company culture. And we know from multiple studies and reports that one bad apple can spoil the bunch. So getting it right early on is key. Because it‘s really hard to unpick when you‘re at 100 or 200 people.
“The first 10 people are going to hire the next 90 people. And they hire people with the same values, and so on.”
2. Change your hiring strategy as you grow
For those who do not have the luxury of building the workforce from the ground up, Bartlett advises organisations to hire people appropriate to their company growth stage.
“The way you hire and the type of people you hire will change at different stages of your organisation,” Bartlett says. “At the first stage, you‘re looking for people who are all-in.”
Then, if all goes according to plan, you enter a second stage. “Now, there‘s a greater requirement for processes and departments like HR,” Bartlett says. “This is quite a difficult phase and sometimes requires a different type of person. Thirdly, you tend to get into an enterprise phase, where processes are in place, growth isn’t 100% a year, and you’re looking for a different type of leader again.”
But letting people go who are no longer relevant isn’t about disloyalty. “I think it‘s actually about fairness. Because if it’s not right for the company, it’s also not going to be right for them.”
And this rule applies to company founders just as well.
“At the very start, founders will take very high-level roles,” he says. “One will be CEO, another will be CFO. But then the company goes to 5,000 people. And Dave or Brenda, or whoever, has never been a CFO for 5,000 people; it requires completely different skills.”
3. Protect the culture
Regarding culture, Bartlett says: “Think about one person in your organisation, and ask yourselves: If everybody in your organisation had the same cultural values as that individual, would they raise or lower the bar? You can probably think of some people who, if everyone had their cultural values, you might fail as a company. If that’s the case, either a conversation or training or some other type of intervention is required.”
He warns that not addressing this upfront will reap dire consequences for organisations.
4. Build systems of communication
“One of the key things organisations don’t do enough of is teaching people how to communicate with each other,” he says. “For example, you‘ll often see a suggestion box in an office, but when you open it, it‘s just a bunch of people roasting the CEO. That‘s not how we should be communicating.”
5. Promote kindness above all else
Finally, Bartlett put an emphasis on kindness within company cultures, “because that‘s the glue: the glue of culture, the glue of community.”
To cultivate that culture of kindness “the organisations that retain people the best, and get the best out of them, provide much more than financial remuneration,” he says. “One of the big things they’ll provide is a supportive community. Because all the studies show that having a supportive community around you at work reduces your stress levels.”
Bartlett also put forward more tangible ways to build a supportive, kind, community: one way he did this was by offering in-house therapists as an ‘opt-out’ benefit rather than an ‘opt-in’.
“Some individuals would not have opted in, because there was still a stigma around it,” Bartlett says.
To watch the full ‘How To Build The Winning Team’ Webinar by Steven Bartlett, click here.
In partnership with YuLife
YuLife is the first digital life insurance provider on a mission to inspire life.
